Slashdot Mirror
Stallman: Thousands Dead, Millions Deprived of Liberties
The worst damage from many nerve injuries is secondary -- it happens in the hours after the initial trauma, as the body's reaction to the damage kills more nerve cells. Researchers are beginning to discover ways to prevent this secondary damage and reduce the eventual harm.
If we are not careful, the deadly attacks on New York and Washington will lead to far worse secondary damage, if the U.S. Congress adopts "preventive measures" that take away the freedom that America stands for.
I'm not talking about searches at airports here. Searches of people or baggage for weapons, as long as they check only for weapons and keep no records about you if you have no weapons, are just an inconvenience; they do not endanger civil liberties. What I am worried about is massive surveillance of all aspects of life: of our phone calls, of our email, and of our physical movements.
These measures are likely to be recommended regardless of whether they would be effective for their stated purpose. An executive of a company developing face recognition software is said to be telling reporters that widespread deployment of face-recognizing computerized cameras would have prevented the attacks. The September 15 New York Times cites a congressman who is advocating this "solution." Given that the human face recognition performed by the check-in agents did not keep the hijackers out, there is no reason to think that computer face recognition would help. But that won't stop the agencies that have always wanted to do more surveillance from pushing this plan now, and many other plans like it. To stop them will require public opposition.
Even more ominously, a proposal to require government back doors in encryption software has already appeared.
Meanwhile, Congress hurried to pass a resolution giving Bush unlimited power to use military force in retaliation for the attacks. Retaliation may be justified, if the perpetrators can be identified and carefully targeted, but Congress has a duty to scrutinize specific measures as they are proposed. Handing the president carte blanche in a moment of anger is exactly the mistake that led the United States into the Vietnam War.
Please let your elected representatives, and your unelected president, know that you don't want your civil liberties to become the terrorists' next victim. Don't wait -- the bills are already being written.
Copyright 2001 Richard StallmanVerbatim copying and distribution of this entire article are permitted in any medium provided the copyright notice and this notice are preserved.
RMS, i respect your opinion when it comes to software, but please don't voice any other political opinions. the remark about our 'unelected president' makes your peice look stupid anyways...
If they want to pass some effective legislation they need to loosen up restrictions on the CIA.
Allow them to have assasination teams working covertly that any time they see people consorting with these groups, kill them.
If the heads of states of these countries consort with them, kill them too.
We have a lot of really good snipers all itching to do it, let them do it.
Yeah, that was real helpful. What a dork. And he wonders why he is marginalized so often. Restraint could get him much further in this world.
"Doubt your doubts and believe your beliefs." -- Switchfoot, Ode to Chin
Who the hell is RMS talking about? If he is somehow saying that GWB is not our rightfully elected president then why doesn't he just write his little paragraph about that. This is the sort of C### that really gets me mad.
From what I have heard, every possible Democrat group went down to Florida and did their own recount and guess what..... GWB really won. So, I suggest that RMS just get over the election and keep his comments to our liberties.
With all that said, I tend to agree with RMS's position and I for one will be contacting my representative to voice that opinion.
PS. At one time I considered RMS a bright engineer but now I think he is just a jackass!!!
Macho Engineer Donkey Wrestler
You're obviously just not as 1337 as Stallman, who no doubt could easily outperform the numbers you claim can only be done by computer. So crawl back into your incompetent hole and leave the commentary on airport security to experts like RMS.
However, If you want to stand atop the still warm corpses heaped onto the aftermath of a tragedy, loudly proclaiming your own selfish agenda, feel free. You'll probably get posted to the front page at Slashdot.
Same Gore crap - different day. Yesterday some butthole claims that Gore lost, due to Nader votes. Today, some butthole claims Gore won, but had it "stolen". Which is it, people? And as to the claim that Face Recognition software can't work better than airport "security" - someone needs to go visit the dumbfucks at the X-Ray machine and see what a $5/hour brain really functions like.
Absolutely! I was actually right outside of FBI headquarters immediately after the attacks, and and FBI agent could be heard to say, "This is the moment we've been waiting for, now under the cover of investigating this terrible tragedy we can spy on people like Bryguy who didn't have anything to do with it! This is our greatest moment of opportunity to depoy carnivore everywhere!"
You are a complete fuckwit. While I do not support unecessary (and we have established courts of law to determine neccesity) intrusions on civil rights I wholehearted support law enforcement.
If you honestly believe that the FBI asked for the cooperation of ISPs in the days following the attack because they felt it was a good time to do some civil-liberty-violating-eavesdropping, and not because they wanted to catch the shitstains who were celebrating and planning more attacks then maybe you should move to Afghanistan and live it up with your homeys.
They're saying Ussama Bin Laden is coordinating all this via internet and encryption and steganography. They're making him out to be some genius-cum-hacker.
The guy lives in a fucking wasteland with no communications infrastructure of any kind. He probably doesn't see a modern toilet on a daily basis for chrissakes. People talk about nuking Afghanistan into the Stone Age; it's already there. And they expect us to believe Bin Laden is capable of being some internet manipulator par excellence? One would need an internet connection first.
Trust me. The powers that be are always looking for excuses, and this is a great one. That uncomfortable feeling you're having is the feeling of having smoke blown up your ass. The only people who are going to make out well on this deal are the jackbooted types in our own country, and the terrorists, who will laugh themselves silly at us selling ourselves into slavery out of fear.
I'm all with RMS on this one, but then when am I not? =P
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
right up until he made the statement "...your unelected president." Get over it fucko. He is your president too. I for one am really glad we didn't have to find out what Gore would have proposed we do in this situation. Probably something along the lines of "forgive and forget"... In a word, WEAK.
Russian Russian Russian RussianDollSig DollSig DollSig DollSig