[wordup] Decentralism Against Terrorism

[Adam Shand]

Eric Raymond (aka. ESR) is one of the most well known "geek/open source"
evangelists.  He also happens to be a extremely opinionated libertarian
who is deeply against gun control laws.

I have incredibly mixed feelings about gun control.  In many ways I
dislike governmental control of weapons and think that an *educated* and
armed populace would be a good thing, or at least a less bad thing.
However I grew up in NZ and I can tell you that it was really nice being
about to go to a bar (or where ever) and not have it in the back of my
head that if some jackass picked a fight with me, he could pull out a gun
and shoot me or a friend).  Handguns are scary and I think that the
statistics that show the high percentages of policemen that are killed
with their own weapons and family's who have accidents with their own guns
resulting in a loved ones death are tragic.

I guess bottom line is the old deal, government is a trade off.  You agree
to give up certain freedoms in exchange for protection.  Which freedoms
are worth giving up for how much freedom?  Well ... I guess that's really
the magic question ...

Given that this commentary is from a geek source I will provide links to
some geek commentary on the article as well.

	http://www.advogato.org/article/340.html

From: http://tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/against-terrorism.html

Decentralism Against Terrorism
By Eric S. Raymond

(I wrote this on September 11th, 2001, hours after learning that the World
Trade Center had been destroyed, with thousands of lives lost, by
terrorists who hijacked two jetliners using carpet knives.)

Some friends have asked me to step outside my normal role as a technology
evangelist today, to point out in public that a political panic reaction
to the 9/11 terrorist attack could do a great deal more damage than the
attack itself.

Today will not have been a victory for terrorism unless we make it one. If
we reward in any way the Palestinians who are now celebrating this hideous
crime in the streets of the West Bank, that wil have been a victory for
terrorism. If we accept "anti-terrorism" measures that do further damage
to our Constitutional freedoms, that will have been a victory for
terrorism. But if we learn the right lessons, if we make policies that
preserve freedom and offer terrorists no result but a rapid and futile
death, that will have been a victory for the rest of us.

We have learned today that airport security is not the answer. At least
four separate terror teams were able to sail right past all the elaborate
obstacles -- the demand for IDs, the metal detectors, the video cameras,
the X-ray machines, the gunpowder sniffers, the gate agents and security
people trained to spot terrorists by profile. There have been no reports
that any other terror units were successfully prevented from achieving
their objectives by these measures. In fact, the early evidence is that
all these police-state-like impositions on freedom were exactly useless --
and in the smoldering ruins of the World Trade Center lies the proof of
their failure.

We have learned today that increased surveillance is not the answer. The
FBI's "Carnivore" tap on the U.S.'s Internet service providers didn't spot
or prevent this disaster; nor did the NSA's illegal Echelon wiretaps on
international telecommunications. Video monitoring of public areas could
have accomplished exactly nothing against terrorists taking even
elementary concealment measures. If we could somehow extend airport-level
security to the entire U.S., it would be just as useless against any
determined and even marginally competent enemy.

We have learned today that trying to keep civilian weapons out of
airplanes and other areas vulnerable to terrorist attack is not the answer
either -- indeed, it is arguable that the lawmakers who disarmed all the
non-terrorists on those four airplanes, leaving them no chance to stop the
hijackers, bear part of the moral responsibility for this catastrophe.

I expect that in the next few months, far too many politicians and pundits
will press for draconian "anti-terrorist" laws and regulations. Those who
do so will be, whether intentionally or not, cooperating with the
terrorists in their attempt to destroy our way of life -- and we should
all remember that fact come election time.

As an Internet technologist, I have learned that distributed problems
require distributed solutions -- that centralization of power, the first
resort of politicians who feed on crisis, is actually worse than useless,
because centralizers regard the more effective coping strategies as
threats and act to thwart them.

Perhaps it is too much to hope that we will respond to this shattering
tragedy as well as the Israelis, who have a long history of preventing
similar atrocities by encouraging their civilians to carry concealed
weapons and to shoot back at criminals and terrorists. But it is in that
policy of a distributed response to a distributed threat, with every
single citizen taking personal responsibility for the defense of life and
freedom, that our best hope for preventing recurrences of today's mass
murders almost certainly lies.

If we learn that lesson, perhaps today's deaths will not have been in
vain.