A dead duck? (Was RIP s22 notices SI)

[Owen Lewis]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ukcrypto-admin@chiark.greenend.org.uk
> [mailto:ukcrypto-admin@chiark.greenend.org.uk]On Behalf Of Ian G Batten
> Sent: 17 June 2002 21:13
> To: ukcrypto@chiark.greenend.org.uk
> Subject: Re: A dead duck? (Was RIP s22 notices SI)
>
>
> On Mon, 17 Jun 2002, Owen Lewis wrote:
> > In countries such as ours, government is by consent. This government is
> > about to test the limit beyond which consent cannot be pushed. One hopes
> > that it is in for a rude awakening.
>
> Unfortunately, the defence of abstract rights is the province of a small
> sector of the population.  The vast mass believe that (a) they have
> nothing of interest to the powers that be and (b) those that do have
> something to be ashamed of.  So they aren't interested in rights either
> for themselves or others.

I agree (and have said so here in the past). That is what makes the present
extension of powers interesting. I believe it *may* represent that step
which passes from a defence of abstract rights to that of a popular gut
issue. Crypto is mumbo-jumbo to most people. Your local council being
empowered to peer into your bedroom, on its own authority, when it likes and
for as long as it likes. Is something most people understand and don't like.
Their local councillor lives in their street; they know and rather dislike
the snotty-nosed clerk from the rates office; they either know or strongly
suspect that the planning and highways departments are corrupt. They know
that that employment in local government offices is an over paid sinecure
which they support directly from their own pockets.

Consider the power of numbers. If only 12 of us here can convince 12 others
to take up the matter as one of importance and to convince 12 of their
friends and family to do so, that exercise only need be repeated
successfully four times to have a quarter of a million people knocking on
the door of the Commons. That will be enough yet more seems possible.

As always, its more important to draw a line in the sand than to quibble
about exactly where it should be drawn. The point at which it should be
drawn in these matters is the point at which people will respond to it as a
gut rather than an intellectual issue. Get it on the gut level and neither
this nor any other govt will touch it again. I say its time to draw the
line.

Owen