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."

Comments

Come on...

[niceone]

You could at least try to slashdot the guy's site, it is^H^Hwas kind of cool.

Re:Come on...

[maxwell demon]

If his site gets slashdotted due to your link, the FBI might think he's turning it off so that they don't see what he does at that moment. You are responsible if they send him to Guantanamo because of it!

Re:Come on...

[Shads]

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.

Re:Come on...

[rucs_hack]

Bush isn't a dictator as such, more an empire builder, in fact exactly an empire builder.

Most effective empire builders have based their empires on economic control and diplomacy (it's worth your while to submit to us, trade in safety and be protected). England, the romans for example, there are more, but I can't think of them right now. Admitedly this is usually after land acquisition through wars, but ecomomic methods are usually far more effective.

India was an instance of economic control, they actually asked england to take over, and there was a fair bit of reluctance on the part of England. The US was also an empire member, but through benign control, England didn't actually want to help it succeed, or help out that would have cost too much, it was largely colonised initially by businessmen, and all England wanted was any money that might be available.

Mind you, it didn't especially want to drop the US or India from the empire when succesion was demanded. Not wanting to lose, in both cases, all that lovely money. We were right bastards back then...

England, although no longer an empire builder, still has the commonwealth, whereby lots of tiny independant nations, formally empire subjects need not have large armies because we are still obligated by treaty to help them. So does the US in the case of Japan, they still depend on the US for defense, having just a small military force.

The problem with Iraq is that the US government were thinking they could repeat the succes of Japan. That was a closed Island culture though, many people there didn't even think the americans were even human (peasants I mean, there were rather a lot of them). That was a different time though, and that event is unlikely to be repeated.

The paranioa after 9/11 was a neo conservatives dream. These measures do exactly what they want, they can try to 'fix' the US into a form they deem suitable. I don't think they caused 9/11, unless you count funding the guy who authorised it for years, but they certainly made use of it.

Re:Come on...

[zero_offset]

There isn't anything complex about the war in Iraq and it certainly isn't empire-building. Quite simply the strategy is to ensure we fight militant Islamics somewhere other than in our own country. Or rather, that has become the strategy. I'm one of those people you very likely hate in that I do believe the original impetus was to deny WMDs to militant Islamic terrorists.

If Bush was as hell-bent on empire building as you imagine, there are far more effective ways to go about it. Israel is pretty much the 51st state, and they have no qualms about going ape-shit on everybody around them using all our latest weaponry. It wouldn't have taken much at all to arrange things so that they'd do our empire-building for us in the region, had that been the goal. That is one simple, obvious example among many options.

Re:Come on...

[mbrod]

Quite simply the strategy is to ensure we fight militant Islamics somewhere other than in our own country.

We were already in Afghanistan, where the actual problem was. There were a number of reasons for going in to Iraq, and they were complex. However, "fighting them over there" is not one of those reasons.

That reason for this war is even more invalid than when it was applied in the Vietnam war. The war where it was a valid reason was WWII.

Re:Come on...

[onsblu]

I don't mean to rant, but a response really is necessary.

I don't hate you for your opinions regarding WMDs. Luckily, we all know the information that was available to the administration in the spring of 2003 (and earlier). In my view, there are practical security measures, and then there is security theater, as in the case of liquid restrictions on planes. There's no way anyone can change your belief as to why Bush invaded Iraq, even knowing what they knew at the time, but that doesn't mean it wasn't damaging to our safety. But it was certainly not a slam-dunk.

As far as Empire building, you have to decide whether forcing Iraq to accept American companies pumping its oil (under contract for 50 years) is empire building. I don't think the nomenclature matters as much the end result.

Ultimately, I think you have a very simplistic view of the middle east. While Israel is known as a major military ally of the US and has been labeled one of the biggest human rights abusing country in the developed world, that doesn't mean either:
1) "They have no qualms about going ape-shit on everybody around them using all our latest weaponry"
2) "It wouldn't have taken much at all to arrange things so that they'd do our empire-building for us in the region, had that been the goal."
Israel has enough problems with its neighbors without picking fights for the US. And while they have certainly shown a will to use aggressive force, such as in Lebanon last summer, they have not used any WMDs (nuclear, chemical or biological) that I am aware of. Just because the US supports gives support to Israel doesn't mean that Israel is going to do anything which puts Israeli lives in jeopardy. Although Israel expanded her borders in '67, there's no chance whatsoever that it could "do our empire-building" in an Arab state given the tensions in the region. And I don't get where the 51st state thing comes from - I would think Puerto Rico or DC would be better candidates for that honor.

