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Re: Britain Closer to Banning Tools Found in GNU/Linux Distros?

Verily I say unto thee, that Darth Chaos spake thusly:

> The Hegelian Dialectic, aka Problem-Reaction-Solution: Create the 
> problem, feign a reaction, then offer a phony solution. Nothing more,
> nothing less.

Hegel's dialectic is not about manipulation through deception though,
that is merely propaganda. He may have been prone to convolution, but
he wasn't a liar.

Here is a clear case of political propaganda, serving an agenda that,
although hidden, is nonetheless transparently obvious. This has never
been about security, it is about the overwhelming corporate influence
that drives governments to secure "protections" for those who seek to
maintain monopolies. This is about so-called "Intellectual Property",
not the threat from cyber-terrorists.

Two of the worst breaches in data security ever (in the UK), occurred
last year (the "Department for Work and Pensions" and "HM Revenue and
Customs"), and neither of those cases had the slightest connection to
"hacking". Are we actually supposed to believe that security breaches
will disappear, if the tools that facilitate them are made "illegal"?
I somehow doubt that any /actual/ terrorist is overly concerned about
the legal status of his hacking tools, since his entire raison d'être
is criminal anyway.

Once the government has set the precedent, of being able to determine
the legitimacy of one piece of software over another (notwithstanding
copyrights), then they will be able to arbitrarily determine the fate
of *any* software, based on ever-more indefinite criteria. As Roy has
already pointed out, what's next ... Perl? With a scripting language,
and the right system hooks, one can conjure up alternatives to pretty
much *any* so-called "hacking" tool, or even devise new ones. Are the
British and German governments going to outlaw scripting next, or any
other form of programming? Are they going to outlaw source code, then
compilers, then books on programming? Will "Windows: Tips and Tricks"
be branded subversive reading material, and GNU/Linux classified as a
weapon? Should we start the bonfires now, or wait until after the gas
chambers have been built?

The forces behind these initiatives aren't the democratically elected
representatives of the people, they are the corporations that want to
deprive us of our liberties for the sake of profit, using politicians
as proxies who are coerced by lobbyists and bribed by CEOs. Once they
have control of the laws that determine the legitimacy of a competing
product, there simply won't *be* any competition. There is barely any
*now*. Corporations like Microsoft, and cartels like the RI/MPAA have
always sought this degree of control through dirty tricks or bribery,
but now they increasingly turn to the law to do their dirty work, and
where the law does not suit their criminal agenda, they simply change
it by pulling puppet strings.

-- 
K.
http://slated.org

.----
| "[Microsoft] are willing to lose money for years and years just to
|  make sure that you don't make any money, either." - Bob Cringely.
|  - http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2007/07/cringely-the-un.html
`----

Fedora release 8 (Werewolf) on sky, running kernel 2.6.23.8-63.fc8
 03:32:22 up 19 days,  1:08,  5 users,  load average: 0.06, 0.08, 0.08

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