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Obama May Toughen Internet Privacy Rules
CWmike writes "The Obama administration is considering plans to step up policing of Internet privacy issues and to establish a new position to direct the effort, reports the WSJ, which cites unnamed sources. Any push for stronger federal oversight over online privacy is likely to be welcomed by privacy advocates increasingly concerned about the data-collection and data-sharing practices of big Internet and marketing companies. High profile cases such as the uproar over Facebook's personal data collection habits and the public reaction to Google's continuing problems over its Street View Wi-Fi snooping have created a broader awareness of online privacy issues. The big question, though, is just how successful any fresh attempt at enforcing new privacy strictures on the Internet will be with Republicans soon to be in charge of the House."
The big question, though, is just how successful any fresh attempt at enforcing new privacy strictures on the Internet will be with Republicans soon to be in charge of the House.
Let's try not to be so blatant with our biases next time.
Okay. I think I'm done. I'm going to terminate my traffic, all of it, via VPN in some other country.
bullshit.
"The big question, though, is just how successful any fresh attempt at enforcing new privacy strictures on the Internet will be with Republicans soon to be in charge of the House."
The Democrats have proven themselves to be just as guilty in this regard so please refrain from the partisianship.
I'm all for more privacy, but all this means is the NSA and those other three letter agencies have decided it's easier to snoop on us without asking Facebook and others simply hand over the data they need.
Great. Now where did I put that tinfoil hat...
He might try, but the republicans will block it.
Technoli
From the evil data-mining corporations out for our private data.
Still no word on whether or not we will be saved from a prying government with increased authority over internet communication and encryption.
How does it feel to be a liar with pants constantly on fire?
Then allow the consumer to decide what to do about the problem themselves.
Most consumers will do nothing. Educating them will do nothing except waste money. All that will happen is the consumers who do end up losing everything will complain because the government didn't do more to prevent it. They'll complain and get some politician needing an issue to promote to force a half-assed plan into place. Its better to at least attempt a rational level-headed method than something done as a rushed response to a sudden public outcry.
I'm sure the government will do something sensible like require all internet traffic to be encrypted. To make things easier they'll even give you your own personal set of keys to use. Dont worry if you ever lose your keys because they'll keep a set for you.
That's impossible now. In order to get a job you have to apply on the internet - many times with third party companies that have their own multi-page legalese filled "Terms of Service" that has the "we reserve the right to change these terms at anytime" bullshit clause.
My credit union uses a third party for many of their back office and web services.
Many companies spread your personal information all over the World without your consent - the credit bureaus, insurance companies, banks, and just about any firm that handles your most private data. They share data with credit bureaus, other companies that collect data, Governments, etc...
Aside from living under a rock, living "off the grid" and doing business with no one, there's no way for the consumer to control their personal information - none.
I have been doing my best and yet, just googling myself, it sickens me how much personal information is out there - current information.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
Secure a mans fish and you starve him for a day. Teach a man to secure his fish and he'll call you an idiot and eat it.
What were we talking about again?
"We the people of the US" funded the inception and development of the Net thru the use of "our" tax dollars which DARPA invested into cutting edge communications research. Here's a quarter ($.25)to go buy a clue. All content is regulated even if you think otherwise. In fact... I'm sure you're doing it yourself at the moment. Self regulation is still regulation!
Right now, when your privacy is violated, they say "My bad" and keep on going. We need a law that says something like: 1. For violating all non-medical, non-sexual privacy, (revealing Social Security information, bank account information, phone numbers, etc.) each incident costs the violater $100 fine per person 2. For violating medical privacy, each incident costs the violater $800 fine per person 3. For violating sexual privacy, each incident costs the violater $5,000 fine per person Having the fines go to the EFF (to avoid spurious lawsuits) This would be in addition to the legal right to sue for damages.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Is this not the typical reaction by the average idiot American? Let government legislate a cure to our problem? Are we not supposed to be a free market? When will we say as a group, we refuse to use facebook, or any other site for that matter, until they provide agreements that protect our private data? Instead we just give corporations everything we have so THEY can make money off YOU, and your only concern is why is the government not doing anything about it?
The Government's track record leaves little for debate. The standard is to over charge taxpayers for a system with loop holes that only result in the public "feeling better" without actually solving the real problem. Ladies and Gentlemen, do you want your privacy? Then stop giving it away like retarded little tripe's without a care in the world while expecting the government to swoop in and rescue you like a mythical Superman. If you have not been paying any attention the government does not care about your privacy when it concerns them. They want to be able to stop, search, and seize you and your property any time they please regardless of the constitution. If you think they really care about your privacy, I have some top quality products I would like to sell you! A fool and their money as well as their liberty are soon parted!
