Date: Tue, 22 Apr 1997 13:38:24 -0700 (PDT) From: "Eric J. Schwertfeger" <ejs@bfd.com> To: Sysadmin <danlaw@rust.net> Cc: Blaine Minazzi <bminazzi@denverweb.net>, isp@freebsd.org Subject: Re: How many customers read news (was Re: News...) Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.95.970422125716.12008B-100000@harlie.bfd.com> In-Reply-To: <335D02D0.1607@rust.net>
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On Tue, 22 Apr 1997, Sysadmin wrote: > What country is this you live in? In the United States, we have civil > liberty laws prohibiting such behaviour by law enforcement officials, > of course I am not aware of the situation where you live, but I don't > see why Usenet should be governed based on the activities of a police > state where a distributor is treated as a publisher of information. That's right, we live in a country where BBS operators get all of their eqipment siezed because someone managed to download a file from the BBS, that while legal in the state the BBS was in, was illegal where it was downloaded. Totally different situation, guess California isn't part of the United States. Or it all gets seized as evidence, and returned several months later, when the DOJ realizes that it just plain blew it. In one case, the file that caused the whole issue had been uploaded by the investigating officer less than an hour prior to the bust. But we've got protection against abuse of power, now don't we. Anyone that thinks that the government at any level is going to treat ISP's any better than BBS operators needs to examine very closely why they think this way. Depending on how you read it, the Communications Indecency Act could easily be used against ISP's, even for something as simple as news. Remember, the law wasn't drafted by people that actually understood USENET News. Not to mention the fact that what he's describing here is only an expansion of the property seizure laws already in effect in the good old U.S. of A. Read up on it, or at least watch for the 60 minutes episode on the topic. People every day get cash seized simply because it was suspicious that they had that much cash on them. Charges are never filed against the property owner in 90% of property seizure cases, because of insufficient evidence. But does that mean the people get the seized property back? Nope, because the case against the property is not the same as the case against the person, and the property does not have the right of due process. To all the innocent bystanders in this, I'm sorry for venting like this, I'm not a conspiracy nut or an activist of any sort, but anyone who isn't concerned about this hasn't paid attention to how the government pursues things that it thinks are wrong. One of my biggest gripes with the Key Escrow "privacy protection" bill was that circumventing due process only has a penalty if what you do with the keys is illegal. So, as long as they feel good about the results, there will be no penalty. O.K., so we're not in a police state, but this isn't the land of the free anymore. We've given up freedom for security, and there's a rather famous quote on that one.
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