Re:Come on...

[hurting now]

Quite simply the strategy is to ensure we fight militant Islamics somewhere other than in our own country.

I'm going to have to disagree. This tactic is not what got us into Iraq - it is part of what is keeping us there. That and the oil.

Re:Come on...

[Moofie]

Do you understand why some people believe that ruining somebody else's country for our own convenience is a bit, well, unconscionable?

Re:Come on...

[mbrod]

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.

Re:Come on...

[element-o.p.]

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.

Re:Come on...

[theodicey]

They should have handed the governance and rebuilding efforts at that point over to a conglomeration of willing Islamic coutries.

You're right about "fighting them over there" being bunk, but the rest of your post is full of wishful and revisionist thinking.

Remember how Bush had to cobble together a "coalition of the willing" formed of our longstanding allies Britain and Australia, plus whoever small island nations we could bribe with aid? And how there weren't any Muslim countries in said coalition?

Yeah, that was because the US didn't have how UN or even NATO approval to invade. Without that, plus a lot more bribery, no Muslim nation was going to let their soldiers get blown up in Iraq. Hell, most of our ostensible allies in the Middle East even denied us the right to fly over their country to attack Iraq.

In the words of Colin Powell, "You break it, you bought it."

Re:Come on...

[GigG]

"Do you understand why some people believe that ruining somebody else's country for our own convenience is a bit, well, unconscionable?"

Do you understand that some people don't? In a perfect world we wouldn't have people willing to intentionally attack civilians to further their cause. So if you have to have a bunch that do feel it is required to do so it is much better to have them do it somewhere else and if they have to attack your fellow citizens that they attack those that are armed, trained and paid to deal with it.

Re:Come on...

[baboo_jackal]

In the '80s, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan; I don't recall why.
Other than the "furthering the spread of global communism" theory, one proposal is geography and oil: The Caspian Sea was estimated to hold huge oil fields, and a direct pipeline through Afghanistan is the quickest route to get it to the open ocean via the Persian Gulf. With meddlesome and destructive Islamic rebels in Afghanistan, it wouldn't be possible to secure such a transnational pipeline.

Our involvement in Afghanistan had little to do with the rebels. It was a very cost-effective way to fight the USSR by proxy. As a side note, does anyone remember the video game based on Tom Clancy's "The Cardinal in the Kremlin"? Part of the game was a mini-arcade shooter where you played the part of an Islamic rebel killing Russians in Afghanistan by finding and using U.S.-supplied weapons. It's kind of funny that a few decades ago we (well, maybe just me and a few others...) were playing a video game in which you got to be Osama Bin Laden...

Anyways, point is that Afghanistan was just a cheap way to harm the USSR during the Cold War...

Twenty years later, Bush gets the bright idea to invade Iraq and depose Saddam Hussein, not remembering the lessons of Afghanistan.
I disagree with you here. There were 2 lessons that this conflict taught us: 1) The Russian Army was a paper tiger, and 2) How to lose a guerilla war. We never did have to go to war with the USSR, so lesson 1 is moot. And based on what we did in Afghanistan *this* time around, I'd say that we definitely learned lesson 2.

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?
You make a really good point - The real struggle for peace in the ME is something that Muslims are going to have to work out themselves. It's a choice between a religious identity that transcends nationality, or a national identity, to which your religious beliefs are subordinate. Same thing in Ireland, like you said. The Irish in conflict, by the way, recently chose national identity over religion, by the way, and it's being touted as the end to that particular conflict.

Thing is, most of us live in a world where we take it for granted that religion governs our personal lives, but national governments run our public ones. We've seen what happens when the opposite is true in our own societies, in our own lifetimes - for example, your example about Ireland - yet we're perplexed about why there's fighting in the ME. There's an answer for when the seemingly endless ME conflict will end: When the balance of Muslims subordinate their Islamic identity to their national identity.

