Date: Mon, 24 Aug 92 15:59:28 MDT
From: David Wade <djw@corrtex.lanl.gov>
Newsgroups: comp.society.privacy
Subject: Re: Feds seek customer records on "Grow-lamps"
Organization: Computer Privacy Digest
X-Submissions-To: comp-privacy@pica.army.mil
X-Administrivia-To: comp-privacy-request@pica.army.mil
X-Computer-Privacy-Digest: Volume 1, Issue 074, Message 1 of 4

Clearly you don't see the good that these cash-registers are doing.  They
are making records which can be examined to prove that you committed a
crime, just as soon as we get around to that particular crime...

We all know that there are crimes so heinous that the people who perpetrate
these crimes must be caught and punished.

>	From: Dan Veditz <daniel@borland.com>
>
>	An AP story in today's paper (21 Aug 1992) date-lined 
>	San Francisco states that Federal prosecutors sought court
>	orders yesterday to force three local businesses to turn over 
>	their customer lists, sales receipts and shipping records 
>	for indoor "Growing lights" since the start of 1990.  They
>	also want copies of any correspondence mentioning marijuana.

This particular ploy has been being used in the "war on drugs" for so
long that reporting on it used to be a regular feature of "High Times",
and even that venerable olde ragg "Rolling Stone".  

It seems that similar methods were used to determine which people fit into
this group of people, (i.e. those people who would actually "burn their
draft-card" before running off to Canada...).

Back when all this started, everyone knew that you could easily cultivate
these "magic mushrooms" (i.e. "cow-paddy mushrooms") and, you could
trivially get your "get-high" merchandise.  Now, it has become "fashionable"
and "politically-correct" to be "clean".  Times Change.

Here in New Mexico you can buy 4oz of Paragoric with Opium "over the counter",
every other day.  Or 4oz of Cough Syrup with Codeine "over the counter" every
other day... (Unless, of course, you can find two drug stores with Pharmacists
who don't know each other...)  Oh, yeah, it's really hard to separate the
Codeine from the cough syrup...  (You put it in the refrigerator, the white
stuff that settles out is the codeine.)

So now it is easy to impress the illiterati by lots of press coverage on
how you "logically deduced" that people with "grow lamps" or people who
answered the "Grow Marijuana in the privacy of your basement" ads in "High
Times" are evil.

The only truly evil people I've ever met spent absolutely no time in determining
the difference between "yours" and "mine".  It had nothing to do with drugs.
I lost several friends when I discovered they didn't even consider that
something was "mine" and not theirs.  (We're talking wives&children and 
lifestyles here, not guns&autos...)  And we're talking My Privacy and
your "right to know"...  My Privacy is my most jealously guarded right.

You may think that I am being strange here.  Since I have a "Q" clearance,
and the government re-investigates me every five years, and I provide them
with a signed list of affiliations and addresses...  But I don`t see it
that way.  I just don't understand what makes people/police feel
that they have the "right" to step into my life whenever they wish.


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I promised myself ( when I turned 21, ) that I wouldn't ever again do
anything just once.  I think that solves a lot of problems;
no high speed crashes into bridge abutments, no one-night stands, etc.
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