John Gilmore interviewed by Greplaw 164
mpawlo writes "I have just published another one of those Greplaw interviews. This time, John Gilmore had the courtesy of answering a wide range of questions on various subjects such as terrorism and security, spam blocking, censorship, secret laws in airports and of course - sarongs. Gilmore starts: 'I'm a civil libertarian millionaire eccentric.' Enjoy!"
And I thought I was alone... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the same civil libertarian, John Gilmore.. (Score:3, Insightful)
PS: Moderators!
*Before you knock this user
*please recognize that Slashdot
*should at-least mirror these
*articles on *the server rather
*than having thousands of people
*click the URL. I happily read
*the article from the parent's post
You all just wait and laugh when Slashdot is charged for server crimes by the FCC. Even Yahoo News mirrors their stories for sake of all!
Re:A wise man... (Score:2, Insightful)
Would you care to post a list of other people that have been taken out for thinking too much?
For as much as some tend to complain about oppression in America, I'm not aware of such things actually happening.
Thanks
Rights (Score:3, Insightful)
Deadhead (Score:2, Insightful)
wrong wrong wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
the drug war was first created to get returning GI's , from vietnam off of heroin and originally focused on treatment over criminalization. Of course later Nixon was forced by the right to increase the drug war's focus on criminalization. Oh yeah just as an aside the hippies did not force nixon out of office...he won both terms of his presidency. It was his own criminal activities that forced him out of office....not a bunch of inefectual hippies. They had nothing to do with ending the vietnam war and nothing to do with forcing nixon out of office.
Guys like this, history revisionist, asshole really make it hard for libertarian minded people to support ending the drug war. I mean any time i say the drug war is a waste of money regularly open minded people close thier doors to the idea becouse they have heard all the other consperiacy bullshit guys like this asshole have heaped on to a fairly straight forward argument. What is the saying "With freinds like this who needs enemies"
stendec@gmail.com
Re:And I thought I was alone... (Score:2, Insightful)
Slow down, cowboy. Neither you or I were born with a-priori knowledge of how to drive a car. Licensing programs for operators of vehicles on public roads are not a restraint on freedom of movement.
Re:A wise man... (Score:3, Insightful)
Then we have Sherman Austin under the Patriot Act.
http://rwor.org/a/1217/austin.htm
With the Patriot Act, there is the distinct possibility of people being silenced and no one ever knowing.
The point is not how many are being silenced now, but how many can and probably will be in the future.
First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.
Pastor Martin Niemöller
Re:Server is going down fast... here's the text (Score:5, Insightful)
THis should read.
"Terrorism is now defined as force applied for political reasons by people other than the US or the Israeli Government."
Thank you.
Re:And I thought I was alone... (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:As always, he's a freak (Score:3, Insightful)
That is, of course, if he happens to have permission from the U.S. Government in the form of a drivers' license.
The point is not that airlines or private individuals don't have the right to choose how they wish to restrict access to their property. The point is that the government doesn't have the right to force airlines or private individuals, as proxies, to restrict access to their property.
Although the kidnapping example is technically in the same category of movement restriction, perhaps a better example would be if police set up checkpoints at every major intersection, and required the identification of anyone who wished to pass. This would differ from the current system only in degree, and has been thus far prevented from taking place by both popular opinion and by the logistical nightmare that would ensue, although with the advent of cheap RFIDs, I wouldn't place too much faith in the latter, and I've little in the lasting ability of the former, given the example that you provided with your own comment.
the right to be left alone (Score:4, Insightful)
Arrgh. Now I'm all riled up.
Join the ACLU [aclu.org]. It's safer than direct action against "the Man."
Re:And I thought I was alone... (Score:1, Insightful)
"The claim and exercise of a constitutional right cannot be converted into a crime." - Miller v. U.S., 230 F 2d 486, 489.
I.e., that state can't use the argument, "Sure you have the right to travel... and we have the right to arrest you if you do it in our state without a license."
Re:And I thought I was alone... (Score:1, Insightful)
Personally, I think a large percentage of the people driving should lose their right to drive, because they can't seem to do it in a way that doesn't endanger or unduly impose on other drivers. Taking away licensing requirements would only make this worse. Does anyone have statistics on how much the economy loses to traffic every day? Some traffic is legit (construction), but a lot of it is caused by people who just refuse to drive reasonably.
Now, considering how dangerous a motor vehicle is, and considering that nobody knows how to drive by default, how is it such an imposition to require someone to prove they know the rules of the road, and that they can drive safely, before they are allowed to drive? It seems pretty reasonable to me.
Re:As always, he's a freak (Score:2, Insightful)
You also make the point of ones passage being inconsistant; and use that as an example against Gillmores arguments, I fail to see how millions of passengers flying in the United States, each one who had to show ID, are demonstrating 'inconsistant pasage'.
As for your statement about people wandering around nuclear plants; this is not what Gillmore is speaking of at all, he is talking about our transportation system, so stick to the point.
I could go on, deconstructing the rest of your arguments, but I just realized I was suckered into replying to a troll. Ill leave it as an exercise for the reader to eliminate the rest of this commentators arguments. I got the ball rolling you may as well do your part. . . . . .
Re:And I thought I was alone... (Score:1, Insightful)
You want utilitarian government. One that reduces your risk not only of injustice, but also from chance events. The end you are after is reasonable. And, in fact, it is *reasonable* to desire to restrict the freedom of others in order to achieve it. But not all reasonable desires are morally acceptible.
