At 12:05 PM -0400 5/23/01, Duncan Frissell wrote: >At 09:27 AM 5/20/01 -0700, Charles Farley wrote: > >>The dissemination of an SSN does not contribute an idea, there is >>no speech content behind it. If it advances a compelling interest, >>in this case individual privacy, it seems to me a pretty good idea >>to restrict disclosure. > >The "compelling interest" in disseminating personal information on >others should be obvious. Particularly where those others are >public employees or the subject of public controversy. And I think letting the State say that free speech only exists for speech which "advances a compelling interest" is ass backwards. "I'm sorry, Mr. Jones, but your pamphlet has been deemed by the Department of Compelling Interest Evaluations" to have no compelling interest. You are hereby ordered not to proceed with publication." We have seen this ass backwards meme spread to other areas: deciding whether certain forms of dance should be "allowed" based on whether they have "speech content" or deciding whether a poem is of "compelling interest." Even deciding whether the right of association (really a restriction on the power of the State to stop people from gathering) is to be granted to some group which the State does not feel has a good reason for gathering. The issue is not whether Declan or me or anyone else has sufficient basis for showing "compelling interest" or "speech content" in some utterance or publication, but whether the State may ban some utterance or publication. Except in very circumstances, they may not. The issue of SS numbers is orthogonal to this basic point. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED] Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
