X-Message-Number: 536 From: (Ben Best) Date: 12 Nov 91 (08:40) Subject: bcrats & cryonics replies The replies to my "BUREAUCRATS AND CRYONICS" E-mail message cause me to want to more carefully articulate my views on this subject. I agree with what Russell Whitaker, Kevin Brown, Thomas Donaldson and Ralph Merkle have said, and do not see a conflict in these views. In the present world much of the relationship between cryonics and the state is on a war-footing. That does not mean that negotiation, co-operation and non-interference cannot occur, however. There are things about cryonics which it is to our advantage to have known by bureaucrats and politicians -- and there are other things which it is better that they do not know. The more control we have over what they do or do not know, the better off we are. It would be naive to believe that we can have absolute control over what anyone knows of our activities. I agree with Ralph Merkle when he says that cryonics organizations should conduct their activities with the knowledge that anything could end up in court or in the newspapers. Security is not strong against anyone who is sufficiently motivated to obtain information. But the absence of perfection (perfect security) is no reason not to do the best we can. We make it easy for the state and the press to access information we want them to know, and we make it costly and difficult for them to obtain sensitive information which increases our vulnerability. We try to maximize the availability of some information and minimize the availability of other kinds of information. To be specific, most bureaucrats and politicians have barely heard of cryonics. Here in Ontario, Canada, I repeatedly lobbied for cryonicists to be exempt from the law that human remains shipped out of the Province must be embalmed. No one lobbied against my request (although Orthodox Jews wanted the same exemption). With the new laws it is no longer illegal to ship unembalmed human remains out of Ontario. To the bureaucrats I dealt with, cryonics is a new and harmless "fringe" activity. Would it have helped my cause to tell them that cryonics is illegal in British Columbia and to supply them with the phone numbers of bureaucrats in BC who made cryonics illegal? NO!!!!!!!!!!!! And, yes, I supplied all this information in my article about the illegality of cryonics in British Columbia. But how many Ontario bureaucrats read cryonics magazines? Similarly, I think a much smaller percentage of those likely to work against cryonics are likely to read CRYONET messages than read cryonics magazines. A hostile investigation is more likely to involve going-through back issues of cryonics magazines than getting CRYONET messages (which are more ephemeral, anyway). That is why I am more ready to discuss this issue in CRYONET than in a magazine. My view of security involves improving information-access quantity rather than qualitative perfection. -- Ben Best () -- Canada Remote Systems. Toronto, Ontario NorthAmeriNet Host Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=536