Week 4 - Give 'Em Hell!

[streetnights]

Let me paint you a picture, dear reader, of the world as it exists today

Comments

[tatdatcm]

It's pretty frightening that this is going on, more frightening when I hear people ask what the big deal is.

I like the progression of this too. It flowed really well.

[streetnights]

Thank you! I think the most frightening thing is absolutely the 'who cares' argument, because everyone should care! The majority of people not caring is what leads to these rights slowly disappearing. :(

[alycewilson]

I guess "Person of Interest" got it right.

[streetnights]

We are living with The Machine.

[porn_this_way]

Yes. Just, yes. (To the last few paragraphs I mean. A big fat hell no to the rest of it!)

[streetnights]

Yes! And now we see if the people will simply let this blow by, or whether there will be actual change.

[majesticzaichik]

Excellently stated and you put it into perspective well for us laymen. I applaud Snowden too and I hope he will get amnesty and at least not go to jail. He risked everything telling us how the government was spying on us.

[streetnights]

I think amnesty is going to be a stretch, politically. There would have to be a large, large amount of change for that, and while I'm hopeful, I'm rather cynical about the government, these days.

[kandigurl]

I know I'm totally in the minority here, but this doesn't bother me at all. Companies have always tried to get as much market research as possible, and I'm not interesting enough for the government to care about researching me, nor would they find anything worth caring about if they did.

What would worry me is if they start monitoring the web and arresting people for visiting websites or being part of certain online groups/etc. Then it would be invasive to me. Until then, I say let them look, and give them an entertaining (and hopefully confusing) show. ;)

[streetnights]

I think the 'I'm not interesting' argument is a dangerous one. Market research is skeevy enough as it is, but at least they can't put you in jail.

I don't know if we know when we might start caring about a hot-button issue, and when we might want to start exercising our right to speech, but I do know that I wouldn't want my words to be watched and possibly silenced because I, say, started participating actively in wikileaks, or because I wrote this entry and it popped up on a filter somewhere.

I think the inherent danger isn't necessarily that we are all terrorist lawbreakers, but rather that this system allows for data collection to be stored until some prosecutor wants evidence at some point in time that we have broken the law - whether it's something like copyright infringement, or admitting to trespassing, or anything like that - they'll have that evidence at some point in the future.