> we all agree that police do useful work. What a strange conclusion to which to jump. While I happen to agree that police are a benefit to society, their pla

> we all agree that police do useful work. What a strange conclusion to which to jump. While I happen to agree that police are a benefit to society, their placement as a tool of the state is something that I hope to see changed, maybe even in my lifetime. Professional police are a very new thing in common law society; still in an experimental stage in my view. And with the emergence and eventual maturity of the internet, I (and I think many of us through the open source world) think that it's totally plausible that police-as-a-service-of-the-state will be judged to be more trouble than it's worth. > Is the correct solution to this problem to introduce a technical system where everyone can hide perfectly from the law if they spend some time and effort? We aren't talking about "hiding perfectly from the law," at least not if the law in question casts no shadow over speech based on its content. Being able to publish content without any possibility of destruction of that content seems, at least to me, an entirely orthogonal venture to that of exacting violence or theft of some kind (ie, the more natural implications of the law). If the state is made unable, in a physical and technological sense, to reach out and eliminate particular bytes-on-the-wire deemed illegitimate, I assert that the law will grow stronger, not weaker, precisely because we won't have to concern ourselves in the political realm about what to and not to censor.