Slashdot Mirror
Feds Open 'Total' Tech Spy System
Diesel Dave writes "A Wired article reports: 'On Wednesday, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will begin awarding contracts for the design and implementation of a Total Information Awareness (TIA) system...The Total Information Awareness program, with its ability to provide persistent storage of everything from credit card, to employment, to medical, to ISP records, is a recipe for civil liberties disaster unless there are provisions for citizens to find out who is looking at their records and to see and correct those records.' The foundation for the omnipotent National ID database has now been laid."
Sometime I want to be heard with my name, other times I'm quite happy to be very anonymous...
Just think about it, do you really want those horny 16 yearolds at the checkout stand to know who you are while you're picking up the tampons for your wife?
You know, I have one simple request. And that is to have sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads!
Microsoft's passport system has been around for years.
"Americans deserve neither liberty or safety"
-John Ashcroft
So DARPA is taking a page from Google's book. Does the winner get $10,000 in cash, a VIP visit to the Pentagon in Arlington, VA and the possibility of running their prize winning code on DARPA's supercomputers?
I've seen it in the 70's with the notion of a Corporate Data Base, in the 80's with Enterprise Resource Management (ERP) systems, and in the 90's with Data Warehouses. It's nice to think of a single source of information providing all the answers, but it inevitably turns out too expensive to build and impossible to keep current. I see no evidence that such a system would have prevented the attacks on 9/11. But some IT infrastructure companies are going to get rich on this boondoggle.
As a professor of mine in college once said; "Computers make great filing cabinets, but lousy guessers."
It's like Terminator and the Matrix put together... just an early alpha version.
Question everything that you've accepted without thinking.
If the /. community objects to this, the solution is clear... we mount an open source bid for the contract, which should (as the product will be free as in beer) be guaranteed to win the contract on price grounds.
:-)
Then we just 'do a mozilla' and keep adding wonderful new features but never actually deliver the damn thing
problem solved!
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
people who live in the "boonies" or homeless people. There are so many US citizens all over the world who have so many different levels of technology and social involvement that they will never be able to get everybody. It will be very easy to avoid getting in this system.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
It's one thing for such systems to exist in private hands, using information collected through noncoercive means.
It's another thing entirely for it to be not merely difficult but downright illegal to avoid them.
Intro: I saw "XXX" a couple of hours ago. I think it was intended solely as an action flick, but for a minute, let's pretend there's a message here. In this life we enjoy freedoms given to us by research and technological improvements, also a few of those freedoms are provided by the organization of government.
;-)
Many times we raise a red flag because of privacy issues, and I agree that the direction we (as a world) are progressing in is sad at times. However, let's put this in perspective for a moment. Regardless of your beliefs in a higher power or lower power, one thing is sure...does it really matter that the government knows what you are up to? Yes we live free lives and I know my concern is that perhaps, in the future I will want to do something underhanded and this system will prevent it...what fun would life be without the challenges? Our lives span only a minute on this world, live in your situation and make life a joy: you're the only one who can do that. You can make a case for any possibility, but does the existence of this database can't interfere with that!
By the way, do any of you really expect that the government will be able to implement this without people like us helping them? If you have a hand in it, you can control it
"Homeless people are not in our target market".
-- Terry
Remember folks, the only reason we don't live in an Orwellian nightmare world is actually because it isn't technologically feasible.
As soon as it's possible and practical, in the next few years, it will happen on a wide and broad scale. If it's unpopular, they'll simply not publicize its use. If a few innocents are harrased by it (activists, anarchists, pagans, atheists, and other similar unAmericans), you won't hear a word. If by some sheer coincidence it actually assists in finding a terrorist pre-crime, they still won't say a word.
And I'm sure they'll find a few other uses for it. I mean if you're commiting a crime, it's a crime, no matter what, so what's the problem?
