Forwarded from: dont <dontat_private> OK, major departure incoming... but a couple of points... > It was once argued that our government could not possibly > succeed in placing limitations on its citizens' exercise of their > Second Amendment rights. Now behold the municipalities, > commonwealths and states in which the right of the people to keep > and bear arms (which the Second Amendment clearly states _shall > not be infringed_) has been abrogated in the name of "public > safety." Given that trend, it is more than idle speculation to > suggest that our lawmakers will walk down the same path on the > issue of cryptography. Second Amendment states: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." People just always seem to forget the "well regulated Militia" part... and no, I don't want to start a huge debate on the individual writings of the constitutional authors and what they really meant... just noticing how few people mention the first few words when "quoting" this Amendment. As with most things in life, I can argue both ways on the gun "control" issue... > Given the glacial pace of our judicial system and the > lightning rate of our technological advances and vulnerability > discoveries, those two institutions are sorely incompatible if we > are to genuinely pursue meaningful security. Let us not forget > that the Black Hats are not I kinda hate the DMCA myself on several levels, but the Constitution did not create our governmental system for EFFICIENCY. It has, however, guided us from horse power to nuclear power, and I have faith it will continue to do so, through arguments in forums like this. Heck, it wasn't until the 17th Amendment (124 years later I think) that Senators were elected by popular vote. "We" just need to keep telling our elected folks what we think, and things will change, eventually (nothing good really happens overnight anyway). We are the oldest representative democracy on the planet, and about two-thirds of the constitutions in hte world now were written since 1970. We'll get this DMCA thing close to "right" eventually. don tobin (PhD someday, soon, maybe...) Center for Secure and Dependable Software Univ of Idaho - ISN is currently hosted by Attrition.org To unsubscribe email majordomoat_private with 'unsubscribe isn' in the BODY of the mail.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Thu Oct 11 2001 - 05:55:25 PDT