UK To Ban Crypto In Devices, Email And More

[dan at geer.org]

In my consideration of it, the right to bear arms is the right to
self determination.  Nevertheless, as a sovereign nation, Australia
may do as it pleases to Australians, but talking firearms here on
this list is almost surely a rathole unless one wants to argue that
cyber weapons are a parallel vector; perhaps this selection in
forward time order will illustrate:

A free people ought not only to be armed but disciplined; to which end
a uniform and well digested plan is requisite: And their safety and
interest require that they should promote such manufactories, as tend to
render them independent on others, for essential, particularly for
military supplies.
        -- George Washington, 8 January 1790

I wish it to be remembered that I was the last man of my tribe to
surrender my rifle.
        -- Sitting Bull, 19 July 1881

Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.
        -- Mao Zedong, August 1927

If the opposition disarms, all is well and good. If it refuses to
disarm, we shall disarm it ourselves.
        -- Joseph Stalin, 7 December 1927

Among the many misdeeds of British rule in India, history will look
upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.
        -- Mohandas K. Gandhi, An Autobiography, pg 446, 1928

That rifle on the wall of the laborer's cottage or working class
flat is the symbol of democracy.  It is our job to see that it stays
there.
        -- George Orwell, in the English democratic socialist weekly
        "Tribune," 1940


Even if, for you, the right to bear arms is not the right to self
determination, what has changed is that the kinetic weapons of the
civilian are no longer even remotely capable of challenging the
kinetic weapons of the powers that be, so it is quite remarkable
and, some might say, fortuitous that cyber weapons have brought us
back to a balance of power some two hundred years old.  What we
might want, therefore, is to discuss whether we can prevent the
overwhelming mismatch in kinetic weapons (between citizen and the
powers that be) that now obtains from being recapitulated in cyber
weapons.  I, for one, favor arms control of big shit, not little,
which puts me at odds with all sovereigns and, quite possibly, the
arc of history.

--dan