(Hmm, Citizen #95235345 just bought a DVD-R unit and downloaded a copy of DeCSS. Set his Awareness Level to 15%, and send a copy of his Dossier to Media Control for further study. Excellent, we might yet meet our Enforcement quota this week!)
It really makes me feel fuzzy as hell when I think about where my hard-earned tax dollars are going to.
really fuzzy.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
How much time before a person or corporation bribes someone on the inside for the info?
I'd say the future employee is probably figuring out what to spend his/her new revenue stream on, from the moment their contract is signed.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
It funny seeing how people react to the continuing encroachments on their freedom by their chosen government. This reminds me of an old Biblical story about King David ordering that a census be taken of the people (they were all willing participants). God got so pissed off at this blatant and fascist violation of freedom that he sent a nasty plague on them that killed close to 70,000 people. And David was a man after his own heart.
Moral: you already lost. If you have a social security number or driver license number or anything that allows the government to identify or control you, you are already living in a Big Brother society. Either you go along with it or you do something about it. Whichever you choose, you loose.
Sorry, but you are all like cattle, tagged with a number. You are not as free as you have been led to believe. No amount of prideful boasts about living in the freest country in the world will change that fact. You are a bunch of deluded slaves working for a central controlling government. And you are paying a lot more in taxes than you can imagine. It's sad.
... is a recipe for civil liberties disaster unless there are provisions for citizens to find out who is looking at their records and to see and correct those records.
Here in the UK we have the Data Protection Act, which all companies must adhere to if they store information about you on their computer systems. Amongst other requirements, it allows you (for a small fee) to obtain a copy of that information on request, and have it modified if it's not accurate. If this does go through, I would hope that the US provides something similar.
There are government agencies, especially law enforcement, whose existence is threatened by this person. They have full access to the complete records of this persons life: medical problems, personal purchases, friends, lovers (including unmarried ones), etc. To silence this person, they will have the ability to make any embarrassing information public (none of which may even have been illegal). Even if the person has the strength of character to withstand this, the persons message will be lost under the media coverage of the scandalous aspects of this person's life: his pr0n preferences, former friends who turned out to be bad guys, extramarital affairs, etc.
This type of this has serious implications for free speech. Even if you are a nobody who will never have anything important to say and who has nothing to hide anyway, there are people to have something to say and have the right to keep the private aspects of their lives private while saying it.
tato (and tato only)
This post is strictly opinion, including the spelling.
do you really want those horny 16 yearolds at the checkout stand to know who you are while you're picking up the tampons for your wife?
Just give them a tired smile and express your profound relief over having a couple of days off from your exhausting studly duties.
Why do you care what a couple of pimply faced kids think, anyway?
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
Before the *DIS*information starts flying fast and furious (doh, wait, it already has!) I recommend everyone read BAA 02-08, the request for proposals for technology that will be transitioned into the TIA system. Here is the link:
http://www.darpa.mil/iao/BAA02-08.pdf
This BAA describes exactly what RESEARCH DARPA is looking to fund (emphasis on research: DARPA is NOT a procurement agency, and DARPA is NOT an operational agency). They are not buying off-the-shelf systems, and they are not setting up systems to spy on people. There is even a component to this BAA regarding privacy-protecting technologies.
It is worth noting that many of the problems for which this BAA is looking for national-security-style solutions are problems common to many organizations, as well as fundamental computer-science questions. Not the malevolent stuff that Wired and others would have you think.
Speaking of outsourcing, this kind of a plan gives ample opportunity for politicians, bureaucrats and police to outsource wrongdoing. Like we are now outsourcing torture to friendly Arab nations and outsourcing covert operations to Israeli and British intelligence. Mostly, they will outsource the abuses to off-shore dummy corporations funded through US intelligence, but domestic corporations that collect large amounts of data on US residents (note that it is now considered legit for phone companies to track and disclose everyone you dial unless you succeed in opting out, and no one knows what goes on inside lots of commercial software -- why does the MS Excel viewer make my internet connection so busy?)will likely get involved as well.
