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FBI Target Puts His Life Online
After the FBI mistakenly targeted him as a terror suspect five years ago, art professor Hasan Elahi began recording his entire life online for the perusal of government agents or anyone else who wants to look in. "I've discovered that the best way to protect your privacy is to give it away," he says, grinning. "It's economics. I flood the market."
"But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother." Part 3, Chapter 6
I agree. But that doesn't mean we are less worthy for the trying. Sometimes, the attempt is the worthier part. And, just like attempts to attain the attention and favor of deities may make us observe closer whehther and how we could be made to deserve such an attention, perhaps the jealous guarding of one's own life's contents might provoke at least the possibility of introspection, and lead us to discover just what it is about our lives that makes their sanctity worth guarding.
And, meanwhile, I don't want you to know my taste in porn. That's just none of your damn business!
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
Let me tell you a story. An "in Soviet Russia" kind of story. A true one at that. The story of how the state kept all those people in line and not fighting oppression.
Short story: lack of privacy. And literally FUD. Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt over what they'll do about your words and deeds.
The side of the story everyone knows is the KGB and GULAG part. Those are true, and were especially true in Stalin's times. But then it evolved into something that worked cheaper and better: thinking that Big Brother knows everything you do. So people started to avoid doing or saying anything that could bite them in the ass.
The illusion was that the secret police has dossiers (the dead tree kind) on anyone and everyone, and that it _will_ come back to bite you in the ass sooner or later.
Even if you realized that in such a low tech setting they can't know _everything_, you didn't know exactly _what_ they know, and exactly _what_ and _when_ they'll use it against you. Maybe they'll do nothing. Maybe they'll send you to Siberia. Maybe you just won't be allowed to travel abroad any more. Maybe your kid won't ever get a high paying job because his dumbass father got drunk once and complained about the party.
Worse yet, this naturally killed support for any dissidents. If comrade Piotr speaks against the party, egads, you don't want it on your dossier that you sat, listened and nodded. Do you really know if Piotr isn't an agent provocateur? Or if he's just a dumbass, who else in your circle of friends will run to tell the authorities about that talk? Better avoid Piotr entirely from now on. Better safe than sorry.
_That_ is what privacy is supposed to help against.
And that is what "privacy is just a religion" and "if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to fear" lemmings just don't get. Sometime, at some point, it may become _necessary_ to do something "wrong" to just freakin' keep your _other_ liberties. If you gave up privacy, then you might as well give up everything else, because you won't have any means left to defend them. If it ever becomes necessary to resist the government, lack of privacy means you'll never get more than 1-2 disidents which are quickly removed or isolated. As soon as someone does speak out, everyone else just makes themselves scarce, if they think the government will know where they are.
If everyone's life was public, the USA still would be a British colony, because everyone would be affraid to even be seen anywhere around those Jefferson and Hancock guys. India would still be a British colony too, because people would be affraid to be seen anywhere near that Gandhi guy. Etc.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
With the nice big red arrow saying "Hello, I'm no where near where live, please come by and rob my house."
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
You think the government are the only people who can make your life miserable if you want to keep your privacy? Think blackmail. These days, you don't even have to do something embarrassing, as long as the blackmailers can get someone you care about to think you did something. Due process doesn't apply to relationships.
So, if someone said to you, give me a couple hundred dollars, or your wife will leave you, what happens? Maybe the hassle isn't worth the money. But now you're actually concealing something, and a missing $200 can have all sorts of connotations, from hookers, to gambling, to drunken revelry. It could also be something like a present for your wife, or you loaned it to a buddy of yours, but spin is a very big thing, and it's definitely powerful enough to turn that $200 into more.
Compare that to this guy. He's got the perfect alibi, because millions of people can confirm it. He's completely immune to any game that relies on suspicion. And how much privacy has he really lost? Most people won't care, most of the ones who do care will never meet him, and most of the ones that do care and do meet him won't put two and two together, especially if he doesn't put a picture on the site. He's really only lost vulnerability.
I see your informative link, and raise you a pithy comment.
Unattainable? Tell you what, why don't you try and get, say, Rupert Murdoch or King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to realise what a false and unobtainable idol they are coveting. I mean, anyone can just waltz right up to them on the street and snap a picture.
