Rules for "Them" and Rules for "Us"

[tcmay@got.net (Tim May)]

(A copy of this message has also been posted to the following newsgroups:
rec.knives, talk.politics.guns,alt.cypherpunks)


[Note to Usenet readers. I wrote this for the Cypherpunks mailing list,
but decided you folks in rec.knives and talk.politics.guns might be
interested too.]


Pardon the rant, to borrow a line from Dennis Miller.

One of the recent trends which really bugs me, and which seems to be
indicative of a major shift in the American system is this:

"They" have certain rights the rest of "us" don't have. 

Who are "they"?

- law enforcment

- the military

- the spies

- the secret police

The "us" is anyone not in a special group exempted from the ban.

(Note: Please don't cite the hackneyed example of how the government has
the right to own nuclear weapons but ordinary citizen-units do not. This
is indeed so, and I don't even necessarily think this is completely
unreasonable...though I now am more inclined to support the right to keep
and bear nukes. But, seriously, the issues are not so cosmic as nuclear
weapons....the examples I'll cite here are much more mundane, and more
pervasive.)

Here's an example I ran across tonight, in the group rec.knives:

In article <01bc99fa$f7d16420$538a98cf@kevlar>, "James R Thorpe"
<kevlar@meganet.net> wrote:

> > Does the name refer to the blade length.?
> > IE only 2 inches and therefore legal in California.
> > Nice looking knife. What's the blade made out of?
> > daithi
> > 
> Got mine in the mail, it's a sweet little knife. Better than I expected.
> Rugged feeling too. ATS-34 Blade, and aluminum handles. Lanyard Hole, where
> I tied a piece of leather shoestring, and the blade pivot is tension
> adjustable. The blade on the ones PV Knife is shipping now is a little
> different than the picture. It has a clip point and hollow grind. It's
> small but feels bigger than the picture once you get it in your hand. My
> fianc� even wanted to fondle it. Its a very "grabable" knife. After she cut
> herself she didn't want to play with it anymore.
> Not sure why its named CA Special. You can probably get one shipped to you
> with out any LEO/Military credentials due to the blade length.
> Jim

Here's what these guys are referring to:

There are large numbers of knives and knife types which are forbidden for
ownership and/or carrying in California, amongst other states, but which
are commonly carried by cops. Some are the evil "switchblades" (a category
which may or may not include the thumbhole folders a lot of us carry in
our pockets, depending on what the local cops decide). Some are
"butterfly" knives. Some are just plain knives which are longer than the
local burghers (or is it "burgers"? :-)) have "permitted." In California,
there is ongoing uncertainty about whether a fixed-blade knife may be
carried openly, which may be "brandishment," or may be carried in a
backpack (and hence "concealed")...one analysis noted that it is probably
a felony to carry a kitchen knife home from a store, as it is either being
"concealed" if in a bag, or "brandished" if not. I guess hiring a delivery
boy would shift the felony to him...or make one a co-conspirator in a RICO
felony.

(Practically speaking,  there are few arrests and even fewer prosecutions.
Cops have been known to tell people to "keep your knife out of sight and
you'll be OK," even though the laws are usually quite clear that this is
felony concealment. The law is an ass.)

OK, enough about knives.

The point is that the term "LEO" means "Law Enforcement Only." Meaning,
your local cop is free to buy these items, even for personal use in many
cases, but the sheeple are not. My local gun stores have sections marked
"Law Enforcement Use Only," and these sections are getting bigger every
year.

Here are some things which now fall into this "Them" vs. "Us" situation:

* Knives. They get to own all sorts of things. We are being limited more
and more each year: the allowable knives are getting shorter, the types
are being further restricted. (All in a putative move to reduce
crime...anybody think that telling T.C. May he's a felon if he carries his
Benchmade AFCK is going to reduce the number of knifings?)

* Guns. 'Nuff said, as we all have heard much about this. A recent example
is telling though--the banning of magazines (clips) holding more that 10
rounds. (Unless already made before some date, and some other details.) 
Cops and even retired cops and retired military personnel are allowed to
buy the 15-round magazines their guns are made to use, but the sheeple are
not.

(And there are proposals to ban magazines holding more than 5 rounds, to
ban detachable magazines completely, to ban semi-automatic weapons, to ban
all firearms except "sporting" rifles, and so on.)

* Ammunition. Believe it or not, some forms of bullets are now restricted
to "LEO." (Usually after some shooting spree, or some mass media
hysteria--as with the never-produced "Black Rhino" ammo--there are sudden
moves to ban some class of ammo. Cops make sure they are not affected,
and,voila, a new "LEO" item is added to the list.)

* Martial arts supplies. Batons, kubotans, throwing stars, nunchuks, etc.
These are allowed for cops, but not for ordinary people, regardless of
training. 

* Drugs. Aside from the evidence that the CIA and other gov't agencies ran
drugs into the U.S. (cf. the usual sources), there are lots of drugs the
gov't. dispenses to its own troops, including methamphetamines, which it
declares to be contraband in the civilian sector. (Pilots, for example,
are given uppers to maintain alertness, but of course a truck driver
caught with them faces jail.)

* Radio equipment. Certain frequencies are not allowed on civilian radios,
and there are related restricitons. (Radio buffs will know a lot more.)
Some of this may be for "legitimate" (barf) reasons, to maintain radio
security for sensitive operations, but mostly it is not needed (and is
bypassable by spies and anyone seriously interested in doing so). Note of
course that strong crypto would bypass this issue of banning certain types
of electronic equipment.

(I am not including TEMPEST equipment as being banned, as this seems to be
a false rumor. The TEMPEST research may be classified, but there are no
laws that I know of that make it a crime to make a piece of equipment
radiate very little RF. In fact, the FCC likes it this way.)

* Armor. Especially body armor (aka "bulletproof vests"). I believe there
are some restrictions on what may be sold to civilians.

* Biological research. There are specific laws making it illegal for
private individuals or companies to do research in certain areas without
government approval. (I believe the specific law dates from around 1975,
and covers CBW weapons and related research. Ditto for nuclear weapons,
probably under the Atomic Energy Act or somesuch.)

* Crypto, of course. Not yet, domestically, but we appear to be entering
an era in which the government and its employees have access to crypto the
rest of us are forbidden to use. PGP may have a warning sticker: "Law
Enforcement Use Only."

I assume others of you can think of examples I've left out. Obviously
things like wiretap equipment, etc. are often restriced to law enforcement
and spies. At least one of those "007" spy shops was shut down for selling
to civilians stuff that cops readily have (I heard this on CNN, but I
don't have the details).
 
The danger in all of this is not that there are a _few_ things that we let
police and soldiers have that we think civilians should not have, but that
_so many_ things are now classified this way, with the number of things so
classified growing constantly.

This makes for a dangerous society, civil liberties-wise, when industrial
companies and shops have two classes of customers: them and us.

This stinks. We're not talking about private ownership of nukes. We're
talking about a situation where a citizen can go to prison for having a
knife longer than 3 inches in his pocket, while cops are free to have them
for their own purposes.

This stinks.

--Tim May

-- 
There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
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