Re: Anti-Electronic Racketeering Act of 1995

[David Scoggins <gds@connex.com>]

According to Shari Steele:

> Fortunately, the bill does not have a very promising future.  The bill has
> no co-sponsors.  It was immediately referred to the Committee on the
> Judiciary, where it currently sits.  LEXIS's bill tracking report only
> gives it a 10% chance of passing out of the committee.

Thank God, if true.

After lurking on this list for a couple of months, I finally feel 
motivated to comment by this latest bout of official stupidity.

I realize that I am preaching to the choir here, so if you don't need any 
more convincing, feel free to delete this now.  And for those readers not 
in the US - pray pardon the US-centric tone of this piece.

I have been steadily lowering my opinion of the human race for 20 years 
now.  It is depressing to realize that I may have to ratchet it downward 
another notch or two.  That our various elected representatives and 
assorted civil masters are stupid, venal, corrupt, short-sighted, 
incompetant, arrogant, foolish, greedy, megalomaniacal, immoral poltroons 
with the manners of billy goats utterly lacking in common sense or common 
decency no longer surprises me.  What does still surprise me is just *how* 
stupid, venal, corrupt, etc they really are.  If we can not govern 
ourselves better than this, then we really are just overgrown chimpanzees.

And our cousin primates should probably feel insulted by the comparison.

The United States used to be a special place, and I used to be proud of 
being a citizen of this country.  Sadly, this is no longer true.  Our 
government, in all three of its branches and its multiplicity of 
agencies, bureaus, departments and services, has made a mockery of the 
Constitution.  The Ninth and Tenth Amendments are laughed at, the Fourth 
and Fifth Amendments are in tatters, the Second is under incessant 
attack, and the First...  well, the First Amendment to the Constitution 
of the United States is basically being gang-raped by Congress as we speak.

Consider those words, "as we speak".  Clearly, I consider what I am doing 
now to be "speech".  It is not face to face, I am not in the presence of 
all of you in one place at one time speaking these words aloud - but it 
is still speech.  Most of you who read this, perhaps all of you, will 
agree, I think.  What we do on the 'net - in email, in Usenet, in irc - 
is communication between human beings - fundamentally, speech.  It is 
obvious to us that speech, regardless of medium, should be protected by 
the First Amendment.

Equally obvious, many in Congress, the Administration and the Federal Courts
disagree.  The courts, and in particular the Supreme Court have by a 
process of straining at gnats and swallowing camels "interpreted" the 
Constitution in such a way as to permit clearly unconstitutional laws and 
practices to continue.  They are wrong, but so what.  The knowledge that 
you are wholly right and that your opponents are wholly wrong is of small 
comfort when the noose is around your neck.

Many Americans now actively fear the Federal government and its Law 
Enforcement Agencies, and justly so.  Every day more evidence emerges of 
profound and widespread abuse of power, corruption and official arrogance 
on the part of the LEAs, yet many of our Senators introduce and vote for 
legislation that would severely weaken the precious few remaining 
restraints on their power, and grant them even broader and ever more 
sweeping powers to invade the privacy and abridge the rights of American 
citizens.

The United States used to be special.  It was founded by people who 
believed that human beings had rights that were *not* simply privileges 
granted by the state, but were innate and could *not* be taken away.  (Or 
at least you did as long as you were an adult white male property 
owner.)  They believed that governments had no powers unless they were 
granted by the people, not the other way round.  In short, they believed 
in the principles and philosophy outlined in the Declaration of Independence.

This is no longer the case.  Two hundred and nineteen years later, we pay 
lip service to the ideals of the Declaration every July Fourth, but the 
last person in Congress who paid any attention to those ideals was 
apparently Barry Goldwater.

Let us be realistic for a moment.  Consider this a half-hearted apologia 
for Senator Grassly, if you will.  France already bans crypto, modulo 
some exceptions that I believe are rather hard to qualify for.  And I 
consider a judicial system based on the Napoleonic Code reprehensible.  
Yet by all accounts France remains a tolerable and decent place to live.  
Without irony, most people refer to France as part of the Free World.  
The UK, Canada and Australia have censorship laws, Official Secrets Acts 
and the like that permit prior restraint of publication and other things 
that we Americans find distressing.  Yet I believe that the UK, Canada and 
Australia remain tolerable and decent places to live, and they too are 
considered part of the Free World.

If Senator Grassly's bill is enacted into law, it will not be the End of 
the World.  The United States will not suddenly have become Nazi Germany.
This country will remain, for the vast majority of Americans and even 
most cypherpunks, a tolerable and decent place to live.  It will still be 
one of the few countries in the world to grant its citizens the 
relatively unchecked freedom to speak their minds, to work at whatever 
profession or occupation they wish, to travel where they wish.

It just means that a tiny bit more of our rights will have been eroded, 
our freedom lost - a little bit more of what used to make this a special 
place, of what used to make this country different from - and in my 
opinion as a still somewhat patriotic American - better than France, Canada, 
Australia and the UK - will have disappeared.