IP: Re: Britain's sad decline of liberty a warning for U.S.: Dan Gillmor on Technology Thu Jul 05 15:15:09 EDT 2001

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

>Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 12:11:31 +1200
>From: Hamish MacEwan <Default@Hamish.MacEwan.gen.nz>
>To: farber@cis.upenn.edu
>
>On Thu, Jul 05, 2001 at 19:48 -0400, David Farber wrote:
>
> > [ My only comment right now is:
> >
> > "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a
> > little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor
> > safety." - Ben Franklin, ~1784
> >
> > Dave]
>
>The increase in enforceability, which the correspondent
>lauds as a desirable outcome of surveillance for a number of
>crimes that we find either abhorrent or inconvenient, misses
>the point that at some time, inevitably if Voltaire and
>others are to be believed, such mechanisms will be used for
>other purposes.
>
>Enforcement of the law is always in tension with the consent
>of the governed.
>
>[a bit like copyright and fair use... <grin>]
>
>Screwing down the lid tighter and tighter with progressively
>more invasive surveillance, will pay a negative dividend
>beyond the short term improvement in crime statistics.
>
>It is probably another short-term cost-effective solution
>to behavioural problems that will at some point explode.
>
>We need not bother about the poor or distressed, simply
>enforce behaviour rather than addressing the causes.
>
>For every ten people who are clipping at the branches of
>evil, you're lucky to find one who's hacking at the roots.
>-- Henry David Thoreau
>
>Surveillance is that clipping.
>
>Hamish.



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