Lets see... what was the last major governemnt that:
Tracked information about all its citizens
Required you to carry federal identifiation whenever you left the house
Required "papers" for any sort of travel outside of your home town
And yet here in 2002, we as a nation seem to be jumping for joy that all these things are being talked about and implimented in our country. Yea, it's all supposedly for national defense, but Hitler started his reign by imposing all those rules and ideas for the good of the country. How far will we take it this time?
Why can't the Fed just look at the easy way out: stop imposing our will on other countries by military force. Just get out of the Middle East and let them fight it out amongst themselves. Problem solved.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
This excerpt taken from a paper written by Dijkstra in 1986 seems very appropriate:
"...society tolerates the computing profession because of its incompetance. It is our incopetence that makes us, though expensive, relatively harmless: were we as competent as we would like to be, we would offer the perfect implementation of the complete police state. We would be the darling of any dictatorship"
Food for thought.
This could be just what we need to convince the ignorant sheep out there that they need 4096 kilobit encryption. First place to start is E-Mail and instant messangers. Second place, whether it's legal or not, is the telephone system. That should put a spin on any TIA system. At least anyone that tries will be forced to concentrate effort on only pertinant information. When someone has to put down their donut and drive down to someone's house to spy on them, they can't be doing it to the entire world.
Hey, then we can block telemarketers and spammers because we won't have their key. Don't forget, you have to physically hand a key to someone in order for it to be truely secure, else you are trusting whoever you hand it to. This only needs to be done for personal calls/email. It isn't very likely that someone will use a business call against you.
Karma Clown
In the past it was possible to create an entirely new life. Criminals, debtors, or just people who wanted to start a new life could move to "The New World" or other countries and begin again. Now, your new home already has a pretty good idea who you are.
Until the age of direct deposit, it was possible to move somewhere new and get a job that you could be paid for the same day, paying cash for a room in some seedy hotel until you could get a better place. Now, it takes 2-3 weeks before you see your first paycheque, and most hotels require a credit card. Right away it is harder to move around, let alone reinvent yourself.
Let's look at the example of one famous head of state. He spent the first half of his life screwing around, doing drugs, getting arrested for drunk driving, and wasting Bush Sr.'s money. Suddenly he cleans up his act and buys a baseball team, becomes governor of Texas, and eventually President of the U.S. of A. Good for him.
Imagine this same kid 20 years from now. (Minus some of daddy's influence, perhaps.) Generally good kid gets into a bit of trouble when he/she is young, but cleans up and decides to get a job working for MS-AOL-Time-Warner-USA. (MATWU for short.) Person goes in for their interview, to face a series of questions, like a normal job interview. After doing quite well, the interviewer says this:
"You are very well suited for the job. I think you would make an excellent addition to the team. However your ethics do not fit with corporate guidelines. We notice that on your trip to Amsterdam you visited 3 hash bars in a 4 hour period, 1 strip club where you took part in two lap dances and consumed a good deal of alcohol. We also note that you visited Tokyo and stayed for 2 weeks at a VSP resort. Consorting with Vivendi-Sony-Panasonic, perhaps? I'm afraid we cannot hire you."
Who has never done anything they wouldn't want their prospective employer, prospective friends, prospective mate, or prospective client to know about?
What Future?
umm.... no. That had nothing to do with why God was angry with David. God was angry with David because of David's pride -- his census was a public display of pride, which God hates. The people's privacy had nothing to do with it.
Is that why God killed 70,00 people? To punish David's pride? Wow! Nice God! The truth is that taking a census is forbidden in the Torah for the reasons I have stated. It's fascist and it allows the goverment to control people's daily lives.
The goverment keeps tab on its people for a simple reason: it does not trust them to pay their taxes and it knows that the people does not trust it either. Government without trust is bound to fail in the end. This includes democratic governments. Heck, the very tenet of democracy is that we cannot trust anybody. Hence checks and balances, etc...