Can we please stop calling Google's Wifi drive-by data collection a "Privacy violation" - they only collected traffic that was publicly available because people chose to transmit it. If anything, it was good for public awareness, hopefully at least a few people encrypted their Wifi traffic because of it.
It's not like Google put the data up on their search engine, it was an artifact of the collection process leftover on corporate hard drives.
While it's nice to see lawmakers taking an interest in privacy, rather than go after Google, they should be going after the manufacturers that still sell access points that default to unencrypted traffic.
The danger that all of these people who had their data snooped face is not from Google -- it's not like Google is going to use their credit cards or try to steal their identity. The real danger is in having their data snooped by people with criminal intent.
It takes two parties to engage in bipartisan politics. What you're suggesting is just complete asinine rubbish. The President went way out of his way to include the GOP in the process, and they opted to shut things down anyways. By design he doesn't have any good ways of forcing the opposition party to do it's part to do things in a bipartisan fashion.
While I agree with your overall point, I'd like to take this moment to point out how awesome it is that C-SPAN 1, 2, and 3 exist. Being given a direct line-of-sight into our legislative process is rad as hell, especially when compared to the secretive inner workings of many other governments around the world.
The people that call-in during the morning show on C-SPAN Radio commonly say "Thank you for C-SPAN". There's a damn good reason for that.
Living With a Nerd
Warning: unpopular opinion ahead.
As far as advertising is concerned, I'm actually GLAD that companies are "invading my privacy" in an attempt to display ads to me that are relevant to my interests. I don't give a crap about tampons, or Roth I.R.As, or some new Genital Wart drug. However, I DO care about AMDs latest processor, or some new Asus laptop, or a special deal going on with digital cameras.
Advertising is going to happen, no matter what you do. Yes, I know, I know...adblock and noscript. Still, regardless, advertising will reach you at some point in your day-to-day life. I would MUCH rather it be for something I care about. /rant
Living With a Nerd
There is a huge difference between Dems and Reps. You see, the Dems take money orders, and the Reps take cashier's checks.
How about we start with "no more warrantless wiretaps" and by having the Executive Branch's own agencies reversing their insistence that America's telecom infrastructure be inherently snoopable by the spooks?
So, that's nice that the government wants to crack down on sites like Facebook, but I think there are data mining things going on that most folk (even some on slashdot) are unaware of. For instance, awhile back I decided to switch my car insurance policy from company A to company B. When I contacted company B and had them quote me a rate, they said there was an at-fault accident on my record that shouldn't have been there. I asked them where they got that information because my DMV record was clean. They explained that they got their info. from a third party company that gets that kind of information from DMV. They told me I could contact the company to have the accident removed from my record, as there seemed to be no problem with the insurance company disputing the alleged incident (in other words, I am not paying for the accident). Well, I did some Googling and internet browsing and found the company. They list themselves as a data aggregation company (one that I had never heard of) that will sell information to any party interested (information like my personal driving record). There was a whole process you could go through to "opt-out" of their aggregation service, effectively limiting them from collecting information on you. I started the process which involved a few forms asking for personal information. Not wanting to give this company much more information, I just decided to call them instead.
I talked to a customer service rep. and they helped me get though the opt-out process without giving up much more in the way of personal info. The rep. quipped, however, that my efforts were pretty futile because there were countless other companies providing the same services. So I asked for those company names and, sure enough, eventually found their web presence with similar business-descriptions and opt-out policies. All of this data aggregation was happening unbeknown to myself and probably most folk that are not in the car insurance industry. Many of them had outdated records (they only mine DMV so often), and showed various false information about my driving record in their records. This was the info. that would be used to analyze my driving habits for insurance rates. All in all, it was breathtaking how flawed and vast this info. gathering network was.
So, long story short, the privacy thing goes a lot deeper than Facebook. Frankly, I have a Facebook profile and I couldn't give a damn about my privacy settings on there (I never want to work for someone that takes things I say on a site like Facebook seriously). What I do give a damn about is companies that turn a profit off of data-mining me without my permission (I NEVER requested any of these company's services, why the hell do they have the right to gather a profile on me?)
