Re: Electronic Frontiers Houston Cyber-Political Questionaire.

[Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>]

>FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
>Electronic Frontiers Houston Cyber-Political Questionnaire.

I'm not currently a candidate, though I've had the pleasure of running
for Congress as a Libertarian a couple of times, and I'd like to comment
on some of the issues.

>Please answer the questions on the reverse side.  Attach additional pages
if required.
Hmmm - that'll be a bit tough on line.  Got any spare anti-electrons?
I could run it through rot-13 :-)

>1. Do you think that electronic publishing should enjoy the constitutional
>protections that accrue to print media?
>2. Do you think that electronic publishing should enjoy the constitutional
>protections that accrue to broadcast media?
>3. Do you think that electronic publishing should enjoy the constitutional 
>protections that accrue to libraries?

The Bill of Rights was a good start, but courts have seriously mishandled it
over the past 200 years, whether to support the public mood on an upcoming
war (as in the Schenk (sp?) case, which gave us the appallingly misused
"fire in a public theater" dictum), or to permit censorship of speech that
offends the popular morals, or to support oligopolies through restricting
access to radio and TV broadcasting to government-approved companies.
I tend to agree with Hugo Black's position that the people who wrote
"Congress shall make no law...." meant what they said.
In particular, even supposing, as Holmes did, that there are types of
speech so offensive and valueless as to not be protected by the First Amendment,
the Constitution also doesn't specifically empower them to ban it either.

>4. Do you favor new laws to regulate the content of electronic media?
Yes - there's a lot of old law and FCC regulation that needs to be repealed,
and that takes new laws.

>5. Do you think that the First Amendment rights of free speech protect 
>private use of encryption?
First, Second, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, Tenth

>6. Do you favor laws to regulate the private use of encryption?
Nope.

>7. Do you agree with restrictions on the export of technology that 
>incorporates cryptography?
No - nor of other technology, either.

>9. Do you support the right of a private individual too publish printed 
>materials anonymously?
Not only do _I_ favor it, the Supreme Court also supports it.
Electronic materials as well.

>10. Should the government play a role in providing access to computer 
>networks?
Yes and No.  Governments have a role to play in providing access to
existing government-run systems that have public information.

>11. Do you think that the government should guarantee universal 
>access to computer networks?
No.  Government-provided services are government-controlled services.
And governments can't guarantee services - they can only force people 
to buy them (with their own recycled money) from pro-government providers, 
while interfering with competing technologies and services that the
market would otherwise provide.  From a Liberal perspective, Internet
access is already available on the open market for less than the cost
of cable TV, in most of the country - trading government control of the
most important media of the next two decades for the cost of a half-pack
of cigarettes a day per citizen would be a really bad choice.

>12. Do you think that access to government computerized information 
>is a right?
>13. Should all governmental records that are available to the public be 
>made available via computer resources?
>14. Should access to computerized governmental records be free?

Not strictly - the public does own most of the government's information,
but providing subsidized access to it isn't an appropriate use of tax money.
Providing at-cost access certainly is, for information that the government
should be giving out, and restricting distribution of that information
or giving monopoly access to rent-seeking private companies certainly is wrong.

But there's a lot of information the government has today that it shouldn't -
people's private data that they've been forced to provide to bureaucrats,
or information that wasn't quite as forced such as census data.  
Most of that data should be destroyed.  And there are difficult questions,
such as how to reveal details on CIA/NSA/FBI abuses without violating
the privacy of people they spied on or interefered with.

>15. Should the government regulate electronic financial transactions 
>and require traceability?
Of course not.  (I do distinguish between banning fraud and embezzlement,
which is arguably a reasonable government function, and regulating the 
communications often used in those activities.)

>16. Do you approve or disapprove of the wiretap provisions in the 
>1994 Digital Telephony bill?
Disapprove.

>17. Do you favor expanding law enforcement access to telephonic 
>communications?
Sure - cops need phones, too.   And access to the communications
of other government officials to investigate crime and corruption
in government is mostly safe.  But demanding access to citizens' private 
communications is not only _far_ outside the bounds of government's
legitimate access and a bare-faced grab for political power
by the folks who brought us COINTELPRO and J Edgar Hoover's files,
but is a call to violate individuals' rights to use whatever tools
they want to protect their privacy to support their power-grab.
And they've been so _disingenuous_ about it...


>In addition, candidates for national office will be asked the
>following additional question:
>18. Do you favor legislation which would require a national ID card?

No - I favor legislation to eliminate the half-way measure we have,
the single "Social Security" tax-id Number, and, until we eliminate
privacy-invasive taxes altogether, give taxpayers a large group of
numbers so they don't have to give everybody a universal identifier
just to pay their taxes.

>Candidates for state office will be asked the following question:
>18. Should laws requiring fingerprints to acquire/renew drivers licences 
>be repealed?

Yes, as should driver's licenses and other mandatory ID.

>Electronic Frontiers Houston is a non-profit group that supports civil 
>liberties and the development of culture in cyberspace.

While I don't live in Houston, I've been a member and usually
a supporter of EFF.
#--
#			Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, stewarts@ix.netcom.com, +1-415-442-2215 pager 408-787-1281
# "At year's end, however, new government limits on Internet access threatened
# to halt the growth of Internet use.  [...] Government control of news media 
# generally continues to depend on self-censorship to regulate political and
# social content, but the authorities also consistently penalize those who
# exceed the permissible."  - US government statement on China...

"SigFiles of Unusual Size?  I don't believe they exist!"