I don't think it's insane

to notice a trend. You may be exaggerating the actuality as of today - but not IMhO - the agenda of at east a few in positions of power.

But as with SSSCA (whose trend you mention re the creation of a new Draconian interpretation of the idea of \ufffd) - remember the Founding Mothers' wisest exhortation to the fledgling Republic:

Eternal vigilance is the price of ...

Even locally - Ben T. for example in one post, has made it about as EZ as any lazy one could ask: to write one's representatives [and Hollings!] about the absurdity of Hollings' proposed SSSCA. (Do you know yours? and their addresses? - a link is there if you Don't).

But hasn't it always been thus? Aren't there always 'forces' whose vision for the country is: more police, more restrictions on behavior; more 'enforced' homogeneity? (makes enforcement so much easier when everyone thinks, acts the same)

Don't think that your letters (presuming only that.. there are more than a handful? which *actually get sent*) -- are unread and unheeded. Thinking that - is merely the lazy person's rationale for sitting mutely and bitching.

It's not too late to eviscerate, ridicule -- Kill SSSCA. Good logic and good writing are your armament. Use It. (You'll Know later.. if you just skipped the letters, and this sucker passes. Then: Whom will YOU blame?)

Cheers,

Ashton

PS - you can even boilerplate some of the cogent arguments which others have created. I think it's best though.. to add at least a few original angles of your own, lest the screed seem to be a carbon copy = less credibility when the tallies are made.

You'll feel better after you do it. US Mail is worth the 34\ufffd for its effect, IMhO - but e-mail is LOTS better than silence.

[link|http://netsecurity.about.com/library/weekly/aa121901a.htm|Magic Lantern is the FBI's latest plan to combat terrorism] but it can be abused to keep track of innocents, or raise red flags on someone that visits the AYB web sites and all of a sudden they see "Someone set up us the b*mb!" and the B-word flags them as a potential terrorist. Lord knows what will happen to this same person reading posts on IWE's WOT forum, or the Microsoft is Guilty Forum, and any combinations of other forums. It is the red scare all over again, I wonder how many innocents will be victim to this?

When I did a search for Magic Lantern, and virus and trojan I came up with this site [link|http://www.dojgov.net/USDOJ_Main.htm|[link|http://www.dojgov.net/USDOJ_Main.htm|http://www.dojgov.net/USDOJ_Main.htm]] I cannot verify how accurate it is, but basically it says that innocents are getting hit as hard or harder than the guilty. Now I am not sure who runs it, but there are all sorts of sites on the Internet.

Apparently there is a law [link|http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/laws/pl096456.htm|CLASSIFIED INFORMATION PROCEDURES ACT PL 96-456] that allows them to do this?

Now if I was working on a programming project, with a few of my friends, and we sent email using PGP to encrypt the source code, the ML server would have all of our keystrokes and have all of our trade secrets listed on it. Then all my competition need do is hack the ML server or run a packet sniffer on the ISP between my dial-up or DSLAM or whatever before it goes to the ML server, and they can get all of our trade secrets and copyright them before we could. Even if we have proven that they have stolen our work, the copyright would still stand. They may face criminal charges for hacking into ISP equipment, but they'd make a bundle off of our ideas that we spent R&D on, and they didn't.

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