Several excellent points to consider
I'm still reading and digesting this speech, and the comments to it.
Check Against Delivery. My speech to the IAAC. To misunderstand the centrality of these services to today’s society is to make a fundamental error. The internet isn’t a luxury addition to life; for most people, knowingly or not, it is life.
...
Indeed, a small part of the trigger for the London riots can be understood as the gap between the respect given to peoples’s opinions by the internet, and the complete disrespect given by the government and the ruling elites.
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The government, and the security industry, in this country and elsewhere, have spent the past ten years really blowing it. Time and time again there has been a demonstration of security theatre, or overreaction, or overstatement of the risks in hand. From liquids in airports to invading Iraq, no one believes this stuff any more.
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What’s worse, is that the phrase “security precautions” has become a synonym for “pointless annoying thing to do because politicians are either stupid or oppresive”.
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What are we protecting, if the protection itself means we become, in some small way, a police state?
Go read this speech. Read the comments too; they're unusually thoughtful and cogent.
Crossposted from http://montuos.dreamwidth.org/899136.html ;
comments on original post. If you do not have a Dreamwidth ID and you want to read comments on protected posts there, you can log in with OpenID using your LJ ID. Also, I have 17 Dreamwidth invite codes if you want one.
Check Against Delivery. My speech to the IAAC. To misunderstand the centrality of these services to today’s society is to make a fundamental error. The internet isn’t a luxury addition to life; for most people, knowingly or not, it is life.
...
Indeed, a small part of the trigger for the London riots can be understood as the gap between the respect given to peoples’s opinions by the internet, and the complete disrespect given by the government and the ruling elites.
...
The government, and the security industry, in this country and elsewhere, have spent the past ten years really blowing it. Time and time again there has been a demonstration of security theatre, or overreaction, or overstatement of the risks in hand. From liquids in airports to invading Iraq, no one believes this stuff any more.
...
What’s worse, is that the phrase “security precautions” has become a synonym for “pointless annoying thing to do because politicians are either stupid or oppresive”.
...
What are we protecting, if the protection itself means we become, in some small way, a police state?
Go read this speech. Read the comments too; they're unusually thoughtful and cogent.
Crossposted from http://montuos.dreamwidth.org/899136.html ;
comments on original post. If you do not have a Dreamwidth ID and you want to read comments on protected posts there, you can log in with OpenID using your LJ ID. Also, I have 17 Dreamwidth invite codes if you want one.