Re:Come on...

[volpe]

"Do you understand why some people believe that ruining somebody else's country for our own convenience is a bit, well, unconscionable?"

Do you understand that some people don't?

Actually, no.

New religion

[Romwell]

Privacy nowadyas is like a religion. Some people believe in it, some don't; some fight to protect it. But it is still as intangible and unattainable as deities from other religions.

Re:New religion

[bedonnant]

we *have* to fight to protect it. otherwise the world will be a big MySpace page.
God forbid.

Re:New religion

[Elemenope]

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!

Re:New religion

[m1k3y121]

The attempt is what matters, at least to me. I currently am a member of the Army and it makes me realize that privacy is important to most people. Some people don't have a problem with people knowing just about everything about them (small towns), but people like me and alot more hate having a roommate and our whole life being watched. When I get out, it will be like heaven for me for that reason. p.s. other than that it's not a bad job

Re:New religion

[mlk]

Good Goddess no. Real life animated gifs.

Re:New religion

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

But it is still as intangible and unattainable as deities from other religions.

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.

Re:New religion

[Vancorps]

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.

Re:New religion

[jez9999]

I guess that information and technology was so slow at the time, that privacy was not given much thought.

It was; it's just that they didn't have audio/video recorders in those days...

Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Nice, clever, but still not right

[mcvos]

It's great that he's created the perfect alibi, and keeping himself out of accidental incarceration on Gitmo, but the real message here is that government institutions are way too sloppy, and that if you do not give up your privacy like this, you may be risking all sorts of harassment and worse. Innocent people do get locked up because of mistakes, malice, or a combination of both.

Re:Nice, clever, but still not right

[bedonnant]

it actually is the saddest story of all. it is the defeat of the individual, defeat of freedom. this guy spends his every hour in a state of rational paranoia. thank God I dont live in the US anymore.

Re:Nice, clever, but still not right

[WoodenRobot]

Indeed - and that's why 'if you've done nothing wrong you've nothing to fear and no need to hide' is a load of bull.

Re:Nice, clever, but still not right

[Fruit]

It's even worse in the Netherlands though (article in Dutch, unfortunately). Summary: privacy and other citizen rights continuously eroding and no one cares.

Re:Nice, clever, but still not right

[CurbyKirby]

Total openness is an interesting idea, but only if you are guaranteed that everyone is totally open too. Yes, this means organizations as well as individuals. Otherwise, requiring you to publish your life in order to escape either incompetence or profiling (when the results of either is questionably humane incarceration) is absurd. If the government isn't totally open, then why should you have to be? This project is interesting as a thought/art exercise, but its original intent/purpose makes it another blow against the fourth amendment.

Re:Nice, clever, but still not right

[Torvaun]

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.

Re:Nice, clever, but still not right

[Simon]

The difference is that in the US, there's plenty of evidence that it is already being abused. In Netherland it's still only the risk that it may happen.

Well, the article gave a couple good examples of how laws are being abused.

Een dakloze liet Rick van Amersfoort laatst een stapeltje van dertig boetes zien. De oogst van een maand op straat leven: oversteken bij rood licht, in het openbaar een joint roken, hangen op een bankje voor het Amsterdamse Muziektheater. Van Amersfoort werkt bij het bureau Jansen en Janssen, dat geworteld is in de kraakbeweging en politie- en inlichtingendiensten kritisch" volgt. Jij en ik zouden er geen boete voor krijgen, maar deze dakloze is lastig, dus pakt de politie hem zo aan."

"A homeless person showed Rick van Amserfoort his collection of 30 fines. The harvest of one month on the streets: crossing against a red light, smoking a joint in public, loitering on a bench in front of the Amsterdamse Muziektheater. Van Amersfoort works at the bureau Jansen en Janssen, which grew out of the squatting movement, and critically follows the work of the police and the intelligence service. You and I wouldn't receive a fine, but this homeless person is difficult, so the police are always on to him."

and another example:

De legitimatieplicht is volgens Brenninkmeijer een goed voorbeeld. Waarschuwingen dat de politie hem zou kunnen misbruiken, werden weggewuifd. "Nu zie je dat politie betogers vraagt om hun legitimatie. Dan is het een repressiemiddel geworden."

