Comments on violence

[Carl Ellison <cme@sw.stratus.com>]

I don't know if legalization would prevent the violence at this point.  It
would probably reduce street crime but I'm concerned that our population is
getting adicted to the thrill of violence (movies, TV news, video games,
...) and it might take a kind of drug treatment program for the whole
nation to do anything about it.

My second, bigger concern is that the government is using this violence as
an excuse to attempt to remove our rights.  The one I'm most concerned
about is the right to privacy in communications through cryptography (since
I'm a computer system architect and cryptologist).  We have always had the
right to invent and use our own strong cryptography (for the whole 4000
year history of cryptography) and yet the administration (no doubt prompted
by the NSA) is now trying to claim a right to read all private messages
[cf., the "Clipper" proposal], citing violence (drug dealers, snuff movies,
etc.) as the need, without establishing a link -- just using the reference
as a scare tactic to get voter adrenalin flowing so that they'll feel
pro-law-enforcement.

This is a major conflict between government and civil rights, coming to a
head as we speak.  A spotlight on this attempt by you would be appreciated.

Thank you.

Carl Ellison
Sr. Technical Consultant
Stratus Computer Corp. / ISIS Distributed Systems