Anyways, I would much prefer to see legislation regarding issues like mine rather than crap directed at Facebook or Google. Either way, it was a few months back that I went through all of this and I forget the name of the first company I contacted. I think I still have it written on a post-it note at home. I'll try to find it and dig it up to post in a response to this message later.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
All these calls around privacy, protection of user data. They are all going to fall in the end.
That is because the young neither know nor care about privacy. The next generation will grow up in a world where pretty much no-one cares who reads what they post. People here worry all the time about employers freaking out when they see random things you've posted on the internet (hence the attempt at regulations that let you wipe a slate clean) but future employers will not care, because they too will have grown up in a world where privacy didn't really matter, and will simply filter out a persons public persona from the work persona (which is already very different for most people anyway, it's just not as obvious now).
So even if you try to regulate all of this it will not work, because when the people posting care nothing about privacy and the people building things care little about privacy, there is little you can do to stop the flood of privacy-stripping output that results.
As with everything there will be some negative side effects, but the world moves on with most people getting by just fine.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Actually, where I live, the collection of personal information is regulated by law, and Google is/was in flagrant violation of that law. It doesn't matter that the data was available in the clear, over the air : personal data is protected by law, and hand-waving excuses about technical errors or artifacts of collection process are irrelevant. I realise that the US has no proper privacy laws, but many other places (and all other industrialised nations) do have such legislation. Google simply ignored those laws, which is why they were called to task by the Canadian Privacy Commissioner and EU data regulators.
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The 2 parties have primary goals is to oppose whatever the other proposes...except for going to war !
I have to hand it to the government on this one. They have completely reframed the idea of "privacy" online and separated it from anonymity. We all know that to have true privacy, you have to have anonymity. That aspect of the debate has already been marginalized and will never be addressed. Instead what we are getting is a regulatory regime that proposes to protect our real identities online. What happens if you do not want to use your real identity? It seems like the path that we are going down is to make it more and more difficult not to.
The battle has been lost. We're already in the aftermath; the laws are now being codified to solidify the decisions that have already been made.
It would be nice to see some push back against the government on this. I'm of the opinion that if they want me to be me online, I want a cryptographically secure authentication mechanism. I want two factor RSA. I don't want a single piece of unsolicited email. Unless I have opted in by signing with my digital key, I don't want to hear one peep from advertisers.
If the government is going to get involved, it better go one of two ways. Either A, let me be anonymous or B, make it so damn burdensome for anyone who I don't want to talk to talk to me that they decide it isn't worth the hassle to initiate communication unless I solicit it.
It's a Canadian thing. In Canada, "The House" is the House of Commons--our counterpart to Congress.
Our counterpart to the White House is Rideau Hall, but there the similarity ends with a resounding crash.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
I don't give a crap about tampons, or Roth I.R.As, or some new Genital Wart drug.
You're assuming that targeted advertising means you won't get ads for those kinds of products, since you think you're not interesting in those products. That's not quite true. Advertising dollars do the most good on 'fence-sitters'. Ad dollars are wasted if the person has no interest in the product (e.g. live in an area where it isn't available). But ad dollars are also mostly wasted if the person is already well-versed in a given subject: an expert on CPUs is more difficult to sway with flashy ads. Whereas middle-of-the-road consumers can be strongly affected by ads, often just because of brand recognition.
Example: Let's take your tampon example. When a guy gets a call from his girlfriend telling him to pick up some tampons while he's at the pharmacy, what is he going to buy? Hopefully he'll buy the brand that she likes. But failing that, he'll probably buy the brand that seems the most 'reputable', which basically means the brand he remembers from various commercials. When non-experts buy computers or other electronics, they're going to tend towards the brands they recognize. And so on...
Another aspect of marketing is to create new customers. You may not care about Roth I.R.A.s right now, but there are companies that want you to care, so that they can convert you into a customer. So, the very fact that you don't care about them, and have no particular opinion about them, makes you an ideal target for their advertising. (An expert in such matters is far more difficult to convert via advertising.)
So, just because you think tampon and I.R.A. ads are pointless to you, doesn't mean advertisers think that. In a highly targeted ad situation, you may well see ads for things that you don't (currently) care about.
All this to say that targeted advertising by no means implies "not-annoying" advertising. It's probably better than completely random advertising (there are certainly some classes of products that I don't care about and will never buy)... but it has its own annoyances. Ads, by their nature, are trying to convert your way of thinking, and thus will tend be disruptive and annoying to the target (at least in aggregate; obviously some commercials are fun). Keep in mind that what the advertisers do with their targeting data is not really in your best interest: they will be targeting you with attempts to change your spending patterns; they won't care about annoying/boring you with their ads, so long as there is a (statistical) increase in money being spent on their products.