I may, for example, desire to shoot an intruder in my home the first chance I get. But doing that before I even determine that he poses a physical threat to me is not right. It is putting my personal well-being too far above his. I am allowed to put it above, but there are limits.
What you are asking for is a preliminary injunction against the right of every human being in America to travel the public highways. You want the law to presume their inadequacy, despite the fact that the vast majority *can* drive adequately. This is ridiculous as a point of law: you would have to have at least probable cause (%50) to get such an injunction in any other case. But furthermore, you would have to have it against each individual person, not merely their statistical group.
Furthermore, it is very common to rant about all the stupid drivers. But it's been shown time and again that nearly everyone dramatically overestimates their own driving abilities, and magnifies the flaws of others. Every time *you* screw up, you know all of the reasons and can usually rationalize it. You also often realize that although you didn't see a person, or were going to fast, etc., that you in fact did not really endanger anyone because you were still in control. In other words, it appeared to be a mistake but you know that it was within your 'acceptable operating parameters', so to speak.
When other people screw up, you see only the alarming part: the jerky correction, the surprised look, the skid, etc. You don't possess enough data to know if they did put you in danger, nor are you likely to give them the benefit of the doubt.
So I just don't buy that people suck at driving, or that driving is very difficult, or that it takes much learning at all. Most of what we call 'learning to drive' is really gaining the ability to ignore the road safely! The more we learn the less we pay attention. And most of us are just fine with that, even if it increases our danger.
Re:And I thought I was alone... (Score:1, Insightful)
Travel on the public right-of-way, via common conveyances of the time (which right now includes cars) is not a privilege. This has been upheld in numerous court cases: http://www.dlois.com/realtruth/right_to_drive.htm [dlois.com]
Driving is a right, which means you don't need a permit. Permit = permission, and you don't need permission to exercise a right. That's what a right *is*.
Re:And I thought I was alone... (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, a five-year-old has the physical ability to turn the ignition key in a car and press the accelerator pedal down. But this doesn't mean that they should be allowed to drive.
The key principle is that certain actions are inherently dangerous to other people. Allowing other people to engage in these actions is a direct and severe imposition on *my* right to stay alive. Of particular importance, in the case of driving, is the fact that it is not possible for a completely untrained driver to not willfully (if unintentionally) endangering me, because he or she does not have the skill to operate a dangerous device in a way that won't endanger me.
Simply by their using the vehicle, they are putting me at risk. There is no effective difference to me (as a victim) between them driving on public roads and them playing Russian roulette with me when I drive on public roads (using a gun with a sufficiently large cylinder).
So we have to balance their rights to be able to act freely with my rights to not be killed by other people's free actions. The current solution is to require training for people who use dangerous devices so that the user of the device can, with high degree of confidence, willfully avoid causing harm to others.
(Note also that it is not good enough for me for them to be punished after they kill me. I'm still dead. The rights we have in a free society should not include the right to kill one or more people, as long as we die ourselves or suffer some other punishment afterwards.)
Now, obviously, if one has a requirement but never enforces it, it doesn't protect my rights at all. So the requirement has to be enforced. I don't really care how it is enforced. The key is that there must be some mechanism to distinguish between drivers who can intend to not hurt me and, to a high degree of reliability, follow through on that intent; and those who through incompetence or inability either cannot intend to not hurt me, or lack the ability to translate intention into action.
A license is one way to accomplish this. A license that doesn't clearly identify itself as belonging to the driver isn't as useful, because this removes the ability for people to distinguish between proper drivers and threats to society. So, typically, you have to use something like a photo ID. I'd be happy with on-the-spot proficiency checks, or an IDless card with a hash value off my fingerprint that could be verified with a fingerprint scanner, or any other way to verify that the operator of the device has the capability to avoid harming others through using it.
The principle of being able to avoid harming others is also why it makes sense to outlaw drunk driving (and increase penalties for hurting people while drunk). When sufficiently drunk, you can no longer guarantee the safety of others. So by driving while sufficiently drunk, you are willfully endangering others.
So, the bottom line is: you can have a right to travel. But it doesn't follow that you have the right to travel and kill people while doing it. The right to travel is the right to travel *provided* that you possess the ability to do so without causing injury and death to others--if you do not possess that ability, their rights to stay alive trump your rights to move from A to B.
(Note that this only applies for the people operating the devices. Having IDs for being a passenger is silly, unless the passenger can, by virtue of incompetence, cause a threat to others. And it's only worth implementing checks for commonly-used devices that can hurt others. Machine shop tools can be deadly if used improperly, but they're not sprinkled all over where they can kill bystanders when untrained people use them on a daily basis. Thus, there's no point requiring an explicit license for public machine shop tool operation.)
Re:As always, he's a freak (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's not even worry about the legalities, but let's think about the usefulness of your statement.
Nuclear power plants can and should restrict who enters. The list of people allowed in the plant is small and known. The list of people carrying bombs on airplanes is small and unknown. Therefore, checking ID's makes sense to keep people out of nuclear power plants and checking people's bags for bombs makes sense in keeping bombs off of airplanes. Since no one's ID says "I AM CARRYING A BOMB" checking their ID is worthless for the purpose of keeping bombs off but is useful for infringing on civil liberties by preventing people who disagree with the government from traveling, and even people who are part of the government from traveling (Senator Ted Kennedy was recently put on the no-fly list - read about it here. [startribune.com])
If you would care to explain how checking ID's will keep bombs off planes I'm sure it would be very illuminating for all of the readers.