Ruritania

[Censored Girls Anonymous <carolann@censored.org>]

                      The Legend of Ruritania

There was once a far away land called Ruritania, and in this land there was
a strange phenomenon  --  all the trees that grew there were transparent. 
In the old days, the people had lived in mud huts.   But now, high-tech wood
technology had been developed,  and in this new age of wood, everyone in
Ruritania found that their homes were all 100% see through. 

Now, until this point, no one ever thought of allowing the police to spy on
someone's home. But the new technology made this tempting. This being a
civilized country, however, warrants were required to use binoculars and
watch someone in their home. The police, taking advantage of this, would
get  warrants  to  use  binoculars  and peer in to see what was going on. 
Occasionally, they would use binoculars without a warrant, but everyone
pretended that this didn't happen. 

One day, a smart man invented paint -- and the people found that if they
painted their houses, suddenly the police couldn't watch all their actions
at will. Things would go back to the way they were in the old age -- 
completely private.

Indignant, the state decided to try to require that all homes have video
cameras installed into every nook and cranny.   "After all", they said,
"with this new 'paint' development, crime could run rampant. Installing
video cameras doesn't mean that the police get any new capability -- 
they are just keeping the old one."

A wise man pointed out that citizens were not obligated to make the
lives of the police easy, that the police had survived all through the mud
hut  age  without  being  able  to  watch  the  citizens at will,  and that 
Ruritania  was  a  civilized  country  where  not  everything  that  was 
expedient was permitted. For instance, in a neighboring country, it had
been discovered that torture was an extremely effective way to solve
crimes.   Ruritania had banned this practice long ago, in spite of its 
expedience.   Indeed, "why have warrants at all", he asked, "if we are 
interested only in expedience?" 

A famous paint technologist, Dorothy Quisling, intervened however.  She 
noted that people might take photographs of children masturbating should
this new paint technology be widely deployed without safeguards, and the 
law was passed.

Soon it was discovered that some citizens were covering their mouths 
while speaking to each other, thus preventing the police from reading 
their lips through the video cameras. This had to be prevented, the police
 said. After all, it was preventing them from conducting their lawful
 surveillance. 

The wise man pointed out that the police had never before been allowed 
to listen in on people's homes, but Dorothy Quisling pointed out that 
people might  use  this  new  invention  of  covering  their mouths 
with veils to discuss the kidnapping and mutilation of children. 

Now, no one in the legislature  wanted  to be accused  of being in favor of 
mutilating children, but then again, no one wanted to interfere in people's
rights to wear what they liked, so a compromise was reached whereby all
homes had to have microphones installed in each room to accompany the 
video cameras. The wise man lamented few if any child mutilations had 
ever been solved by the old lip reading technology, but it was too late --
the new law was passed  and microphones were installed everywhere.

However, soon it was discovered that this was insufficient to prevent
citizens from hiding information from the authorities, because some of
them  would  cleverly  speak  in  languages  that  the police  could  not 
understand. So, another new law was proposed to force all citizens to
speak at all times only in Ruritanian, and, for good measure, to require 
that they speak clearly and distinctly near the microphones. "After all",
Dorothy Quisling pointed out, "they might be using the opportunity to 
speak in private to mask terrorist activities!" Terrorism struck terror
into everyone's hearts, and they rejoiced at the brilliance of this new
law. 

Meanwhile, the wise man talked one evening to his friends on how all of
this was making a sham of the  constitution of  Ruritania, of which all
Ruritanians were proud. "Why", he asked, "are we obligated to sacrifice 
all our freedom and privacy to make the lives of the police easier? 
There isn't any real evidence that this makes any big dent in crime,
 anyway! All it does is make our privacy forfeit to the state!" 

However, the wise man made the mistake of saying this, as the new law
required, in Ruritanian, clearly and distinctly, and near a microphone. 
Soon, the newly formed Ruritanian Secret Police arrived and took him off,
and got him to confess to crimes by torturing him. Torture was, after all,
far more efficient than the old methods, and had been recently instituted
to stop the recent wave of people thinking obscene thoughts about tomatoes,
which Dorothy Quisling noted was one of the major problems of the new age
of plenty and joy.
Member Internet Society  - Certified BETSI Programmer  -  Webmistress
***********************************************************************
Carol Anne Braddock (cab8)  carolann@censored.org   206.42.112.96
<a href="http://www.primenet.com/~carolab">My Homepage</a>
<a href="http://www.winternet.com/~drozone">The Cyberdoc</a>
***********************************************************************
------------------ PGP.ZIP Part [017/713] -------------------
M8H,),S$8G>&.WP(8IRA`-M['+`Q%&_C"">5-F%LX@<_Q$;*P'',Q$Z/AA[8M
MF=O0H+*%(-S%&>S%+FS&<LS%3(Q&#W1"<]2%`H^;,]^1C$'HBN8PX$4SYAU^
MPGD<Q0ZLA0D+,`MCT!LA**4M[-JPAK9F?40!AJ,CW"'%DR#:'9?Q)3[%<DQ`
-------------------------------------------------------------
for next chunk to export --> http://dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/export/