From Free Life No 21, November 1994

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Sir,

Regarding the quote from the absurd Richard Neville in Editorial Jotting One [Free Life No. 18, May 1993], "pleasure without pain" really is "like sex without orgasm".

On behalf of your sado-masochistic readers, allow me to commend the endless and variegated joys of the rod, and thank you for the uncompromising defence of the Spanner 15 in the above issue.

Yours sincerely,

Margaret Richardson,

Birmingham.

Sir,

I was most diverted by "Reflections on the Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill" [Free Life No. 20, August 1994].

Messrs Furlong and Hume say much that is valuable against the newest Criminal Justice Bill in the United Kingdom; and I am grateful for their extensive quotation from the relevant statutes. However, their discussion of child pornography is surely eccentric.

They divide child pornography under two headings. The first comprises text, line drawings, "pseudo-photographs", and other kinds that do not involve the direct use of child models. All this they would tolerate, because it does not threaten the life, liberty or property or any identified individual. The second comprises representations of actual children. This they would not tolerate, because it is - or stems from - actual aggression against the models.

The division seems reasonable on first inspection. On closer inspection, though, it falls apart.

In the first place, what is this aggression that Messrs Furlong and Hume think should be prevented? Is it a child's being persuaded to have sex with adults or other children? Apparently not. They say nothing so much as to imply that these acts are immoral - let alone that they ought to be illegal. They worry only that the child models might be identified. They worry a lot about that!

In the second place, let us allow for the sake of argument that child models are harmed, and never mind by what means. In justifying prohibition on these grounds, Messrs Hume and Furlong advance a principle with a much wider application than they would like. It is a fact that most child pornography is produced outside the United Kingdom - mostly in Latin America and South East Asia. If its sale in the united Kingdom - and therefore its importation also - is to be forbidden in the country, so on the same principle is the sale of Colombian coal, which is often dug by children. So too is the vast range of things made in India with indentured labour. Remember that prohibition is not to follow from the nature of the product but from the nature of its production.

I am not sure what the present debate is inside the European Union. Here in the United States, though, the protectionists have long been demanding import restriction on the flimsiest grounds of local exploitation of labour. They have not so far had their way. But I do know how greatly delighted they would be if their favourite principle were ever accepted for the banning of something so generally reviled as child pornography - and were accepted by libertarians. What a precedent that would make!

In the third place, it is untrue that children are specially harmed by being objects of sexual desire. There are people, I know, who claim to have lived in the utmost misery since being fondled at the age of twelve. Most of these, I am convinced, are lying - to obtain money, or pity, or both. The rest are so hugely sensitive that if there had been no sex to make them unhappy, there would have been something else.

I am not saying that child pornography is anything wonderful. In fact, I strongly disapprove of it. But I do suggest that, as with much else affecting children, it is not something that can be safely put down by the laws of a free society. By all means, let us as protect our own children from being used as sexual objects; and let us ostracise child pornographers and their agents and customers from respectable society. But that is all. We need to accept that for the sake of possessing a greater good, we must leave alone much that is evil.

Yours sincerely,

T.J. Eckleburg,

New Jersey.

Sir,

This is to acknowledge the kind receipt of your latest issue of Free Life [No. 20].

IPCI would like to thank you for pointing out the review of Dr Jamal Badawi's The Status of Women in Islam by Marian Halcombe.

Yours sincerely,

Shamshad M. Khan,

Islamic Propagation Centre International,

Birmingham.

Sir,

I was impressed by your Editorial in the last issue [Free Life No 20, August 1994]. However, I do not think you have stated with sufficient clarity the chief arguments against an identity card scheme in this country.

It is conceivable that the British Government will one day turn thoroughly despotic, and will start persecuting smokers and boxers and dog owners and all the others. If that happens, then it will certainly help if we are efficiently tagged.

The point is that it will probably not happen, and so apocalyptic talk of what can be stored in modern computer systems is largely a waste of time. The real case against identity cards is how they will reinforce our present, rather gentle, styles of social control.

Oppressive laws are an embarrassment to the authorities. At the least, their regular enforcement brings international condemnation. Therefore identity cards - for to be watched is in many cases to be deterred. Take, for example, homosexuals. Many of these prefer to keep their inclinations private outside their own circle. For them, having routinely to produce identification will keep them away from gay clubs and bookshops, and all the other gathering places, as effectively as would a legal prohibition - and perhaps more effectively.

