🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Oct30.103041.304@news.uwyo.edu> jimkirk@news.uwyo.edu writes:
>
>This seems to ignore constitutional issues, like forcing a person to
>testify against himself,

What?!?!  Has the land of truth, justice and cotton fields done away with
the standard swearing-in phrase of "...the truth, the _whole_ truth, and
nothing but the truth" which, if agreed to, implies that you must testify
"against yourself" if some part of the truth is incriminating?

It seems to me that this whole argument (which I have skimmed only) loses
sight of the fact that there is another party involved between the individuals
and the government, and that is the suppliers of the network that the
"private" messages are sent over.  Although bound to work within the
constitution I imagine, they are more tied to the rules of the market, and 
as such will bring in rules to suit.  The government in turn regulates them.

For example, the Post Office "requires" you to put a ZIP code on mail you
send, and the price you pay for not doing it is slower delivery time.  The
companies who supply the "net" may well be within their rights to only
forward messages which comply to certain rules, and if the goverment dictates
that one of those rules is that "no encrypted message shall pass without
a registered assault key" then is there really any constitutional comeback
on that?  The contract you implicitly agree to with the Post Office is that
you won't sent explosives or prohibited substances in ordinary mail and they
are withing their rights to X-ray things to make sure you don't - is there
any _fundamental_ difference between that and the case in point?

I'm not saying the idea is good or bad, but without a real knowlege of your
constitution, I doubt that there's going to be a strong case for challenging
such a law if passed from a constitutional standpoint.  So you'd better
support it or protest against it when the time is ripe, because as someone
noted earlier "once a bad law is passed, it is virtually never repealed."

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