It's not like they have hired goons squads and political connections and secretive schedules which outright confound your ability to snoop into their lives is it? I mean, privacy is a fantasy right? There's no way the rich and powerful could have something the rest of us don't if that something simply just doesn't exist right?
Privacy is very, very real. In todays market centric humanisms, one could almost describe privacy as an obtainable asset which people are willing to pay money for, and one which, because of it's decreasing availability, is becoming ever more expensive to obtain by simple laws of supply and demand. I await an astute poster's follow up comment discussing the rise of a "privacy industry" in response to decreasing supply of this so called "intangible" notion.
May the Maths Be with you!
It's disgusting anyone should need to tell "big brother" jack shit about what they're doing.
Whatever happened to "Innocent until proven guilty."
Oh yeah, that was 9/11 when the American people got raped by overzealous politicians and a dictator wanna-be.
Shadus
You illustrate the real problem with how the constitution is interpreted today. It was never intended to give people rights, it was intended to give the government rights. There is nothing in the constitution which gives the government the right to take away our privacy except under the most extreme of circumstances which we are not under by any stretch. The issue is muddied by congress and the war powers bill that was passed but regardless the government was never explicitly granted the right to spy on its own people. That means it's unconstitutional and it's plain and simple.
As long as my freedom doesn't restrict the freedom of someone else then I should be allowed to do what I want. That is the principle the country was found upon and in my opinion at least is a principle worth sticking to.
If it was a matter of simply "fighting them over there" we were already doing that in Afghanistan so there was no reason to do that in Iraq.
The reason you heard phrases such as "fighting them over there" in the media is because it worked well in WWII to motivate the nation to be for the war and it was justified. The media and politicians are still pulling this line because it worked then but is completely and totally false now.
Think about it, how likely is it Iraqi's are going to come to the United States and fight us here? One, they had no motivation to do so and two they had no means to do so.
I was fine with the United States getting Saddam but the war stopped there. After that it was no longer a war it was an occupation. They should have handed the governance and rebuilding efforts at that point over to a conglomeration of willing Islamic coutries. Indonesia, Jordan and Egypt would have been good choices and then the United States along with other coalition partners should have helped fund the efforts of those countries.
I was with you until you got here: "I was fine with the United States getting Saddam but the war stopped there...They should have handed the governance and rebuilding efforts at that point over to a conglomeration of willing Islamic coutries."
In the '80s, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan; I don't recall why. That was during the hey-days of the Cold War, so naturally the U.S. starting supporting the Mujahideen who were fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. Finally, the Soviets decided they had sunk enough money and manpower into a lost cause and pulled out of Afghanistan. When the Soviets withdrew, so did we, abandoning our former allies. In the vacuum that was left, the Mujahideen were now at war with the other political factions for control of a country that no longer had any kind of stable government. Needless to say, a lot of people died in the ensuing chaos, and the former Mujahideen blamed us for a lot of that...and they were right, to some extent. Our battle was over -- the Soviets had withdrawn -- but theirs wasn't, and from the bitterness and hatred that resulted from our abrupt withdrawal, the seeds of the Taliban and Al Qaeda were born.
Twenty years later, Bush gets the bright idea to invade Iraq and depose Saddam Hussein, not remembering the lessons of Afghanistan. Unlike you, I have reservations about deposing Saddam. Yes, he was a (tm)Bad Dude, and yes, the world is a better place without him, but the reasons for the invasion were trumped up, and that bothers a great deal.
Furthermore, I'm not so sure that a conglomeration of willing Islamic countries with the U.S. providing funding and material support would have made much difference in the occupation of Iraq. In either case, it's still a foreign army occupying the country, and that rarely sits well with the natie population. Furthermore, the problems shaking Iraq right now are largely due to the fact that Muslim != Muslim for all instances. The Sunni and the Shiite Muslims don't like each other. Think Ireland during the '80s and '90s -- the Protestants and Catholics did not play well together. Which flavor of Islam is practiced in Indonesia, Jordan or Egypt? How do you unite the different sects in Iraq? These are real problems, and I don't think they are going to be solved by our current Presidency. The mid-east has been a volatile part of the world for many, many thousand years; the odds of it being calmed any time soon aren't good.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?