Re: The End of Privacy ?

mark@unicorn.com
Wed, 1 Jul 1998 04:35:40 -0700 (PDT)

Scott Badger [wbadger@psyberlink.net] wrote:
>I saw Jim Halperin (The Truth Machine, The First Immortal) speak and he made
>this same point. He seemed to say in The Truth Machine that terrorists and
>criminals will have increasingly destructive weapons available to them and
>it won't be long before we will be practically forced to create some means
>of identifying the crazies (e.g. an infallible truth machine).

Of course the correct answer to this kind of statement is "So what?" Yes, freedom fighters, free marketeers and criminals will have nukes and other mass destruction weapons. So what? Things change, deal with it.

Sure, were I an authoritarian who wanted to boss people around in safety I'd be scared stiff; bossing people around in secret is no fun, but you can't boss them around publically without getting nuked by the freedom fighters. So of course I would want to remove everyone else's privacy to protect my power.

But for the rest of us, so what? Just move away from the people who are likely to be nuked and hope you avoid the odd random crazies. It's no big deal for those who don't want to boss others around. Unless Y2K takes the government down then DC probably will be nuked in the next couple of decades. So what?

Mark

(Brin is another big government supporter, so of course he feels the same way as the big governors.).