Talk:Little tin god sysop
This seems like a trivial topic but it isn't, really: the LTGS tends to have inordinate power to invade privacy and reveal data about people to others, and so can be quite dangerous, e.g. to activists or people in countries with laws that allow for various kinds of intrusion with only 'online evidence', which now is most nations.
There are interesting suggestions of how to deal with this, many of them including moderate levels of physical violence, e.g. breaking all fingers of an LTGS who actually gets someone imprisoned, breaking one finger for each instance of outing or other revealing of private data based on their position of trust. This wouldn't apply if they were just guessing, only if they claimed some knowledge they didn't have but no one else could know they don't have.
In this way the LTGS would feel the violence that the state directs towards those he targets directly. So far this discourse is confined to anarchist circles but it's hard to argue with the ultimate logic of it.
On one of the cypherpunks list once there was serious discussion of when the death penalty should apply to those who are trusted with data due to some online process that others bet their life on, and violate its integrity. There were a remarkably large number of circumstances where unwise statements by those in a position to read the logs could get someone killed. It was quite disturbing. Perhaps online communication is really a quite dangerous thing that should be limited - after all who wants to be held responsible for everything they say out of context, when maliciously quoted by some creep in a position of power?
I'm sure at least Bill Gates and Oliver North feel this way!
So is this now the personal page of the poster from 142.* who hasn't registered a public identity by which indicating willingness and opportunity to communicate or cooperate?
If so, I'll say that positive progress is being achieved on multiple fronts, and some level of harmony may be achievable after all.