To deal with your other statements -- just because I have a SSN and a credit card doesn't mean the government can track all my purchases.
That is not the point of government control. The point of government control is to make sure its taxes are paid.
To paraphrase the AC:
The only people who are worried about these types of programs are the ones with something to hide
The fact that an AC said this deserves either a +1 Ironic or -1 Ignorant. Unfortunately you didn't include any sarcasm tags to help us decide.
I thought government's role was to defend its citizens and provide a system of justice.
That's the ideal but, in practice, the government does not care about justice. If it did, there would be no private lawyers. Everybody would be provided with effective and equal legal aid, regardless of their financial or social status.
These are paid for by taxes, sure, but if what you said is true, then a government is as ethically sound as the self-perpetuating disease.
It's a disease alright. And no cure in sight that I can see.
Internal or ad-hoc identifiers are much worse than a public, well-designed system of national ID numbers. Among other things, if you don't know your secret government ID number or record locator, it's much harder for you to force the US government to comply with privacy regulations--even with a court ourder--they'll just claim that they "couldn't find the records" or that they "must have overlooked them" and get away with it even if found out. And if the government makes up their own internal system or uses social security numbers, you are much more likely to be the victim of identity theft or mistaken identity.
In order to protect our privacy, we need good privacy legislation that covers both government agencies and companies. And in order to protect our privacy, we need a well-designed system of national ID numbers--preferably numbers that are large and have a non-trivial internal checksum. Both of these would have to be decided at the ballot box.
The reason why this isn't going to happen is because the people in the US that are mainly concerned about privacy are also people with libertarian leanings. They just don't understand that the only way to protect privacy is through strong government regulations.
How else are you going to know what brand and size your wife should be wearing?
No they aren't. Not on americans at least. Do your self a favor and pick up the book 'Body of Secrets'. It is a no bullshit account of what goes on at the NSA. It is amazingly well researched and will fill you in on the fact that the the NSA is prohibited on sying on Americans within America (if you are in another country that is a different matter). If you are sitting down watching Nascar in Nashville and Osama Bin Laden calls you on the phone, NSA procedure is to record that phone call and note that it was Bin Laden, but you are simply identified as 'American Citizen'. If a customer to the NSA, requests to know who 'American Citizen' is, and has due cause, the NSA will reveal it, but this is the extreme circumstance. Oh, and the good part is that politicans never get recorded at all :).
one other interesting fact, the NSA is exempted from any US law that does not specifically name the NSA....
Everyone should read Body of Secrets before claiming to know something about the NSA.
Privacy and fascism had nothing to do with it. Nor was census taking illegal (the book of Numbers is one counter-example). The reason God forbade this particular census was because David wanted to use it to build an army (cf 2 Sam 24:9) -- instead of relying upon the Lord God,
I agree that David did not rely on God but I don't buy that God killed 70,000 people just because David did not rely on him? David already had an army. He wanted to increase it by fascist means because he did not trust the people to join the army ranks. He was, so to speak, a control freak. The people, too, were a bunch of jerks because they knew what David was up to and did nothing to oppose it. They wanted to control those who did not volunteer to fight so as to force them to enlist. God was mad at the people because they were a bunch of jerks who were willing to forgo their liberty for selfish reasons.
As far as the Book of Numbers is concerned, it was not Moses who ordered the counting but God who commanded him to do it. There is a difference. It was a way not only to build the army (sword-carrying men were to be counted) but to divide the people into distinct families of each tribe and to prepare them to inherit the promised land: a plot of land for each family. It was not done for fascist control reasons. Land ownership is freedom. Remember, they were landless slaves in Egypt.
If this turns out half as bad as it looks, I'm all for a new American Revolution. Worked in 1776, I think it'd work now if we actually educated the public about this bullshit.