The legitimatieplicht (=law requiring everyone to carry ID in public) is according to Brenninkmeijer a good example. Warnings that the police would misuse this law were waved off. "Now you see that police ask protesters for their ID. It has become a tool of repression."

--
Simon

Re:Nice, clever, but still not right

[HostAdmin]

I'm actually kind of worried about this guys diet. I don't see many actual grocery store receipts. From the look of the meals he eats, he has a rather high fat / calorie dense / junk food diet. Maybe he should add a feedback section so we can send him lifestyle advice.

His wardrobe probably needs to be updated as well. I see no transactions at any nice mens clothing stores ...

Killing time?

[cb_is_cool]

Sounds to me like he's just made it into some wierd pseudo-hobby. I don't think I could ever be that comfortable posting my every move.

Re:Killing time?

[farkus888]

I'm picking my nose right now. this post written in the interest of keeping my ass out of jail.

Re:Killing time?

[ArsenneLupin]

Sounds to me like he's just made it into some wierd pseudo-hobby. I don't think I could ever be that comfortable posting my every move. Also, what about the people he happens to be with? Are they comfortable about such openness? And does he document the night hours too? What does his wife think about that?

Shouldn't we all stop fighting?

[Nymz]

"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

Re:Shouldn't we all stop fighting?

[Blondie-Wan]

I wonder why nobody has made it into a movie yet, seeing as the book was published as early as 1949(!).

It has been made into a movie - multiple times, in fact: a version in 1956, a made-for-TV version in 1965, a version actually released in 1984, and yet another version currently in development, to come out in 2009.

How to defeat the CCCP

[F34nor]

This was my friend's idea of how to destroy the CCCP. You take every classified document in the US, shuffle, and ship. They would have bankrupted the economy trying to find the gems in the huge piles of useless shit.

Sorry, no.

[imsabbel]

That whole "give away so much that they cannot use all the Data" might have worked back when all was done by humans.

Nowdays, you just buy some more computers to do the datamining and cross-referencing. Dont worry, there are thousands of PHDs working at google to make 1984 a reality.

(Dont believe me? Take a look what googles CEO says here : http://www.ft.com/cms/s/c3e49548-088e-11dc-b11e-00 0b5df10621.html . In short, a quote: "The goal is to enable Google users to be able to ask the question such as 'What shall I do tomorrow?' and 'What job shall I take?'")

Re:Sorry, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact the sofware the KGB used got released on the market at the end of the Cold War http://www.infotame.com/Support/faq.shtml

Re:Sorry, no.

[value_added]

The goal is to enable Google users to be able to ask the question such as 'What shall I do tomorrow?'

AFAIK, I'm not doing anything tomorrow. Until the new Google service shows up in beta, anyone got any good suggestions?

Not paranoid

[TheSciBoy]

Well, it's not paranoia if they're actually after you.

Re:Not paranoid

[bedonnant]

Well, it's not paranoia if they're actually after you.

yes, because the FBI would have arrested him for vital information such as what he had for lunch. What he does is surrendering his rights and freedoms as an individual, the victory of an orwellian society.

information countermeasures

[martin-boundary]

IMHO, what he should be doing is flooding the internet with both real and fake information about himself, the more and the more varied the better (*). In an age where people look you up on Google, the best (only?) way to regain your privacy (once it's been breached only) is to poison the information index with total and contradictory garbage. The more obviously contradictory, the quicker people will give up reading page after page of Google's results about you.

This principle is similar to Rivest's winnowing and chaffing cryptographic system, or the military countermeasures used to confuse self guiding missiles.

(*) but not fake terrorism, that would be counterproductive in his case :)

It's Not Worth It

[jellie]

I understand the intentional irony in his actions, but I don't agree that it would work. It's the government, for crying out loud. They do not act rationally, neither in placing him on some terrorist watch list nor in continuing to monitor him because they don't trust someone with an Arabic-sounding name. Suppose his the batteries in his GPS unit fail - then the FBI would scream, "Get him! He's going off the grid!" My life is probably more boring than his, but I don't want invisible agents snooping around my house or following my online activities. Treat us like citizens should be treated, not like characters in a video game. I've never been detained at an airport, so I can't imagine what it's like to have to call the FBI before every flight.