With obvious changes, this argument applies to the rest of us. The natural tendency of an identity card scheme will be to divide society between two groups - a majority looking and behaving and at least trying to think exactly alike, and a few exhibitionists undeterred by living under the watchful eye of authority.

No one who values individuality can think this an attractive prospect. And that is why the campaign against identity cards is of such huge importance.

Yours,

Reginald Bunthorne,

London.

Sir,

You say in your last Editorial [Free Life No. 20, August 1994] that "identity cards are the equivalent of laws to make us send our letters unsealed through the post, and to give sets of our housekeys to the police".

I have been unable to find any instance of this first invasion of liberty. Of the second, however, I offer your readers the following from Reynold's Illustrated Newspaper of the 18th April 1937:

NO FREEDOM HERE

German Householders Under New Search Threat

One of the German householder's last links with freedom have just been severed. Under an order issued by the German Ministry of the Interior - the German Home Office - every householder must deliver a duplicate of the keys of his home to the local police authorities.

He is given a receipt, the set is numbered, labelled, and carefully docketed.

The reason? Spread of "underground" propaganda aimed at the Nazi regime.

Activities of the German Freedom Party and the secret radio stations have stirred the police to action.

Armed with the keys of every home, the police can enter without formality, and conduct a cellar-to-attic search.

Comparisons with National Socialist Germany can be overdone, I know. But this certainly made me sit up and think.

Yours,

Moses Jackson,

Shropshire.

Sir,

I respect your belief that there is something that can be done to prevent an identity card scheme [Free Life No 20, August 1994]. But I do not share it. Our authorities are so fixed on the idea that I doubt if anything can be done in the way of prevention. It is the equivalent of the nationalisation rage of the late 1940s. This being so, I suggest that we should consider how we ourselves might avoid its worst effects.

I have three proposals. The first is to take advantage while we still can of the books on alternative identity published and sold by Loompanics Unlimited. To have several identities - and preferably citizenships - frees us from the prospect, faced by millions this century, of having no place to run if ever the powers that be turn against us and come looking. It may also divide the amount of information held on us into apparently innocuous chunks. Remember that being Jewish, a homosexual, a self-employed taxi driver, a former member of the peace movement, and an overweight pipe-smoker, are all things that individually might attract no official comment - but that all together would certainly have the authorities sniffing round.

The second is to ensure that our private records and more sensitive correspondence are safely encrypted. Those who want the safest encryption can try Phil Zimmerman's Pretty Good Privacy, available from ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/crypt/pgp23a.zip - and from many other sites. Being caught with a stack of encrypted floppy disks will not save us, of course, if the present attacks on due process are allowed to continue: as Messrs Furlong and Hume pointed out in your last issue ["Reflections on the Criminal Justice Bill"], to arouse suspicion is already a crime. Even so, the penalty for safeguarding our privacy may be less than for whatever offences we are hiding.

There is also the prospect of further developments in encryption technology, to allow multiple decryptions. It may one day be possible, for example, to encrypt a file with two passwords - one to decrypt it as an illegal picture, the other as something naughty but not illegal.

The third takes us back to the Loompanics Catalogue. Books like The Poor Man's James Bond (Kurt Saxon) and Homemade Guns and Homemade Ammo (Ronald B. Brown) contain information that to some extent rearms us. They will not save us from a concerted assault of the kind made at Waco; but they will empower us against individual agents of the State. I have neither need nor wish at the moment to kill anyone, and then dispose of the body. But who knows what the future may hold?

There is no opposing the State on this matter. We shall have identity cards. This being so, I repeat and emphasise - that libertarians should turn their attention now to ensuring that they and their own do not suffer from the impending abolition of liberty.

Yours sincerely,

Henry Lakington,

Surrey.

Sir,

There was too much sex in issue 20. I hope for considerably less in issue 21.

I am not tremendously prudish; I simply feel that the main battle for sexual freedom has been so plainly won, that for you to spend so much of your time running round the battlefield, still waving your sword at a retreating enemy, is a diversion from the war effort where it matters.

How about an article on the gradual abolition of cash transactions, or on the full surveillance potential of modern technology? Telling your younger readers what fun it might be to throttle themselves over a dirty magazine is no substitute for the struggle for liberty.

Yours sincerely,

Aaron P. Krellburger,

Florida.