[ale] Cablemodem problems, considering DSL - OT response to OT comments

[JK]

James P. Kinney III wrote:
> On Tue, 2008-01-22 at 09:36 -0500, Horwitz International, LLC wrote:
>> I don't get what the big "conspiracy" theorists among you are on about.

Another note, to augment Jim's nice summary:

It doesn't have to be a conspiracy.  A whole bunch of spooked
people doing what "seems like a good idea at the time" can
really bork things up for all of us.

Re congress trying to get massive wiretapping made "legal"
(in blatant contravention of our Constitutional rights):
I'd be willing to support such a bill, provided the very
first and immediate recipients of wiretapping attention
were all elected and appointed members of the US Congress
and executive branch, and that all the fruits of that attention
be made public.

-- JK

> In short: Everyone here knows that email and http is open-air broadcast.
> The problem is the rise of the mentality that says everything the
> population does is suspicious and must be logged for later use in court.
> In this country we are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty. The
> slippery-slope argument that topic foo is clearly unsafe for current
> societal needs and therefore it should be monitored and maybe actively
> prohibited leads easily to topic bar and then to topic baz. This is a
> problem of human nature and it has been observed before. It is also
> apparently human nature to continually add further restrictions on
> permitted behaviors. The technology we all know and love is a
> double-edged sword. It make easy access to information and provides a
> breadcrumb trail back to the viewer of that information. If that trail
> leads to an anonymous entity by default, that is OK with the freedom
> purists. But the current trend is to make the anonymity the exception
> and not the rule. That violates the innocent until proven guilty concept
> that is the basis of our legal/penal system. If the converse replaces
> it, then once under suspicion, the population can longer access the
> information that can be used for exoneration.  
> 
> 


-- 
"What can be asserted without evidence can also be
dismissed without evidence." -- Christopher Hitchens