Go ahead and arrest me, Ascroft, you totalitarian son of a bitch, you'll have to do me like you did Padilla; have the military hold me in a brig without bringing charges, 'cause I a'int done a damn thing wrong. Or maybe I should just start looking around for another country. This country is great, but I'm starting to wonder whether the public at large is populated by morons or people too scared to come out of their bunkers. Freedom is something you have to want and want bad. It's incredibly delicate, and we're seeing it torn apart before our eyes. 1984? I don't think so. I'd rather die on my feet than live on my knees. If America is populated by pussies, then just let me know and I'll find another place to live where they actually want their freedom. Sept 11 was an attack on our way of life. Judging by the way things have gone the last 11 months (patriot act, data mining, warrantless arrests, detention of American CITIZENS without a trial/lawyer/grand jury, etc) I'd say they kicked our asses. Cower in the dark if you like, but I will never call you a patriot. I was at the Statue of Liberty today, and it was still closed; you can't go inside. Why? The people of America are too scared to tell Bush to re-open it. What does it say when the people of this country are barred from entering our greatest symbol of freedom? What the hell does that say?
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
How does being an aethist make you unAmerican? I'd LOVE to hear your thoughts on this.
Read George H.W. Bush's thoughts; that's probably what the grandparent post was referring to.
The purpose of this is political control, not counter terrorism. Please see this for mroe background and very interesting info on the IAO symbol:
. ht ml#79173969
http://www.cryptogon.com/2002_07_14_blogarchive
Defensive, aren't you? Too defensive to note that the poster was attempting irony by subtly summoning the bogeyman of a right-wing Big Brother. Being an atheist surely is not unamerican, but neither is being religious, and in particular neither is being Christian. If you (and the poster you are replying to) had a more comprehensive picture of court rulings over the past 30 years, you would see that Christians have more to fear from undemocratic abuses of power than atheists or subscribers to other religions.
More people have DIED over religious wars than any political war..
From this comment alone, I'll peg you as a 19-21 year old, hot-headed undergrad who took two history classes, both taught by professors who advocate socialism, and you think you're being intellectual by stating that old canard with that kind of CAPITALIZED fervor, like you calculated it up yourself. In this you are hardly unique. You'll grow out of it.
Oh, and far more people have thrived in the propsperity of Western, Judeo-Christian societies than in any autocratically mandated atheist society.
taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
However, if you take the time to include the tens of millions butchered by prominent atheist Josef Stalin, and the tens of millions butchered by prominent atheist Mao, it turns out that atheists are responsible for so much more wholesale slaughter in the world's history that it's not even worth comparing to anything or anyone else.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
I'm out of mod points. Good thinking here, deserves notice.
WWJD for a Klondike Bar?
What we do have is way too much cosmetic stuff that pushes the right-wing control agenda. Many arrests, deportations, and secret detentions, but few trials. Talk of a war with Iraq without Congressional approval. More Government secrecy about stuff that has nothing to do with terrorism. Plans for a huge internal security agency, something the US didn't need in WWI or WWII. Talk of using the military for domestic law enforcement. Warships for the Coast Guard.
Note what we're not seeing - competence at the top. Retired FBI agents write books reporting that FBI HQ is packed with bozos. (The field end of the FBI is generally considered better than HQ.) But there hasn't been a purge at FBI HQ, despite several scandals. Ashcroft is at best a lightweight, but he's still running the Justice Department. The head of FEMA was Bush's campaign manager. Cheney is still in office, despite the Halliburton scandals. These guys are not the team we need to win.
Sorry to break it to ya, but this has recently been proven an incontrovertible fact. By far the majority seems to agree that the USA is "one nation under God" - or if they don't agree, they're too scared to say so. Therefore, if you're an atheist, you can't be part of the nation, so you're un-American.
BTW, I'm an atheist, and not an American, but I live in the USA. I was rather disappointed to see the selfish "my religion wins because there are more of us than you" attitude that prevailed in the recent "debate". Tolerance and equality is well and good as long as it doesn't interfere with the national superstition.
P.S. the original post was making the atheist=unamerican claim ironically, as others have pointed out.
