On Needing Killing

[Major Variola (ret)]

At 05:38 AM 4/11/04 -0400, An Metet wrote:
>> And the responsibles need killing.
>
>No, they don't.
>
>There are two alternative solutions to the problem of restrictions on
>information flow, or more generally restrictions on any sort of
voluntary
>and cooperative activity.  One is to use force to fight back, even to
>the point of killing the perpetrators.  This is what you are advocating

>when you say they "need killing".

When faced with force, you reply with force when you can.

>The other is to evade the restrictions.  This does not involve killing,

>force, or violence of any sort.  Cryptography is an ideal tool for this

>purpose.  It allows people to communicate and exchange data even when
>outsiders want them to stop.  Via digital cash they can even contract
>together, and buy and sell information and services.  BlackNet is
intended
>to be an example of how this could work.

Correct.  But the existence of technical means for playing with bits and

hiding from oppression does not change the ethics of the material world.

When the State's otherwise legitimate monopoly on force is abused
the appropriate response is not to hope the oppressors go away.

When the Jews were put in the ghettos, an abuse of State force,
the appropriate response was more than merely publishing anonymous
flyers
or mumbling in secret languages.  There are times when agents have
earned killing.

Blacknet is a robust archive for words, immune to force
(by State or private actors), but merely words.

-----
"How we burned in the prison camps later thinking: What would things
have been like if every security operative, when he went out at night to
make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive?"
--Alexander Solzhenitzyn, Gulag Archipelago