Cypherpunk Politics [was: REAL-ID Coming]

dan at geer.org dan at geer.org
Sun Mar 15 13:32:52 PDT 2015


As a side note to this debate, I've negotiated bunches of
settlements between local (and, once, state) governments and
citizen claimants.  In not one case can I say that the
agreements were worth the paper they were ultimately printed
on as there is no way to hold a government to its agreements
when you really get down to it beyond the ballot box.  If an
agreement calls for some sort of enforcement, then you can be
sure that in the fullness of time enforcement will wane.  If
an agreement calls for appointment of an oversight board, then
you can be sure that in the fullness of time the appointment
process will yield not fire-in-the-belly citizen activists
but apparatchiks.  If an agreement calls for an evaluation
five years hence as to whether the course of action was or was
not producing the results that it was promised to produce,
then you can be sure that in the fullness of time such review
will be pro forma, vapid, innocuous, and self-congratulatory,
if it is done at all.  A government's word cannot be trusted
when details matter, yet another manifestation of how eternal
vigilance is the price of freedom, or, to repurpose the title
of Larry O'Brien's memoirs, there are no final victories.

Please don't let this start an exploration of any rat-hole,
just allow me to speak from four decades of experience, please.

--dan




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