I think the debates themselves are more of the issue in that complaint, seeing as only parties that the two major parties approve are allowed to participate in them. The C-Span issue is an artifact of that, in so much as people assume the only valid debates are those controlled by the CPD and aired on C-Span, thus undermining the separate, third-party debates.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
You see, the Dems take money orders, and the Reps take cashier's checks.
Libertarians take gold bullion ;)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Yes, let's all welcome the tyranny of the majority.
And while we're at it, the tyranny of the uninformed.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
There's an old saying "Don't steal, the Government hates competition". I suppose we could extend that to "Don't collect personal information , the Government hates competition".
As long as rule 34 isn't touched, it's all cool.
Be seeing you...
I wish I had mod points. I hadn't thought of it, but I have been in one of those situations where I favored the product I had heard of over the no-name product.
Ecept we're not really given a direct line-of-site into the legislative process. We're being given a direct line-of-sight into the dog-and-pony show that masquerades as our legislative process.
The real workings of the legislature happen behind closed doors, on K street and other places where the legislation is actually hammered out.
What we can watch on C-Span is largely circus.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
As far as advertising is concerned, I'm actually GLAD that companies are "invading my privacy" in an attempt to display ads to me that are relevant to my interests.
Good for you. Now what does that have to do with anything?
You do realize that in a world with strong privacy controls you would still be free to give advertisers as much information as you wanted to right?
In a world with strong privacy controls you could opt in to all their collection methods; install as many advertising toolbars as you can find and authorize them to see your online activity, carry around rfid tags and authorize them to track your movements. You can even shove a sensor in your ass that transmits them the composition of your diet, and the frequency and vigor of your sex life.
You are free to opt into as much data collection as you like.
Privacy controls protect people who don't want their data collected and used without their consent. There will be nothing stopping you from handing them your data so that you can get targeted ads about AMD processors and anal lube.
So the AC is all up in my grill about my UID... My handle says all. I started lurking on chips and dips back when many of you were just a gleam in your parents eye. I've paid my dues and my taxes for decades so screw you.
Nor is it possible for a consensus to be uninformed, if it includes anyone who is informed.
Can you elaborate on that argument?
Yes, let's all welcome the tyranny of the majority.
And while we're at it, the tyranny of the uninformed.
Thanks for the welcome, although about several years to late.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
You have your view of the law and the Canadian Privacy Commissioner has hers - I know which one I believe is the more sound. The mere fact that you write of "suing" in your inappropriate analogy shows how little you understand of how the legislation works.
Neither Canada nor the EU are responsible for the ridiculous situation where the US alone among industrialised nations lacks proper privacy legislation. Being ignorant of these matters is no excuse, for either you or google.
My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
Any one informed person in a consensus would either have convinced everyone to his point of view or deliberately voted against himself, presumably in an informed fashion. It follows from the definition of consensus, which means everyone agrees.
I can't get the link to open, I'm just guessing, but it's pure logic so I think I caught the gist.
I always thought "Tyranny of the majority" was a poor and insidiously elitist framing of the issue. "Tyranny of the uninformed" is better... so how can we as a society ensure that the decisions are made by fully informed people in a transparent manner? As self-proclaimed "nerds" (i.e. some of the best informed people on the planet), should we really defer that decision (or other decisions) to someone else? Red Flayer, I'd like to thank you for quoting the "metagovernment.org" url, because otherwise i might never have heard of it.
Wikileaks Is Democracy
First, this is not about the Internet. It's about the American way of using it.
In other (Western) countries I could write things like "you are completely incompetent", but I can' t write "someone should drive by your house and teach you a lesson".
In the US I can write "Dr. Joe performs abortion and lives in 400 Main. To bad, if something would happen to him" but I can' t write something, some company's lawyer won' t like (well, I can if I have the money).
In other countries, companies are limited by law to what extent and what kind of information they can keep about me. Companies that do, have to provide that information to me.
In the US, I can't publish internal information about companies, but they can collect and sell anything they want about me. If I want to see what they have on me, I have to pay for that. (In at least half of the states I pay for the privilege to correct a false credit score).
Will Obama fix that? Probably not. Partly because he really isn't that radical, when it comes to change. Partly because, as soon as he starts talking about protecting privacy, some corporation shills will rephrase it to "limiting freedom" (of corporations), "regulating free speech" (of corporate persons), "taking away our rights" (for corporations to treat private information as they please and to not be accountable for anything).