Re:Here is to hoping...

[LordLucless]

At least he'd be easy to perform a body cavity search on. In and out in a matter of minutes, so to speak.

Momus already said this ...

[Potor]

...in his song The Age of Information.

"Your reputation used to depend on
What you concealed
Now it depends on what you reveal"

Re:Clearly, he's guilty as sin!

[rs79]

There are sometimes more than one way to spell Arab surnames. For example "El Ashi" could be "Elashi".

In the case of "Hasan Elahi" that's close enough to "Hassan Elashi" that it's probably "close enough for government work". I'd be willing to bet this is the source of his trouble.

In the early 80s Bayan, Ghassan and Hassan Elashi had a little company that made computers for the royal Suadi family. My boss was Jewish and he and I were the only white guys there; we did all the software. All the Elashi's are in jail now on what appears to me to be trumped up charges. Trivia: the Elashis paid for the only decent UUCP node in LA at the time; they held the .IQ tld for a while Bayan called Jon Postel one day and Jon just gave it to him by virtue of an Arabic accent. Bayan told me while giggling he was holding it hostage from the Iraqi government. I still have a watch Bayan gave me that I posted about in alt.horlology in 1988.

Let me be less subtle. We ran their computers and were nosy. If they're terrorists then I'm Stephen fucking Hawking.

My private life will not be public.

[Anonymous Coward]

He may be ready to give up his private life, I'm not. And if this is what it takes to keep out of the hands of some overzealous, hyperparanoid government, than the best solution is to depose that government.
How can you live in a world like that? That's not 1984, that's 1984 under Stalin with Hitler and Mao as his henchmen. That's Bush, Cheney and Rice for you.

Correct headline

[Anonymous Coward]

would be "FBI gives attention whore perfect excuse"

Let me tell you a story

[Moraelin]

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.

Re:Let me tell you a story

[c6gunner]

Funny that you mention Ghandi. His life was quite public, and his supporters well known. Privacy is only important under truly oppressive regimes, which is why they go to such length to eliminate it. It's only important when people have a legitimate fear of their government.

Re:Let me tell you a story

[rtb61]

People always forget the most obvious privacy invasion. A stranger walks up to you and tells you the names of children, their date of birth, what schools they go to, what classes they are in, their grades, what time they go to school and what time they come home and how they travel between home and school, the names of their friends and to top that off hands you a series of recent photographs of them. Honestly, how would you feel. You don't just protect your privacy, you protect the privacy of all those people around you, especially your family.

The laws should really be changed, any time that anyone access your records or the records of your family, that are held by state or federal government, or even any major private institution, for any reason, should you not be notified of who did it and why. Also if any changes are made to your records should you not be notified of that change, who made it and why they made it.

With the power of computers and the Internet this could be easily done and would be a major step forward in not only protecting your privacy, but also maintaining the accuracy of your private data, as well as providing you the opportunity to challenge that data and force corrections when it is inaccurate.

The weirdest thing at the moment is that the current republican administration deems it important to restrict you from accessing records about yourself and specifically legislates to keep secrets about you hidden from you, a sick way of ensuring they can protect the lies they about create you in order to control you.

Re:Let me tell you a story

[Opportunist]

How do you tell whether it's legitimate? Do you know whether you just happen to have been picked for the IRS checkup at random or 'cause you said something inappropriate? I mean, after all, Al Capone was also just caught for tax evasion.

Any government today has the means to get quite uncomfortable if they want to, even with "legal" means. Not even breaking any of your liberties. You just "happen" to be the lucky winner of some governmental hassles.

Re:Let me tell you a story

[FromTheHorizon]

It's interesting that you mention Gandhi, because he had some interesting views on privacy (sorry I can't reference them online, I read them in a book on Gandhi)

Gandhi primary philosophy was discovering truth, which he believed to be like God. Quote: "Truth is God". In accordance to this he lead a very open life, and was not afraid to voice his views. As a result he spent quite a bit of time in prison. Neither did he hide his life from the world. He believed in full openness (It is common knowledge that he gave in to his carnal urges and was having sex while his father died - who shares those sorts of details?!?!?)

