I didn't go to the meeting held at the SFPD training center. I was
amazed that such a thing was scheduled. And I'm amazed that a couple
of nominal Cypherpunks are now talking up the glories of working with
the SFPD and cops in general on a "crypto protection" scheme.
Look, in the normal course of things, cops are not involved in what
people write, how they write it, what they download from the Net, and
so on.
Cops (police, sheriffs, detectives, FBI, prison guards, etc.) do have
some useful functions. They track down murderers, sometimes. They
arrest thieves, sometimes. They help to prosecute wife killers,
sometimes.
However, consider what cops are also doing:
-- most cop officials have come out in favor of disarming the
population. Like any rent-seeking special interest group, they favor
laws giving them a monopoly.
-- Red Squads, infiltration of religious and political organizations,
seizure of political material
(Ask the folks in L.A. about how cops and firemen shills raided
political offices and seized tons of leaflets, books, and posters.
The cover story was that this was a fire inspection and the books
constituted fire hazards. Of course, none of the ten thousand other
warehouses and crowded offices in L.A. have been similarly raided.
Sounds like the firemen were truly "Firemen," in the best "Fahrenheit
451" tradition. Will the cops who seized political materials be
prosecuted? Of course not...this is already being swept under the
rug.)
-- cops calling for key escrow, bans on anonymity, no knock raids,
increased surveillance of chat rooms, limitations on the right to
remain silent, and other anti-constitutional measures
-- cops in Washington funding death squads in South America, teaching
terrorists who support the U.S. how to blow up things, and providing
data base software to the secret police in other countries
-- even locally, in my little community, we see the abuses. Two
teen-agers defaced every window in the downtown area by scratching
the glass with rocks...an estimated $50,000 in damages. The kids were
"talked to," but not arrested, not prosecuted, not forced to pay for
the damage. Meanwhile, a guy up in the hills is fed up with teenagers
throwing rocks at his house. He calls the cops. They ignore his call.
Finally he grabs one of the kids and locks him to his gate, then
calls the cops to have them come and pick this perp up. The mother of
the kid screams to the press that her poor baby was _kidnapped_ and
subjected to _mental torture_. The cops arrest not the kids throwing
rocks, but the guy defending his property. The DA promises he'll put
the guy away for six months in the clink.
-- and lest we forget, cops bombing city blocks in Philadelphia, cops
ramming nightsticks up the asses of those they dislike, cops drawing
down on a man trying to unlock the door to his own apartment and
filling him full of lead, cops shooting a woman dead who was sitting
passively in her own car, cops stopping drivers who fit some ethnic
profile, cops entering Greyhound buses and demanding to search all
luggage, cops instigating acts of bombing and terrorism, cops eating
doughnuts while women are gang-raped a dozen yards away in Central
Park, cops sneaking through back yards and shooting dead a Houston
homeowner who comes out to investigate, cops raiding the home of a
Malibu doctor and shooting him dead when in the predawn hours he
reaches for a gun to protect his wife and himself against these
black-clad ninja stormtroopers, cops herding Jews into the ovens....
So, you see, I count on the cops to deal with the basics of law
enforcement: arresting those who commit actual crimes. Crimes as
commonly recognized in the Constitution and closely-related
documents. (It's a real pity that the Founders, who were known to
smoke some weed at times, did not think to add something to the C.
and BOR to the effect, "Congress shall make no law regarding what the
people eat or drink or otherwise consume." This is about the only
thing that ever stops the LEAs and meddlers: a clear statement saying
"You can't do that.")
But this kind of local enforcement of actual crimes against persons
and property is not what modern law enforcement is now about. Mission
creep. The same disease which has overtaken education has overtaken
law enforcement: more and more office buildings filled with people
doing "studies," people looking for new laws and new entitlements,
and less and less actual "street level" work. It's easier to be a
bureaucrat, and with more levels of advancement possible.
And the further removed the cop is from the population he allegedly
serves, the more distanced he is vis-a-vis "us" vs. "them." While the
local Sheriff in a small community might concentrate on catching
thieves and even graffitti artists, the police bureaucrat deploying
helicopters to search for marijuana is not at all linked to fighting
local crimes. The federal cops urging many more laws about what
people read, what they say, what they do, these cops are part of the
institutional evil which pervades law enforcement.
Are all cops bad? No. They're human, with families and friends. But
by giving them power to order raids, to infiltrate organizations, to
kill innocents in their own beds, to stop bus passengers to inspect
their papers, to force people to install "Carnivores" on their
property, to outlaw writing they can't read...well, this is
"institutional evil." Louis Freeh may be, as a person, a fine person.
But as FBI Director, he has committed many acts which can only be
described as "evil."
This is why such concentrations of state power need to be undermined.
At almost any cost, even if some ostensible innocents are also
undermined.
And this is why having "Law Enforcement-Cypherpunks Joint Exercises"
is a terrible idea. They are _not_ our allies.
--Tim May
--
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
"Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
