On Sun, 5 Jan 2003, Samuel W. Heywood wrote: > > Heh, heh. How much you wanna bet they'll disagree with > > you? When something is done in the name of "public safety" > > or some such, it's fine, but when a private citizen does the > > same thing, it's... well, illegal. > > > > Case in point: > > > > http://www.wweek.com/flatfiles/News3485.lasso > > I went to the URL. I did not find there any stories about people > decrypting stuff. The URL was mainly about allegedly unreasonable > police searches of some people's garbage cans. The moral of the > story is that if you have something to hide you shouldn't just > throw it away in the garbage can and put it out on the street where > anyone can pick up your garbage and snoop around in it.
The moral of the story is that when the police, district attorneys and judges do something questionable in the name of law enforcement, they will adamantly defend their right to do it "for the public good." As soon as those same tactics are used *against them*, those same police, district attorneys, and judges will claim it's illegal, and threaten the journalist / private citizen with legal prosecution. The moral of the story is that what's good for the goose is not good for the gander. It doesn't matter whether you're talking NSA decrypting suspected terrorists' emails or FBI going through garbage. It's a "law enforcement tool" for them, but an "invasion of privacy" or "criminal act" if private citizens do the exact same thing. Of the people, by the people, for the people... > -- Message sent by Unix Pine, Version 4.33 -- composed in pico 4.2, "handled" by PINE 4.44, sent via sendmail-8.11.6-1.6.y ;-) -- Steve Ackman http://twoloonscoffee.com (Need green beans?) http://twovoyagers.com (glass, linux & other stuff)
