[KLUG Members] City of Battle Creek Vs. ORBZ

[Adam Williams]

>>Well, it seems the City of Battle Creek has seen the light....
>>City Tells ORBZ Owner...Oops
>>In a classic example of litigating first and asking questions
>>later, the city of Battle Creek, Mich., withdraws its lawsuit
>>against Gulliver's blacklist.
>>http://www.internetnews.com/isp-news/article/0,,8_996341,00.html
>Good news... maybe. Please read this story, and note the leaps of 
>fantasy and presumption made by the city officials in proceeding
>from alleged effect to alleged cause.
>What can be done to abate this ignorance?

In the general populace,  I think pretty close to nothing can be done.  
1.) The public education system has failed most people so utterly, if my
user base is any example, that most people simply don't have the
facilities/discipline to gain a reasonable understanding of the why and
how of hi-tech.  Even if you get a chance to offer an in-depth
explanation it collapses in their mind down to something that would fit
on a bumper sticker.  2.)  Again assuming that my user base is any
example,  allot of people don't want to understand.  They, at least
unconsciously, believe technology is sinister or even occult in some
way.  I've had "grown men" stick their finger in their ears when I
started to explain something.  I have users who assume I spend my free
time hacking into banks, etc...  Maybe in ~100 years when most of the
current generation has tense converted things will be better.

I think the hacker community really needs to focus on educating the
"powers that be."    In my limited experience I've found that many of
them (representatives, law enforcement, etc...) actually will listen to
someone who sounds intelligent.  (In order to admit my own prejudice I
have to say I've been generally surprised by their receptivity).  If
those who wrote and enforced laws actually had some grounding in the
technology things like the ORBZ incident would simply never happen (or
rarely, it isn't a perfect world).  Alot of this involves the boring old
methods of e-mail, fax, and letter writing.  Is there an organization
equivalent to the ACLU or Amnesty International that deals explictly
with technology issues and the government on behalf of technology and
users and not from some corporate perspective?