[1650] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Chutzpah! FBI Calls Privacy Extremists Elitist
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jay Holovacs)
Fri Sep 26 23:00:51 1997
Date: Fri, 26 Sep 1997 18:24:07 -0500
To: David HM Spector <spector@zeitgeist.com>, cryptography@c2.net,
cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
From: Jay Holovacs <holovacs@idt.net>
At 11:54 PM 9/25/97 -0400, David HM Spector wrote:
>
>The absolute positions "handcuffed" law enforcement while also raising
>rights for citizens to levels that were unreasonable and that would
>have been foreign to the nation's founding fathers. Extreme privacy
>positions were ultimately elitist and nondemocratic in that they
>presumed the views of a knowing privacy cognoscenti should pre-empt
>the views of the nation's elected officials and the Supreme Court,
>McDonald said.
Elected officials? FBI and NSA lifers are about as far as possible from
accountable elected officials. (And the whole point to elected officials is
that they can be influenced by the constituents)
I was told by a House staffer (a relative) that within the FBI many of
the agents resent Freeh, they feel he is giving away the store (!!!) because
of some policies he supposedly has taken to prevent another JE Hoover (though
I can hardly imagine what). Anyhow this staffer said, he would really worry
about such gung-ho agents having access to private communications.
>
Jay
