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From: taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (Dave Taylor)
Newsgroups: mod.comp-soc
Subject: Re: The Ethics of Work
Message-ID: <572@hplabsc.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 20-Aug-86 17:35:16 EDT
Article-I.D.: hplabsc.572
Posted: Wed Aug 20 17:35:16 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 22-Aug-86 20:12:29 EDT
Reply-To: hplabs!pyramid!hoptoad!gnu
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories
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Approved: taylor@hplabs
Reference: <524@hplabsc.UUCP>


This article is from pyramid!hoptoad!gnu (John Gilmore)
 and was received on Wed Aug 20 00:27:02 1986
 
islenet!scott writes:
> To equate the military of a totalitarian state and a democratic one is both
> fatuous and dangerous.

It depends on how each state chooses to act with the other world states.
I don't see that having democracy in the US has prevented us from waging
war against Nicaragua, nor has having a totalitarian state caused Russia
to attack every country it neighbors.

> Frankly, I find the efforts of engineers to analyse strategic issues such
> as these rather tedious and simplistic. I fear for the future of free
> societies when skilled persons choose to withdraw from the defense of
> the society on which their own survival depends.

I fear for the future of free societies when skilled people choose to follow
moronic "leaders" without relying on their own efforts to analyse the issues.

Michael C. Berch writes:
>                               Would you rather the DOE, DOD, CIA, and
> NSA were staffed by "good" people, or just whomever the agencies could
> hire after all the "good" people refused to get involved? Think about it.

I have thought about it.  I will think more.

I would rather that the DOD, CIA, etc were staffed by "non-good" people
than that they were staffed with "good" people.  (Is there a correlation 
between being intelligent and being "a good person"?  I hope so.)  The 
last thing we need is a government full of people who are good at what they 
do.  The only thing that saves us from the government we have now is that 
it is so ineffective.  I would rather have all the malicious dumb people 
trapped in bureacracies (by their own choice!), believing that they must 
follow orders, rather than roaming the streets.  Certainly the civil service 
system is set up to reward stupidity and mediocrity and discourage 
intelligence, and that's as it should be.  Our society's structure is not too 
bad, it gives these people a big pile of toys to play with but lets them 
know where to keep their hands off (civil liberties, etc).  The only screwup 
is modern: the civilian militia used to defend the country, now it's the job 
of the bureacracy.  No wonder we are poised for nuclear war!

I don't think these 3-letter organizations can be changed from within.  Their
structure is imposed from without, and I'm working to change the "without"
society to obsolete the organizations.  E.g. we pay the NSA to
keep our information secret and to find "other peoples" information.
But they have twisted this into believing that to do so, they must keep
"our information" (of our own citizens and companies) from being secret.
This led to the DES debacle, their new "black box" encryption screw,
and their current attempt to pass the Electronic Communications "Privacy"
Act so that fewer US citizens will feel they have to encrypt their email.
Funny that the government feels the need for good encryption but doesn't
see that anyone else deserves the boon -- even though we pay for it.

Are we too far off the topic of Computers and Society?  I think so...