Re: Crime and punishment in cyberspace - 1 of 3

[tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)]

I've stayed out of this thread on what's criminal and what's not,
mainly because I'm spending all my waking hours (and more) trying to
finish up the %&*#$%^$ FAQ, but I perk up when my name is mentioned:

rishab@dxm.ernet.in said:

> Unless we want a totally "everyone for him/herself" society (which is 
> contradictory - society is a framework or protocol by which individuals 
> interact with each other), and become like Rwanda, say, we need the 
> intervention of [police/state/society/collective] to ensure that basic social
> agreements are kept - thou shalt not rape, for instance. Even anarchist Tim May
> has in previous posts conceded the possible need for a police force to 
> investigate murders.

But generally I don't favor such governmental police forces, and
especially not national police forces. (That is, cops should be
local to the community...and perhaps even privately
contracted-for...no time here (or direct relevance) to go into how
such privatization works.)

The Rwanda example is especially important. It is mainly two rival
"statist" camps that are killing civilians, butcheing members of the
rival camp, etc. And of course the farmers and peasants were long ago
disarmed by the Tutsi and Hutu "governments," in the interests of
ensuring safety and order (codewords), with predictable results.

Same thing happened in Somalia...jeep-loads of teenaged "soldiers"
terrorizing, raping, looting, and pillaging. A familiar pattern.

States and statists have killed several hundred million people this
century, in various purges, forced famines, holocausts, etc. (the
names of Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and Pol Pot come to mind). This makes
the "dangers" of cyberspatial pedophiles and tax cheats rather
invisible by comparison.

I don't often rant here about crypto anarchy, having written about it
extensively, but it's important for folks to understand that it is not
about tearing down all governments and adopting a "red of tooth and
claw" jungled survival situation. Rather, it involves personal forms
of withdrawing from the system of government, to various extents.
Initially in cyberspace--just like this list (this list spans many
nations, with no intervention by states, no legal system...sounds like
"anarchy" to me...). As tax collection wanes, as interactions in
cyberspace come to be even more important than they are today, crypto
anarchy becomes more important.

But of course nobody is forced into this...they can vote in their
local elections, appoint censors of what they see in non-crypto
channels, vote to tax transactions they can identify, and form armies
to invade North Korea for the "sin" of doing what our "friends" like
South Africa, Israel, and even Risha's own India have been doing for
20 years. (Sorry to digress on this last point, and I have no brief
for North Korea....I just hate Orwellian propaganda disguising
hypocrisy.)

Enough on anarchy for now. Back to the FAQ.

--Tim May



-- 
..........................................................................
Timothy C. May         | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,  
tcmay@netcom.com       | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
408-688-5409           | knowledge, reputations, information markets, 
W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA  | black markets, collapse of governments.
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"National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."