Damn. That needs modded up, seriously. I'm ashamed to not have known about that paper before.
Call (206) 338-5780 COLLECT for information about a genuine BA, BS, MA, MS, MBA, or Ph.D.
- Government funds for religion? No thanks. The "religious wars" the previous poster was talking about (which he attempted to contrast with "political wars") came about because governments used the religions they sponsored and therefore controlled, as political tools. I'll take my religion "unestablished by congress," thank you.
- A moment of silence in the morning at school, while not something I lobby for or care much about, is so thoroughly unobjectionable that one has to wonder about people who call it an establishment violation.
- The Ten Commandments are such a vital part of the history of this world (whether you like it or not) that I find it amazing that I learned more in public school about the Code of Hammurabi, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the I Ching, and the Rig Veda than the Ten Commandments. This is also an indication of the hypocrisy of the "secularists," who are usually thinly veiled "anti-Christians," since things like Buddhism and Shamanism are usually A-OK in their world.
At least the atheists want all religion OUT, instead of wanting theirs IN.Would "wanting all religion OUT" mean not teaching about all those horrible "religious wars," or would the discussion be limited to "why religion is bad for children and other living things?" The very stance of non-religion is unavoidably confused with anti-religion, and all too often anti-Christian in particular, since Chrisitianity is seen as the "dominant paradigm" most worthy of subversion. And if you think that anyone religious who complains about the current state of things is asking to have "theirs IN," then you don't understand either religious people or the current state of things, or both.
The problem I was refering to when I said that Christians have more to fear about undemocratic abuses than atheists, comes from "fundamentalist secularists" who "want all religion OUT," which on its face is a limitation of the free exercise of religion. Wanting religion "unfunded" is fine, but wanting religious topics unexamined or entirely absent (i.e., OUT) from the public forum, is unwarranted secular extremism. Look, in the recent "pledge of allegiance" case, the plaintiff lied about his relationship with and representation of his daughter, just to get his judgment. Even if you agree with his claim, you have to recognize that he represents a tyrannical minority that is often getting its way. Many lawyers, and some judges, are pushing the point of view that students can't even speak or write about their religion in public school, even while they are given class assignments regarding other world religions, or that employees can't wear e.g., cross jewelry in the workplace, and so on. Yes I stand by the claim that Christians have more to fear about losing liberties than atheists do at this point in history.
taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
What has ever stopped a corporation from doing something profitable, but unethical?
.
A lack of working willing to do the unethical?
A corporation is made up of people, if the individual people (or just enough to not make the task possible, heh) REFUSE to do something. . .
bah, a cynic would say that any population willing to build its own prison if paid enough money to do so damn well deserves to be imprisoned. . . .
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
If you look at the record in terms of what information was missed by whom, when, and why, it's pretty evident that little or NONE of it had anything to do with a LACK of information. Most of it was plain old incompetence, or a failure to allocate necessary resource. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that no information "TIA" system is going to do anything to solve that problem.
The Internet has become a tool for government to snoop on their people - 24/7.
The terrorism argument is a dummy - bull*.
Ask the Security Services in the UK and US to deny this:
Internet surveillance, using carnivore or back doors in encryption, will not stop terrorists communicating by other means e.g. face to face, personal courier or steganography.
Terrorists will have to do that, or they will get caught.
Perhaps using mobile when absolutely essential, saying - "Meet you in the pub Monday" (human bomb to target A), or Tuesday (target B) or Sunday (abort).
SURVEILANCE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO STOP TERRORISTS - IT IS SPIN AND PROPAGANDA
This propaganda is for several reasons, including: making you feel safer - that the government are doing something and the more malicious motive of privacy invasion.
Government say about surveillance - "you've nothing to fear - if you are not breaking the law"
This argument is made to pressure people into acquiescence - else appear guilty of hiding something.
It does not address the real reason why they want this information - they want a surveillance society.
They wish to invade your basic human right to privacy.
