John Gilmore interviewed by Greplaw

mpawlo writes "I have just published another one of those Greplaw interviews. This time, John Gilmore had the courtesy of answering a wide range of questions on various subjects such as terrorism and security, spam blocking, censorship, secret laws in airports and of course - sarongs. Gilmore starts: 'I'm a civil libertarian millionaire eccentric.' Enjoy!"

Comments

And I thought I was alone...

[ElForesto]

Here I am thinking I'm the only one that argues what he's arguing. The right to travel *IS* fundamental to a free society, IDs and driver's licenses be damned! I'm glad someone with money gets it (meaning that he has the means to do something about it other than speak up).

Re:And I thought I was alone...

[Anonymous Coward]

It is, because it's *prior* restraint. No one is saying that you have the right to drive dangerously. Neither do you have a right to wield a stick in a way that endangers others. But you don't need a license to have a stick, do you? If you drive dangerously then you are guilty of reckless endangerment, and you can be prosecuted and convicted by a jury. If you are NOT driving dangerously, then you are exercising a right. Permit = permission = not a right.

Re:And I thought I was alone...

[Ichoran]

Fine, there is a right to travel. But this doesn't mean that all rights are unconditional, context-insensitive rights.

For example, a five-year-old has the physical ability to turn the ignition key in a car and press the accelerator pedal down. But this doesn't mean that they should be allowed to drive.

The key principle is that certain actions are inherently dangerous to other people. Allowing other people to engage in these actions is a direct and severe imposition on *my* right to stay alive. Of particular importance, in the case of driving, is the fact that it is not possible for a completely untrained driver to not willfully (if unintentionally) endangering me, because he or she does not have the skill to operate a dangerous device in a way that won't endanger me.

Simply by their using the vehicle, they are putting me at risk. There is no effective difference to me (as a victim) between them driving on public roads and them playing Russian roulette with me when I drive on public roads (using a gun with a sufficiently large cylinder).

So we have to balance their rights to be able to act freely with my rights to not be killed by other people's free actions. The current solution is to require training for people who use dangerous devices so that the user of the device can, with high degree of confidence, willfully avoid causing harm to others.

(Note also that it is not good enough for me for them to be punished after they kill me. I'm still dead. The rights we have in a free society should not include the right to kill one or more people, as long as we die ourselves or suffer some other punishment afterwards.)

Now, obviously, if one has a requirement but never enforces it, it doesn't protect my rights at all. So the requirement has to be enforced. I don't really care how it is enforced. The key is that there must be some mechanism to distinguish between drivers who can intend to not hurt me and, to a high degree of reliability, follow through on that intent; and those who through incompetence or inability either cannot intend to not hurt me, or lack the ability to translate intention into action.

A license is one way to accomplish this. A license that doesn't clearly identify itself as belonging to the driver isn't as useful, because this removes the ability for people to distinguish between proper drivers and threats to society. So, typically, you have to use something like a photo ID. I'd be happy with on-the-spot proficiency checks, or an IDless card with a hash value off my fingerprint that could be verified with a fingerprint scanner, or any other way to verify that the operator of the device has the capability to avoid harming others through using it.

The principle of being able to avoid harming others is also why it makes sense to outlaw drunk driving (and increase penalties for hurting people while drunk). When sufficiently drunk, you can no longer guarantee the safety of others. So by driving while sufficiently drunk, you are willfully endangering others.

So, the bottom line is: you can have a right to travel. But it doesn't follow that you have the right to travel and kill people while doing it. The right to travel is the right to travel *provided* that you possess the ability to do so without causing injury and death to others--if you do not possess that ability, their rights to stay alive trump your rights to move from A to B.

(Note that this only applies for the people operating the devices. Having IDs for being a passenger is silly, unless the passenger can, by virtue of incompetence, cause a threat to others. And it's only worth implementing checks for commonly-used devices that can hurt others. Machine shop tools can be deadly if used improperly, but they're not sprinkled all over where they can kill bystanders when untrained people use them on a daily basis. Thus, there's no point requiring an explicit license for public machine shop tool operation.)

