Xah Lee's Unixism

[Alan Balmer]

On Fri, 10 Sep 2004 01:04:50 +0200, "John Thingstad"
<john.thingstad at chello.no> wrote:

>On Thu, 09 Sep 2004 15:36:29 -0700, Alan Balmer <albalmer at att.net> wrote:
>
>>
>> BTW, did you mean "extortion"? Distortion is what we see a lot of
>> here, though Hoover may have done some of that too.
>>
>
>I guess what I see are endless possibilities of abuse.
>No government can be trusted with that type of power.

Of course not. That's why we have separation of powers, checks and
balances, a multi-party system, and elections.

>I feel it is our responsibility as programmers to prevent this type
>of abuse of information. I'd rather take my chances with the terrorists.
>When you sell out freedom, liberty and justice then what exactly are we  
>fighting to protect?
>Bader-Meihof groups philosophy was that in order to protect the public  
> from terror
>the government would turn the country into a police state. Then the people  
>would rebel and
>support the revolution. From this point of view Bush is letting the  
>terrorist's win by
>sacrificing our constitutional rights.
>
>Anyhow this is probably not the place to discuss this...

Probably not - there are too many intelligent, informed people here
who might poke holes in it.

-- 
Al Balmer
Balmer Consulting
removebalmerconsultingthis at att.net