a parable scottmi microsoft com scott miller techcom writes stikes me that all this concern over the government s ability to eavesdrop is a little overblown what can t they do today my understanding is that they already can tap listen get access exc to our phone lines bank records etc etc again well they can t listen in on much of mine since i already use cryptography for much of my electronic mail and will start using it for my telephony as soon as practical however allow me to tell a parable there was once a far away land called ruritania and in ruritania there was a strange phenonmenon all the trees that grew in ruritainia were transparent now in the days when people had lived in mud huts this had not been a problem but now high tech wood technology had been developed and in the new age of wood everyone in ruritania found that their homes were all see through now until this point no one ever thought of allowing the police to spy on someone s home but the new technology made this tempting this being a civilized country however warrants were required to use binoculars and watch someone in their home the police taking advantage of this would get warrants to use binoculars and peer in to see what was going on occassionally they would use binoculars without a warrant but everyone pretended that this didn t happen one day a smart man invented paint and if you painted your house suddenly the police couldn t watch all your actions at will things would go back to the way they were in the old age completely private indignant the state decided to try to require that all homes have video cameras installed in every nook and cranny after all they said with this new development crime could run rampant installing video cameras doesn t mean that the police get any new capability they are just keeping the old one a wise man pointed out that citizens were not obligated to make the lives of the police easy that the police had survived all through the mud hut age without being able to watch the citizens at will and that ruritania was a civilized country where not everything that was expedient was permitted for instance in a neighboring country it had been discovered that torture was an extremely effective way to solve crimes ruritania had banned this practice in spite of its expedience indeed why have warrants at all he asked if we are interested only in expedience a famous paint technologist dorothy quisling intervened however she noted that people might take photographs of children masturbating should the new paint technology be widely deployed without safeguards and the law was passed soon it was discovered that some citizens would cover their mouths while speaking to each other thus preventing the police from reading their lips through the video cameras this had to be prevented the police said after all it was preventing them from conducting their lawful surveilance the wise man pointed out that the police had never before been allowed to listen in on people s homes but dorothy quisling pointed out that people might use this new invention of covering their mouths with veils to discuss the kidnapping and mutilation of children no one in the legislature wanted to be accused of being in favor of mutilating children but then again no one wanted to interfere in people s rights to wear what they liked so a compromise was reached whereby all homes were installed with microphones in each room to accompany the video cameras the wise man lamented few if any child mutilations had ever been solved by the old lip reading technology but it was too late the microphones were installed everwhere however it was discovered that this was insufficient to prevent citizens from hiding information from the authorities because some of them would cleverly speak in languages that the police could not understand a new law was proposed to force all citizens to speak at all times only in ruritanian and for good measure to require that they speak clearly and distinctly near the microphones after all dorothy quisling pointed out they might be using the opportunity to speak in private to mask terrorist activities terrorism struck terror into everyone s hearts and they rejoiced at the brulliance of this new law meanwhile the wise man talked one evening to his friends on how all of this was making a sham of the constitution of ruritania of which all ruritanians were proud why he asked are we obligated to sacrifice all our freedom and privacy to make the lives of the police easier there isn t any real evidence that this makes any big dent in crime anyway all it does is make our privacy forfeit to the state however the wise man made the mistake of saying this as the law required in ruritanian clearly and distinctly and near a microphone soon the newly formed ruritanian secret police arrived and took him off and got him to confess by torturing him torture was after all far more efficient than the old methods and had been recently instituted to stop the recent wave of people thinking obscene thoughts about tomatoes which dorothy quisling noted was one of the major problems of the new age of plenty and joy perry metzger pmetzger shearson com laissez faire laissez passer le monde va de lui meme