This is like having somebody watching everything you do - all your thoughts, hopes and fears will be open to them.
All your finances for them to scrutinize - heaven help you if you cannot account for every cent when they check on your taxes.
Do not believe the lies of Government - even more money spent on these measures will not protect you from terrorists.
P.S. On the Domain Name System, Corporations steal words that belong to everybody - abridging what words you can use - violating the First Amendment.
The Corporations illegally abuse and expand their brand using domain names - above all smaller businesses who use similar words - violating Competition Law.
The authorities LIE - they know how to make trademark domains unique and totally distinctive, as the LAW requires trademarks to be. Please visit the World Intellectual Piracy Organization - not connected with United Nations WIPO.org !
The problem with this system is that it's one-way transparency. We are transparent to them (the people in power who will have access to this system), but they are not tranto us. If I can get a list of who has looked at my records, and then look at their records -- in the same level of detail that they gained about me -- then I won't have as much of a problem with it. Reciprocal transparency will make it more fair, and help alleviate abuses. If Senator Porkbarrel's office investigates me, and I can investigate them right back, then they might think twice about using it.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Erm, isn't that what project Echelon is all about. Allowing NSA to gather information on US citizens via member countries?
Silly AC, Communism is an *atheistic* religion. And Stalin and Mao - both good communists - were atheists (Stalin started out as a thelogical student, but changed sides).
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
Having looked briefly at it, however, I don't believe that IPD is a sufficient response to what I have been arguing.
What I have been saying is that atheism cannot make truth claims or claims about ethics. It cannot do so because of what it claims about the nature of man. Essentially a man is a glorified electro-chemical machine, according to atheism: based, that is, upon atheism's ideas about human origins.
But if this is true, then it is no more possible for a man to say "it's good to help the little old lady across the street" than for a pot of boiling water to do so. Boiling water doesn't make ethical claims: to even suggest otherwise is absurd. But if man really is nothing more than a glorified batch of incredibly complex chemical/thermal/electrical reactions/interactions, then it is equally absurd to pretend that man can say any more at all about helping old ladies than that pot of water.
If I asked you to inquire of a hurricane whether it is ethical to destroy property and human lives, you would probably laugh in my face. But the atheist, who says that man is - similar to that hurricane - nothing but a batch of chemicals mixed up in intriguing and highly reactive ways, nevertheless expects me to listen to him when he starts chattering about what's "right" or "wrong". I'm sorry, but I fail to see why I shouldn't laugh in his face, IPD notwithstanding.
IPD depends first of all upon the interaction of rational agents - but atheism simply demolishes rationality because of what it says that man is.
This is why I say that atheism reduces ethics to personal preference: because a bag of chemicals doesn't "do" anything. It doesn't think. It doesn't evaluate. It doesn't judge. It's impersonal. Thus, whatever it does is just that, and nothing more. What it does is what it does. The atheist, as a bag of chemicals, can't condemn what atheist bag of chemicals Stalin or Mao does, because bags of chemicals don't have an ethical sense.
Hint: the fact that man really does have an ethical sense ought to be a sufficient clue to you that atheism is a load of nonsense.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
All EU countries have a similar act.
Here's a bit of a suggestion/challenge for all the EU /.ers. Call up your local council and find out who the Data Protection Contact Officer is and their address. Then send them a letter stating that you want to make a Data Subject Access Request. A lot of councils will do this for free but some charge a tenner. They then have 40 days from the postmark of your letter (send it first class else they migh try to get an extension) to send you a copy of all information that they hold on you in both electronic and paper systems (used to be just electronic but paper got added in 1998).
You will probably be very suprised by the sheer volume, if you're not then they're probably holding something back as councils hold a lot of data on their citizens.
Stephen
"Don't write down to your readers, the only people less intelligent than you can't read" - Sign on Newspaper Office Wall
At least the atheists want all religion OUT, instead of wanting theirs IN.
In the case of atheists, that's the same thing.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").