Control Freaks on the Rampage

[Tim May <tcmay@got.net>]

At 4:22 PM -0700 11/11/97, Declan McCullagh wrote:
>***************
>
>[Forwarded with permission. --Declan]
>
>Date: Mon, 10 Nov 1997 11:53:02 -0500
>From: Nina Crowley <crowleyn@ultranet.com>
>Subject: Senate hearing summary
>
>Hi,
>This is really long but I think everyone should get a sense of the lynch
>mob mentality in last weeks Senate subcommittee hearing.
...the usual Congressional moves to shred the Constitution in the "name of
the children and everything that is decent."

This is all part of the death of a thousand cuts the Constitution is
undergoing, with new laws proposed faster by the subsidized vermin in
Congress than civil rights and liberty-advocating groups can respond.

Mandatory voluntary self-labelling, the CDA, the Swinestein ban on
bomb-making information on the Net, mandatory voluntary television ratings,
jawboning the cable industry, the suit against Paladin Press for a book,
the key escrow proposals, the PICS voluntary mandatory standard, Save the
Children, Donna Rice and her lap dancing compatriots, regulation of
Internet commerce, and Protection of the Critical Information
Infrastructure. (I assume you're all familiar with these examples, and
more.)

The death of a thousand cuts is that even if 900 or 980 of them are struck
down, overturned, derailed, or bypassed, the remaining cuts kill.

"Congress shall make no law..." doesn't mean "except if saves just _one_
child's life."

"Congress shall make no law..." doesn't mean "unless FEMA and Office of
Emergency Preparedness issue orders to the contrary."

"Congress shall make no law..." doesn't mean "Congress can threaten the
music industry with unconstitutional actions which will cost lots of money
to fight unless the music industry voluntary self-regulates."

"Congress shall make no law..." doesn't mean a thousand local jurisdictions
get to ban books, censor CD lyrics, restrict birth control information, ban
certain kinds of guns, or otherwise violate the U.S. Constitution (which
all states agreed to adhere to as a condition of their admittance to the
Union).

A lot of us are getting really tired of fighting the same battles over and
over again. It's time the Supreme Court said the same thing. Perhaps if
they issued a clearcut rebuke Congress might get the message, something
like:

"Look, free speech means you guys can't censor music, or lyrics, or books,
or hymnals, or just about anything else. And you can't use the threat of
passing legislation which we'll be dutybound to strike down to "pressure"
writers and publishers into accepting this Orwelllian notion of "mandatory
voluntary" self-regulation. Get this through your heads. "

I'm not holding my breath.

Sometimes I hope for a terrorist nuke in downtown Washington.


--Tim May

The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES:   408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^2,976,221   | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."