CRIMINALITY AND FREEDOM OF SPEECH
                        THE ETHICS OF ANONYMITY
 
                 Copyright (C) 1993 Homer Wilson Smith
                          All Rights Reserved
 
     The more we lock criminals out, the more we lock ourselves in.
 
     The more we beg and plead with the government to help us lock
criminals out, the more the criminals migrate to the government, for
they are glad to lock us in, and charge us a pretty penny for the
service (taxes).
 
     Consider for a moment if you were to ask everyone on earth the
following question:
 
     "What would happen if everyone had a free and untraceable
communication line to speak whatever they pleased?",
 
     Consider that 1 million of them responded to you,
 
     "Well if anyone could say what they wanted without being traced why
then there would be a lot of libel and slander, false accusations and
underhanded informings based solely upon a desire to benefit financially
or otherwise, by ruining the reputation or forfeiting the property of
the one so defamed.  And Oh!, my intellectual property rights!  What
would happen to my intellectual property rights?  They would run though
my fingers like the sands through time.  I would soon own nothing,
everything I owned would be claimed by the pirates of the public
domain!'
 
     Now, of these 1 million people wringing their hands over their fate
in the hands of an anonymous society, how many of them would actually be
criminals who really feared more that someone might say something bad
about them that was true, someone that they could not trace and punish
for having exposed their criminality?
 
     Surely some, no?
 
     Criminals posing as righteous people afraid of criminals.
 
     Could you tell which ones were the criminals by how loudly they
protested free and untethered communication lines?
 
     The good fear that the evil will say something bad about the good
that is false, and the evil fear that the good will say something bad
about the evil that is true.
 
     The evil fear that the good will come after them if they speak bad
of the good, and the good fear the evil will come after them if they
speak bad of the evil.
 
     You can't trace the evil without also tracing the good.
 
     So which is more important,
 
     1.) that the evil be prevented from speaking bad of the good
without fear of repercussion, or
 
     2.) that the good be allowed to speak bad of the evil without fear
of repercussion?
 
     Is the answer to allow free and open communication or to allow only
highly policed communications, or even to allow no communication at all?
 
     Is the answer to make all communication traceable so that the good
can trace the evil and likewise so that the evil can trace the good, or
to make all communication free and untraceable so that the good could
not trace the evil but neither could the evil trace the good?
 
     The more we lock criminals in, the more we tie ourselves to them to
make sure they stay in.  Our tether to them is our intention that they
stay imprisoned, and they themselves are the nail that fastens our
tether to the ground at their feet.
 
     Who is more jailed, the one who is put in prison, or the one who is
assigned to watch him?
 
     At first glance the jailer seems to have the more freedom, but
really if you consider the infinity of wide and unbounded ways, the
jailer is merely in a larger jail which is limited by the jailer's
ability to span space and time to keep his prisoner located and in a
smaller jail.
 
     In this way the Devil traps us all in Hell forever, by getting us
to jail Him in its center, for who can wander far lest the beast be let
out?
 
     Homer