Slashdot Mirror

Objecting to Facebook on the basis of surveillance? That's hardly new. Software freedom fighters got there years ago.

Free Software Foundation got there earlier. From publishing https://www.fsf.org/facebook published on on Dec 20, 2010. FSF & GNU Project founder Richard Stallman has been rightly objecting to Facebook for years in his talks and on his personal website.

Long-time former FSF lawyer Eben Moglen rightly called Facebook a monstrous surveillance engine in talks and he pointed out the ugliness of Facebook's endless surveillance (at length in part 3 but in other places in the same lecture series as well). See http://snowdenandthefuture.info/ for the entire series of talks.

Objecting to Facebook on the basis of surveillance? That's hardly new. Software freedom fighters got there years ago.

Free Software Foundation got there earlier. From publishing https://www.fsf.org/facebook published on on Dec 20, 2010. FSF & GNU Project founder Richard Stallman has been rightly objecting to Facebook for years in his talks and on his personal website.

Long-time former FSF lawyer Eben Moglen rightly called Facebook a monstrous surveillance engine in talks and he pointed out the ugliness of Facebook's endless surveillance (at length in part 3 but in other places in the same lecture series as well). See http://snowdenandthefuture.info/ for the entire series of talks.

In case you didn't get to the bottom of the Guardian essay, that essay comes from "Snowden and the Future", a 4-part talk series Eben Moglen gave on October 9, October 30, November 13 and December 4 2013. It is highly recommended reading, watching, and/or listening. Audio, video, and transcripts are available at his website.

how absolutely boring it is to read essentially the same message ("all software should be free and you should refuse to use any software that isn't free") repeated about 15 times with 15 minor variations. Surely RMS isn't this one-dimensional. I wish there had been some more interesting questions that weren't just prompts to repeat the free software mantra over and over again.

It's not RMS's fault that he was asked similarly un"interesting" questions that each came with the repetitive prejudices (asking about the younger movement he didn't start instead of the older movement he did start, framing issues in terms of amorality and not questioning what non-free software entails). Looking at the questions, it's clear that they were asked by people who didn't bother to read the essays linked to in the original /. story soliciting questions for him. I remember when /. used to criticize behavior like that. A lot of what people bump into are issues where software freedom has a practical response that can liberate users from dependency on untrustworthy programmers, but thanks to an amoral stance on these issues the public is never taught to see how a technocratic/developmental stance (open source, focus on features and price, focus on slick interfaces) can run contrary to their interests (preserving their privacy, retaining and exercising their civil liberties, not being beaten or killed). It's convenient to see a movie when you wish, but certainly not as important as avoiding being spied upon everywhere you go.

Now 15 years later I read his responses to these questions and it all feels very much the same. He's apparently super paranoid (worried about the government eavesdropping on your cell phone calls and tracking you? Wishing for a pager so that you could perfectly control how much tracking information you give when you answer your phone? Jesus christ, get over yourself!) and thinks everyone else should be too.

That's probably because you haven't been paying much attention to what Edward Snowden has been telling us, nor have you been thinking deeply about the consequences of those revelations. I suggest watching Eben Moglen's insightful talks on this topic for some historical perspective on how "one-dimensional" your take is and how much under threat the entire world is these days. That is, if you're not too busy dismissing Moglen for being an FSF lawyer and former FSF board member who deeply appreciates software freedom for its own sake.

I never learned exactly his feelings on the matter because when I tried to ask for some clarification I was immediately shouted down by his cronies who thought I was trying to hassle him or something (I assure you, I wasn't; I just wanted to understand his position better since I had never heard of someone refusing to use passwords and didn't understand why).

I'd be more likely to believe you on this claim if the rest of your opinions were better defended. But it's awfully hard to take someone too seriously when they're so easily dissuaded by stylistic matters over substantive examination of pertinant issues.

I'm referring to the people who aren't informed and aware of the implications of uploading something to social media or posting it online

This is a huge red herring. There are a great many people in the world (my friends amongst them) who think that because they are careful about what they post online they don't have a privacy problem.

What they and you fail to understand is that Google and Facebook (via, respectively, advertising and "like" buttons) are, by default, able to track nearly everything you do online. Thus, regardless of what you post, your privacy is gone.

Genuinely informed people use NoScript, RequestPolicy, etc. Shills and dilettantes continue to pretend that the loss of privacy is the consumer's problem. To avoid accusations of tinfoil hattery I have, of course, failed to mention the elephant in the room. I suggest you read this, and the subsequent parts.

NSA was basically barred from operating domestically

Also: internet. This is by Eben Moglen http://snowdenandthefuture.info/

Stop believing that it's okay to ignore "eminently sensible advice" and you'll encourage others to do the same. Nobody is always pleasing to everyone. Your criticism against RMS here ends up reading as an ad hominem attack without evidence or a backhanded compliment which you think is more important to raise than the substance of the arguments presented. There's no reason to despair unless you are looking for a reason to do nothing but throw up your hands.

Eben Moglen is also giving a series of talks about what "Edward Snowden [has] done to change the course of human history", "the evolution of surveillance since World War II threaten democracy", and what it means now "that information can be both so powerful and so easily spread". One hopes you'll take these talks for what's offered in the talks.