Re: MEME: Leaderless Resistance

From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Sun Mar 16 2003 - 16:30:55 MST

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    On Sun, Mar 16, 2003 at 03:26:37PM -0500, Harvey Newstrom wrote:
    > Michael Wiik wrote,
    > > Well, I'll freely admit I'm proposing thinly-disguised deliberatly
    > > provocative acts since Mr Bokov called for a discussion of tactics of
    > > leaderless resistance.
    >
    > Trying to commit illegal acts by exploiting loopholes in the law is a
    > dangerous practice. Laws often deal with the intent of the perpetrator. If
    > your intent is to break the law in such a way that you can't be prosecuted,
    > I think most judges and juries will still find you guilty of breaking the
    > law.

    There is a deeper problem here. Even when this kind of cat-and-mouse
    schemes might protect you from the first (and maybe second) attempt at
    prosecution, if they actually work the normal response is to change the
    law instead. Usually this means that the law is generalized; instead of
    outlawing a particular list of drugs, the law now outlaws anything
    chemically like them or with the same effects (depending on
    jurisdiction). If you consider the law in the first place to be
    immoral, now the immoral law has become a rubber law allowing
    prosecution much more widely.

    Sometimes cat and mouse works. The Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet was too
    critical of the conservative king and government during the 1830's, and
    was repeatedly banned. So it was removed - and papers like "The Second
    Aftonbladet", "The New Aftonbladet", "The Third Aftonbladet" and so on
    were started and banned. In the end it proved too much bad publicity and
    trouble to ban the paper all the time, so it was left to continue. A
    beautiful victory for free speech.

    I think the times when this kind of game works is when there is no
    strong support of a law, and there is a popular pressure to revoke it.
    So it might work well against some laws in some places, but it is not a
    general approach. One has to understand both the public, politics and
    the law.

    I think the combination of legal expertise and (say) programming skill
    can produce some marvellous hacks to promote freedom, but just as it is
    not possible to whip up a reliable and secure software system as an
    amateur, it is not possible to whip up reliable and secure legal
    loopholes as an amateur.

    -- 
    -----------------------------------------------------------------------
    Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
    asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
    GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
    


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