I think his idea worked the opposite way to Communist Russia, and more similarly to free speech. If everyone says what they think, how can the government prosecute all of them? The more we keep private, the more isolated it is for those who want to speak out to speak out. If everyone kept every private, how would the first revolutionary start talking to the second one?

I think Gandhi's views are interesting in the modern perspective, when technology is eroding our privacy. I do worry about what information there is about me out on the internet, and double check my blog posts for information that might bite me in the arse later down the track. However I think that I don't really have anything to worry about. Sure, there will be some photos of me drunk online somewhere, acting like an idiot. But it's not like that's unusual behavior. I've voiced some pretty opinionated views that would have got me thrown into the Gulag. But the internet is built by people voicing opinionated views, we're not all going to be thrown into the Gulag!!!

At the end of the day, I don't want to do the things which I might be embarrassed by or arrested for if they got out into the public domain. For the other things, who cares? I'd prefer to worry about making sure that I lead a good life, than worry about who knows what I'm doing.

Re:Let me tell you a story

[starwed]

If everyone's life were public, you'd know if Piotr was an agent. You'd know who in your circle of friends ran to authorities. You'd know the personal lives of those running the country. This isn't just some pedantic point, it gets at the heart of how the systme worked; the government didn't eliminate privacy, they controlled it.

A society without any privacy at all would be unimaginably different from our own; I don't think you can claim a priori that it would be worse.

Re:Let me tell you a story

[Atzanteol]

the only way you need privacy is if you live in a world of idiots and irrational people

Er... Have you read the news lately?

Re:Let me tell you a story

[Malakusen]

A free country is one in which the citizens have privacy and the government is open. An oppressive country is one in which the citizens are open and the government is private and secretive. Guess which one we have.

Re:Let me tell you a story

[wesborgmandvm]

People always forget the most obvious privacy invasion. A stranger walks up to you and tells you the names of children, their date of birth, what schools they go to, what classes they are in, their grades, what time they go to school and what time they come home and how they travel between home and school, the names of their friends and to top that off hands you a series of recent photographs of them. Honestly, how would you feel. You don't just protect your privacy, you protect the privacy of all those people around you, especially your family.

The laws should really be changed...

No the laws don't need to be changed your teenager just needs to stop posting to MySpace.

Re:Let me tell you a story

[zero_offset]

It's only important when people have a legitimate fear of their government.

Spoken like someone who has never been stalked by a girlfriend's psycho ex-husband. Do they have junk mail, spam, or telemarketing in your country? Would you feel comfortable if the were able to cast a critical eye on your every activity? Is it fine if the prude at your local bank notices a lot of credit card charges to hotdonkeyporn.com and decides your wife needs to know?

Sure none of these are exciting government-changing revolutionary scenarios, but they're all very real privacy issues. The only thing worse than denying that privacy is real is accepting that it's real but denying that it has any importance.

Re:Let me tell you a story

[carpe_noctem]

Let me tell you a story. An "in Soviet Russia" kind of story.

Wait a minute, I thought that in Soviet Russia, the story told you!

Re:Let me tell you a story

[NecroBones]

Legitimate fear of their government? It's always legitimate. Don't think for one second that any government is immune to corruption. It's human nature... people who enjoy exerting some sort of control or authority over others are drawn to government and law enforcement jobs, so government has an inordinate number of people with that sort of mentality. Governments, as anything else, will tend to act in their own best interest.

Even the best system, with the best of intentions, can gradually erode.

Whether you liked him or not, Ronald Reagan had a great quote that comes to mind: "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."

While spoken about the US in particular, this applies to any free state.

Re:Let me tell you a story

[Hatta]

It's only important when people have a legitimate fear of their government.

As a pot smoker, I believe I have a legitimate fear of my government. My chances of being assaulted (arrested), kidnapped (imprisoned), and robbed (fines, asset forfeiture) at the hands of the government are much more likely than being the victim of any other crime. This is why privacy is so important, they're always persecuting someone.

Re:Let me tell you a story

[jez9999]

But the internet is built by people voicing opinionated views, we're not all going to be thrown into the Gulag!!!

Give the state the powers of prison guards, and the entire country becomes the Gulag.

