🚀 go-pugleaf

>.....strong cryptography changes the whole game:  
>From the relatively small amount
>of information most individuals can hold entirely in their memories, 
>we are suddenly in a world where essentially unlimited amounts of 
>information can be protected.  This changes the basis on which we made 
>the original social tradeoff - every bit as much as more powerful
weapons 
>change the basis of whatever social tradeoff you believe is implied by 
>the Second Amendment. 

Perhaps it does, but the fact remains that the change is fundamental,
technological, and economic.  "All the king's horses and all the king's
men," all of the legislation in the world cannot undo it.  If the
proposed laws could make pi equal to three, then there would be some
point to discussing the convenience that would result.    

Please permit the injection of personal opinion:

Whatever you may believe about the Second Amendment, I do not believe
that the Fifth Amendment represented a "trade off."  The founders were
not far removed from a time in which people were burned at the stake on
no more evidence than their own testimony elicited under torture.  They
understood the potential for abuse of government power that only a few
in this time and place can appreciate.  I believe that the Fifth Amendment
represented a fundamental and unequivocal choice to tolerate any 
individual behavior rather than to tempt the state to torture.

The "magic words," as Jyrrki calls them, have changed.  We can no longer
be manipulated by the fear of witchcraft, heresy, treason, or Communism.
But the current ones are no less potent.  Those that appeal for more and
more powerful government in their name are no more enlightened than those
who burned the witches and heretics.  Those that suggest that we are
only being asked to surrender a little freedom had better be careful what they
ask for, they might get it.


William Hugh Murray, Executive Consultant, Information System Security
49 Locust Avenue, Suite 104, New Canaan, Connecticut 06840                
203 966 4769, WHMurray at DOCKMASTER.NCSC.MIL