Hanging on the telephone

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Mon, 28 May 2001 10:02:58 GMT

FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED AUG. 3, 2000
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
Hanging on the telephone

The Federal Trade Commission is conducting a yearlong review of its regulations concerning telemarketers -- the people who call at dinnertime and try to sell you stuff.

The FTC is expected to give Congress a set of recommended amendments next year. Unlikely to appear on that list, obviously, is the choice: "Why don't you just let us go find some honest work; we're not doing much good here, anyway."

In fact, the FTC lacks jurisdiction to enforce its rules against banks (who use the phones to offer credit cards), savings and loans, long-distance phone companies, airlines, nonprofit organizations, and certain insurance companies.

And ''Who else calls but these tele-intruders?'' asks Bob Bulmash of Private Citizen, a consumer rights organization that works to limit junk calls and mail.

The FTC and the Federal Communications Commission supposedly require telemarketing firms to maintain lists of people who ask not to be bothered again. Supposedly, all you need to say is ''Put me on your 'do not call' list,'' and any subsequent call will violate FTC regulations, putting the business at risk of an $11,000 civil penalty.

But ''The rule is a joke,'' Bulmash points out. Private citizens cannot bring a civil action against a telemarketer under the rule unless the firm can be shown to have caused them $50,000 or more in actual damages. And how many frustrated homeowners could even identify the name and address of the "firm" which staffed tonight's telephone boiler room?

Responding to consumer complaints over the burgeoning wave of pathetic hucksters, lawmakers like Congressman Matt Salmon, R-Ariz., have now introduced legislation to ban telemarketers from blocking their identity on caller ID boxes, or from calling during dinner hours, defined as 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. local time.

But Stephen Altobelli, director of public affairs for the Direct Marketing Association, responds that such "solutions" may not even target the worst offenders -- charitable or political organizations and other noncommercial groups that are exempt from such rules, in the first place.

''We don't feel there is an adequate understanding of who is making the calls,'' Altobelli says.

Politicians, of course, consider themselves to be in the business of responding to the frustrated cry, "Why can't someone make a law?" But real leaders and statesmen might instead take the opportunity to remind us that government can't mandate politeness, and that any bureaucracy with the power to really stop unwanted phone calls (or even knocks on the door) would necessarily intrude into our privacy so far as to become a considerably greater hazard to our freedoms than the relatively minor annoyance hereby being "solved."

The private market responds far more quickly than any lumbering regulatory bureaucracy ever can. Given the chance, private inventors and phone companies should be able to quickly produce and offer phones that refuse calls from unidentified numbers -- or which inform an incoming caller that his number will be billed $4 per minute while we happily listen to his spiel: "Please punch '1' if you wish to continue. ..."

# # #

Meantime, following up my July 25 column on the FBI's e-mail snooping device "Carnivore," Chainmail Inc., a months-old Internet startup housed in a second-floor walk-up in downtown Charlottesville, Va., has announced it will make available beginning next week a free download of its encryption program Mithril, designed to resist decoding by Carnivore for "anywhere from a week to ten billion years."

"What it does is encrypts -- keeps secure -- any e-mail transaction, any e-mail document that you may want to send," says Chainmail CEO Rick Gordon.

"I guess it's the Libertarian in all of us that sort of makes us feel like rogue players. I fully expect I'll be checking my phone for bugs now," Gordon told MSNBC.

For more, see: www.chainmailinc.com.

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. His book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available at $24.95 postpaid by dialing 1-800-244-2224; or via web site http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html.

Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com

"When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right." -- Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926)

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken

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Quotes

Government doesn't work. Never did. Never will. Can't. But there are lots of good people. Love them.

-- Bill St. Clair

The Atlanta Declaration

Every man, woman, and responsible child has an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.

-- L. Neil Smith

Reread that pesky first clause of the Second Amendment. It doesn't say what any of us thought it said. What it says is that infringing the right of the people to keep and bear arms is treason. What else do you call an act that endangers "the security of a free state"? And if it's treason, then it's punishable by death. I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public hangings.

-- L. Neil Smith

A Penalty Clause for the Bill of Rights

Any official, appointed or elected, at any level of government, who attempts, through legislative act or other means, to nullify, evade, or avoid the provisions of the first ten amendments to this Constitution, or of the Thirteenth Amendment, shall be summarily removed from office, and, upon conviction, deprived of all pay and benefits including pension, and sentenced to imprisonment for life.

-- L. Neil Smith

Based on 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and some of its own empirical work, the panel couldn't identify a single gun control regulation that reduced violent crime, suicide or accidents.

-- John Lott, commenting on the National Academy of Sciences report on gun control laws.

Who is a libertarian?

Zero Aggression Principle ("Zap")

"A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim."

-- L. Neil Smith

(Formerly called the "Non-Aggression Principle", or "NAP")

Why Did It Have to be... Guns?

Make no mistake: all politicians -- even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership -- hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it's an X-ray machine. It's a Vulcan mind-meld. It's the ultimate test to which any politician -- or political philosophy -- can be put.

If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash -- for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.

If he isn't genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody's permission, he's a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.

What his attitude -- toward your ownership and use of weapons -- conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn't trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?

-- L. Neil Smith

Concise

"Tell me," I was once asked, "What do you think about gun control? Give me the short answer." To which I replied, "If you try to take our firearms we will kill you."

-- Mike Vanderboegh

Also from The Atlanta Declaration:

... like going to the bathroom, breathing, eating, sleeping, or making love, it turns out that self-defense is a bodily function one cannot safely or effectively delegate to a second party.

-- L. Neil Smith

This does not mean that "Marijuana should be available by prescription." It means that morphine sulfate should be available in five pound bags at the supermarket for a couple of bucks, like sugar... but probably in a different aisle, to avoid confusion.

-- Vin Suprynowicz

If you refuse to pay unjust taxes, your property will be confiscated. If you attempt to defend your property, you will be arrested. If you resist arrest, you will be clubbed. If you defend yourself against clubbing, you will be shot dead. These procedures are known as the Rule of Law.

-- Edward Abbey

The state can only survive as long as a majority is programmed to believe that theft isn't wrong if it's called taxation or asset forfeiture or eminent domain, that assault and kidnapping isn't wrong if it's called arrest, that mass murder isn't wrong if it's called war.

-- Bill St. Clair