Re:Let me tell you a story

[Hoi Polloi]

As an example, J Edgar Hoover kept secret files on people who hadn't been accused of any crime, just "targets of interest". Some of those files have been open and they frequently are full of gossip and vendetta fueled informants. Just the fact that people in the government vaguely knew that the FBI was doing this was enough to stifle dissent or reform of the FBI.

Re:Let me tell you a story

[Repton]

That reminds me of a joke I read on Wikipedia's article on Russian political humour:

A hotel. A room for four with four strangers. Three of them soon open a bottle of vodka and proceed to get acquainted, then drunk, then noisy, singing and telling political jokes. The fourth one desperately tries to get some sleep; finally, frustrated, he surreptitiously leaves the room, goes downstairs, and asks the lady concierge to bring tea to Room 67 in ten minutes. Then he returns and joins the party. Five minutes later, he bends over an ashtray and says with utter nonchalance: "Comrade Major, some tea to Room 67, please." In a few minutes, there's a knock at the door, and in comes the lady concierge with a tea tray. The room falls silent; the party dies a sudden death, and the conspirator finally gets to sleep. The next morning he wakes up alone in the room. Surprised, he runs downstairs and asks the concierge where his neighbors had gone. "Oh, the KGB has arrested them!" she answers. "B-but... but what about me?" asks the guy in terror. "Oh, well, they decided to let you go. You made Comrade Major laugh a lot with your tea joke."

Re:Let me tell you a story

[Fulcrum of Evil]

I understand what you're saying, but who gets to decide what the bad laws are?

Well, if you have to tell people that a substance will make the blacks go crazy and rape white women to get people to vote for it, then it's probably a bad law.

Noise = good hiding place

[drgonzo59]

You might be joking but that is actually a very good way to hide something -- just cover it with lots and lots of noise. I do that with our beloved friend -- Google. You see, it likes very much to gather my browsing history so in case of a court order it can quickly give it to any lawyer out there, so what do I do? I run the TrackMeNot Firefox extension. It sends a fake query to Google about once in 5 or so seconds. Let Google figure out which one is me browsing and which queries are submitted by TMN. TMN is actually pretty smart while I was typing this it asked Google for such things like "describe dept that", "Chinchilla Farm Investigation", "officials representing diverse views" and "each selective router" -- not bad, just as crazy and random as my own queries would be...

Re:Noise = good hiding place

[sootman]

TrackMeNot is the dumbest thing ever.

Now he's a target for criminals instead...

[sifi]

With the nice big red arrow saying "Hello, I'm no where near where live, please come by and rob my house."

Re:Clearly, he's guilty as sin!

[Anonymous Coward]

In the case of "Hasan Elahi" that's close enough to "Hassan Elashi" that it's probably "close enough for government work".

I have zero sympathy for these foreigners with complicated Islamic-terrorist-sounding names. If you don't want to be harassed by the government then change your name from Muhammed Al-Assad Il-Bin-Kumani to Michael Smith or something. African-Americans would be the first to back this up. Who is going to get harassed more by the police if you're black, Joe Jackson or Duwante Fahrakan? There's no way in hell they'd have the balls to put Jeff Jones on a terror watch list, they'd be banning 100,000+ people with that name.

Not a religion at all

[dscho]

It's not anything like a religion. Many people seem to be unable, much like you, to see that you _need_ privacy to live a happy life. Much like you need clean air to live a happy life.

Yes, you can survive without both, clean air and privacy. Yet, is this a life you want to have?

Go watch "Life of others". It is really depressing to live in a surveillance society.

Maybe those countries who did _not_ experience Gestapo-like distrust, arbitrariness, and the mental consequences this brings to your personal life, _have_ to go through a phase like that, to be able to value what the founding fathers tried to establish by the right of anonymous speech and the pursuit of happiness.

However, this would be only the second-best solution: I personally know people who lived in East Germany, and even if some of them experienced this kind of soul-destroying constant pressure only in their childhood, they are spoiled for life. When they talk to me on the phone and hear a click, their _first_ thought (if they want or not) is that somebody is listening in.

This is absolute terror.

Re:Clearly, he's guilty as sin!