This is the same civil libertarian, John Gilmore..

[Anonymous Coward]

I've read many reviews of John. He is brilliant! He knows how to uphold the law theory "all are equal and equally under the law", which United States currently doesn't like to admit. John knows how to use their laws against them. Civil libertarian is somewhat a stretch; John is more of a Jeffersonian, or sometimes known as a Christian Anarchist. If anyone out there dislikes or even enjoys Eric S. Raymond, this John is the gapstop that keeps people together within reason.

PS: Moderators!
*Before you knock this user
*please recognize that Slashdot
*should at-least mirror these
*articles on *the server rather
*than having thousands of people
*click the URL. I happily read
*the article from the parent's post

You all just wait and laugh when Slashdot is charged for server crimes by the FCC. Even Yahoo News mirrors their stories for sake of all!

Rights

[t_allardyce]

Never mind sarongs, what about the banning of thongs in Florida and Louisiana!! this is going to far by the righteous far right.

wrong wrong wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

"The drug war is an ugly, corrupt set of policies that were bad when Nixon set it in motion to bash the hippie students who were hounding his ass out of office."

the drug war was first created to get returning GI's , from vietnam off of heroin and originally focused on treatment over criminalization. Of course later Nixon was forced by the right to increase the drug war's focus on criminalization. Oh yeah just as an aside the hippies did not force nixon out of office...he won both terms of his presidency. It was his own criminal activities that forced him out of office....not a bunch of inefectual hippies. They had nothing to do with ending the vietnam war and nothing to do with forcing nixon out of office.

Guys like this, history revisionist, asshole really make it hard for libertarian minded people to support ending the drug war. I mean any time i say the drug war is a waste of money regularly open minded people close thier doors to the idea becouse they have heard all the other consperiacy bullshit guys like this asshole have heaped on to a fairly straight forward argument. What is the saying "With freinds like this who needs enemies"

stendec@gmail.com

Re:A wise man...

[jbltk]

We can start with Galileo.

Then we have Sherman Austin under the Patriot Act.

http://rwor.org/a/1217/austin.htm

With the Patriot Act, there is the distinct possibility of people being silenced and no one ever knowing.

The point is not how many are being silenced now, but how many can and probably will be in the future.

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.
Pastor Martin Niemöller

Re:Server is going down fast... here's the text

[killjoe]

"Terrorism is now defined as force applied for political reasons by people other than the US Government."

THis should read.

"Terrorism is now defined as force applied for political reasons by people other than the US or the Israeli Government."

Thank you.

Re:As always, he's a freak

[MultiModeRb87]

He simply needs to get behind the wheel of his car

That is, of course, if he happens to have permission from the U.S. Government in the form of a drivers' license.

The point is not that airlines or private individuals don't have the right to choose how they wish to restrict access to their property. The point is that the government doesn't have the right to force airlines or private individuals, as proxies, to restrict access to their property.

Although the kidnapping example is technically in the same category of movement restriction, perhaps a better example would be if police set up checkpoints at every major intersection, and required the identification of anyone who wished to pass. This would differ from the current system only in degree, and has been thus far prevented from taking place by both popular opinion and by the logistical nightmare that would ensue, although with the advent of cheap RFIDs, I wouldn't place too much faith in the latter, and I've little in the lasting ability of the former, given the example that you provided with your own comment.

the right to be left alone

[bodrell]

I'm glad someone is working on this problem. I'm just a card-carrying ACLU member, but if I had Gilmore's resources I'd love to challenge a few laws. Like the right to not be annexed. Isn't that taxation without representation? Reagan blew so many holes in the Bill of Rights, someone has to reverse those precedents. We now have almost no protection against illegal search and seizure. States' rights are practically non-existent (especially here in Oregon, where Ashcroft has swooped down multiple times--to threaten physicians re. the state's assisted suicide law, and also to rattle a saber about medical marijuana issues).

Arrgh. Now I'm all riled up.

Join the ACLU. It's safer than direct action against "the Man."