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Spielberg on Privacy, Minority Report
Staring at Nothing writes "In this ABC News story famed Hollywood director Steven Spielberg voices some concerns over the current state of privacy and paranoia in a post-9/11 world. Some of Spielberg's recent movies, like AI and Minority Report have brought us haunting views of the future, but the present may be just as scary. He mentions software being developed to monitor "abnormal behavior" and concerns about originality being misconstrued as dangerous behavior." The story has some minor plot spoilers about Minority Report.
But, I'm certain that we can rest assured that those in power in Warshington will see this as the WAVE OF THE FUTURE! SAFTEY IS FREEDOM! And while we're at it, democracy works, right?
Bah. I just recently moved from Nevada to The Great Socialist Utopia across the Sierras. (for monetary reasons, not by fucking choice). I've been here for three days, and I already miss my freedoms. This "seatbelt" bullshit makes me want to exact my patriotism and destroy any tyrant who dares impede my freedom to keep me "safe."
Been here for half a week, and I'm already wanting to kill cops and politicians. This place fucking turns men into animals. I must free myself...
Why is it when I hit ^R that ZSH calls me a cocksucker?
and don't listen to anyone who states their opinion as though it's some kind of fact. I also got back from seeing this movie about an hour ago, and have already decided I consider it the best of the year so far. and I have a feeling a won't be able to forget it overnight.
I'm not going to post a full review here, but suffice to say my only criticisms are that it felt a bit long, and that some of the ideas could have been better developed (there's a LOT of ideas in this movie). but concepts aside, it absolutely grabbed me on a viscreral and emotional level. I knew it had worked for me when I walked out of the theater and took several minutes to fully reacclimate to the normal world--it was almost like culture shock. to each their own opinion, I say.
sean
Maybe that's what he's doing, but the message that you can't trust a pre-emptive police state is written pretty obviously throughout the movie, and it went into production before 9/11. So he's capitalizing on a wider social context than just the current hysteria/paranoia. And why shouldn't he? Don't artists get to criticize society? And does doing a kiddie movie like E.T. automatically and forever prevent him from having anything to say about the world?
"Hardly used" will not fetch you a better price for your brain.
Feel 'free' to add to these. (pardon my pun)
"Now we must choose between safety and freedom, we must not flinch if freedom means anything." - Dennis Burke, USA Today
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."- Benjamin Franklin
"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." - Samuel Adams
"If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too." - Somerset Maugham
"My greatest fear is that too many members of the public will embrace the government's call to give up some freedom in return for greater safety, only to find that they have lost freedom without gaining safety." - Nadine Strossen, President ACLU
"Liberty without learning is always in peril and learning without liberty is always in vain." - John F. Kennedy
"Better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees." - Dolores Ibarruri
"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression." - Thomas Paine
"I know not what course others may take but as for me: give me liberty or give me death." - Patrick Henry
"When the rights of just one individual are denied, the rights of all are in jeopardy!" - Jo Ann Roach
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
I don't mean to come off too obnoxious, but it is pathetic to me that someone expressing such cowardice would sign his posts "A True American Patriot" (I know your sig refers to "Russian Radical" writer Ayn Rand, but still). So these assholes hit a couple of our buildings, and may hit more. I'm far more worried about "options being imposed on me" by the likes of John Ashcroft than any terrorist. Don't get me wrong, terrorists are a threat in a very real sense, but they can't take our liberties away - we can only give them away. The sad thing is people wrapping themselves in the American flag as they give them up without even a freakin' fight.
Freedom is nothing without security, because without security you cannot truly be free. Therefore freedom is dependant upon security, and for you to argue otherwise is nonsense. Our Founders understood this; just look at the Second Amendment for a fine example of how they saw the need for security as being paramount!
First off, there's a reason the first Amendment comes first. Second, there is no tradeoff between liberty and security - these are abstract constructs that only make sense in real world situations. In the real world, there may be a tradeoff between a specific liberty (my right to drive a plane into a building) and a specific aspect of security (my ability to go to planes and/or buildings without being incinerated), but to say "you can't have liberty without security" is nonsense. Unfortunately the overwhelming majority of restrictions on liberty we are being asked to endorse under the banner of the "war on terrorism" won't do a damn thing to address any real security threat. I am all for taking away people's right to hijack airplanes or blow things up. But we're being asked to give up a lot more. To simply endorse a "no liberty without security" position is to say you're willing to give up any old liberty in order to create whatever damn illusion of security your leaders happen to be waving in front of your face at this particular moment.
I was as devastated as anyone by the WTC collapsing, but after all the smoke cleared, we were hit by 20 people, who killed far fewer people than we as a society openly sacrifice in cost-benefit analyses every time we build a new highway (not to mention deaths we tolerate as a result of the alcohol and tobacco industries), and they hit us in a scheme that was clever but that just about everybody involved has practically admitted that they should have seen coming. The people we've caught - Reid, Massaoui, Lindh, Padilla - these are some fucked up people, no doubt, but are these really people we can't destroy without turning into a police state? Are we so afraid of a bunch of fanatical and fucked-up twenty-somethings who light their shoes on fire that we're willing to throw the Constitution out the window?
OpenSecrets link to Spielberg's soft money campaign contributors
He's just another phony liberal in the great Hollywood phony liberal tradition. When he finds another set of buzzwords and social concerns that'll pull in his target demographic, he'll use them, i.e. don't be surprised if he sounds like Rush Limbaugh someday.
Right now, he's using the right buzzwords for people who pretend to themselves that they still have social concerns while providing the dollars that bought the politicians that enacted obscenities like DMCA passed and worse legislation to follow.
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