[value_added]

In the early 80s Bayan, Ghassan and Hassan Elashi had a little company that made computers for the royal Suadi family. My boss was Jewish and he and I were the only white guys there

I guess the term white guys could include Jews for large values of white, but some people might disagree. Then, again, Arabs and Jews can both be characterised as Semites, but that might upset other folks and offend the sensibilities of the politically correct who really don't know WTF they're saying (if anything).

Either way, you're screwed. You'd appeal to larger groups if you use more specific terminology or, as an alternative, use ethnic humour to make the point. If it was me, I'd opt for ethnic humour route, and offend everyone you possibly can. ;-)

Nazi Germany

[Savage-Rabbit]

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. I can't speak about Soviet Russa but I do know a bit about Nazi Germany from people who lived through that time and basically the same was true there. You kept your mouth shut because there was a very good chance of even a single moment of carelessness biting you in the ass sooner or later with dire consequences. Even though everybody knew that the State couldn't know everything they still kept their mouth shut because:

1. The Gestapo offered quite handsome bounties for tips on people who exhibited treasonous or regime critical behavior or uttered any derogatory comments about the 'Führer' the party or it's policies.
   
2. Even if the Gestapo didn't get tipped off by one of it's professional informers they would probably eventually learn about any such details the moment they shook somebody down for some minor infraction and that person named you and a couple of dozen others to save his own skin. These tips could range from subversive activities, such as being a communist or social democrat to having once been seen reading a communist leaflet or having been overheard telling a treasonous joke.
   

Basically the Nazi system wasn't all that dissimilar in it's inner workings to the tactics employed by Senator McCarthy and his goons except it went much further. Those who got named weren't merely socially ostracized as they were in the USA, in Nazi Germany and the cooupied territories they got sent to a camp and executed. There was actually a group of people both in Germany it self and the occupied countries who made a tidy business out of regularly informing on anybody that acted even mildly suspiciously. Once the Gestapo did lock in on you they were practically guaranteed to find _something_ to hang you with. Believe it or not, purely out of fear of a Gestapo visit, people both Germans and non Germans sorted the scrap paper they used on the toilet in case it contained any leaflets or other printed material from politically unreliable elements or, god forbid, contained a picture of Adolf him self. People today may find that funny but there were actually people who did long stretches in KZ camps or even died there for the simple offence of insulting the visage or persona of the 'Führer'.

Does freedom imply privacy?

[rumli]

I grew up thinking that one cannot have freedom without privacy. But having thought about it a bit, they seem like orthogonal concepts. Of course, this depends on one's definition of freedom and privacy. Very roughly speaking, the definitions I use are: 1. Freedom is your right to act as you choose so long as your actions do not harm others, and 2. Privacy is your right to control the dissemination of information about yourself. You might argue that lack of privacy can limit choices by the threat of embarrassment, but freedom does not preclude embarrassing actions from your choice set. In other words, freedom does not require your choices to be easy and embarrassment-free, just possible. This is not to say that privacy isn't a right worth fighting for. But I don't think we should use the right to freedom to justify the right to privacy.

Re:Clearly, he's guilty as sin!

[dbIII]

Sorry to spoil the joke but the Australian rockclimber Elizabeth Smith is currently unable to travel to the USA due to having a similar name to a person suspected by the FBI. How many Elizabeth Smith's would there be - and then there's the similar names like Elizabeth Windsor you would have to stop - especially if Windsor is an assumed name picked by her father to rename the family after a building! It really is amataur hour over there - do you have anybody left other than political appointees?

There is alot wrong with this.

[k1e0x]

It upsetting to see so many people say.. "See, what a good idea."

First off if this guy has not committed a crime, why is the FBI watching him? Where do they get the authority to do this if they have nothing on him? If they *DO* have something on him, why haven't they arrested him and charged him formally? What ever happened to Due process.

Secondary.. he has given up his privacy not willingly but under threat of imprisonment and torture in Guantanamo, where he would not get a trial to defend himself at all. This is like saying you gave the mugger your cash willingly and the gun he was pointing at you is irreverent. Like a mugger.. the government is pointing an invisible gun at this man and some of you cheer the fact that he has given up his privacy, sugesting that we all do the same?

Have you people lost your mind?