[2705] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Secure Office
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Sidney Markowitz)
Fri May 15 00:03:30 1998
From: "Sidney Markowitz" <sidney@communities.com>
To: <cryptography@c2.net>
Date: Thu, 14 May 1998 16:41:22 -0700
I've been biting my tongue on this, but it seems to be snowballing and I
have to speak up...
My understanding of a civil disobedience action is that it is supposed to
either bog down the resources of the government making enforcement difficult
(e.g., thousands of people blocking the street or protesters chaining
themselves together across the building steps) or elicit an egregious
response from the government that will win the sympathy of the public and
lead to mass protest (e.g., a sweet old lady sitting at the front of the bus
and being dragged off by police).
Placing Secure Office on a thousand servers does not force the government to
allocate lots of resources to arrest everyone nor to do anything else that
will garner public sympathy for the cause. All they have to do is proceed
with the prosecution of the author for his own violation of the law. If
necessary they can then select the next most visible violation or even pick
a few at random to prosecute.
I am sympathetic, but I fail to see the point of the action.
-- sidney markowitz <sidney@communities.com>