You might or might not be a CS professor, but you're certainly a liar. If you are a professor, your students should ignore you.
Because what the article says is
122B / 1.294T = 9.4281298%. "Budget shortfall" = "deficit". The 2010 fiscal year was the first budget that Obama presented. The 2009 budget was Bush's last budget.
Since you're a CS professor and a liar, I'll explain that means "Obama's deficit was 9% lower than Bush's deficit". If we're rounding down, and I'm sure you'd prefer that.
Let's move on to taxes. Since you're a Republican, you're just lying. The definition of taxes is money collected by the government from the people. 95% of Americans paid less taxes starting in April 2009, passed within Obama's first 100 days as his policy. That's because 95% of Americans paid less to the government under Obama's policy. You're lying just like a Republican: the "very creative definition" is to call the health insurance premiums you pay to a private corporation "taxes". Those increases came within the many loopholes and compromises Republicans forced into the HCR law.
There is as much a "consensus among economists" that Clinton's "forced lending policies" caused this recession 8 years after Clinton left office as there is "consensus among scientists" that Climate Change is either not happening or is not reducible by reducing human generated Greenhouse pollution. That is to say "no such consensus", at least not among real economists (or scientists). Of course, there's consensus among Republicans that the deregulation created as a top policy priority by Texas senator Republican Phil Gramm that Clinton signed, and run into the red zone by the Republican Congress under Bush was somehow something Republicans tried to stop. Somehow 6 years of a Republican monopoly on all three Federal bodies that regulate and deregulate couldn't curb them, but a lone Democratic president could create them. I could go on about how rich people who fund and vote Republicans into power defaulted on mortgages at a much higher rate than the poor people Clinton insisted get more credit while Republicans were deregulating. But you're a Republican liar, so I won't waste more time on that.
But I will spend another moment pointing out that even Obama's first budget, that reduced Bush's deficit by over 9%, was itself inflated by spending hundreds of $BILLIONS under the bailout that Bush forced the Congress to pass (along with many Republicans) during his final months in power, the bank bailout. Because Obama forced that bailout to include America's auto industry, the core of America's manufacturing and overall economy, despite every Republican fighting it. Without that bailout, America's economy would be unrecognizable today, two years later. Closely related is how Obama's overall management of the bailouts has kept unemployment at 9.x%, instead of over 12%. Unemployment caused by Bush, his two wars, his ignoring the real economy in favor of deregulating banksters with his Republican Congress.
Maybe you don't see a rescued economy around you because you're a CS professor. More likely it's because you're a Republican, and all you can see is Fox "News", which keeps you dumb and angry - at anyone but the Republican culprits.
While I am a reasonable person who can recognize the truth. You Republican liars crashed America, Obama has kept us out, and you Republicans have used whatever power you've retained to keep us crashed. And you will never stop lying about it.
--
make install -not war
The problem with your theory is this: It fails to take into account the incredible power of propaganda and its effect on a populace. Just look how many American to this very day believe Iraq had something to do with 9/11? Why do they believe that? Because that is what the propaganda told them to believe, that's why!
So unless you have some "silver bullet" that would dissolve all these "to big to fail" giant multinational corps with more money than many third world countries, well then you are just doomed to fail. Because they have the massive WMD known as propaganda in their pocket and I'd argue thanks to the "always on" nature of the MSM it is even easier to change the masses to your thinking than it was then. Just look at how many dirt poor consistently vote against their interests by voting republican? Does anyone actually think republican policies are gonna help someone living in a tar paper shack? But because their local MSM is hard right and pounds those views into them 24/7 that is how they vote.
Welcome to the future comrade, where just a handful or people can completely control the beliefs of a large section of a populace simply using the incredible power of propaganda. Hell look how many poor people voted against getting themselves medical care even though studies have shown that having large sections of your populace unable to see a doctor is bad for everyone? Propaganda my friend, propaganda.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
they won't share with the government.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
If you don't understand the thought process behind a decision, then instantly calling it a knee jerk is itself a knee jerk. If you do understand the thought process behind it, and call it a knee jerk anyway, then it's simply deceitful. What makes you so sure that the government didn't think this one through?
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
It is your analogy that is ludicrous and you continue to cling to it as though it has some relevance. It has none. It is up to Google to follow the law. The law governs the collection, use, retention and disclosure of personal information - just because the data can be readily captured doesn't then make it "fair game" for whatever a third party wants to do with it. I readily concede that "fair game" is precisely the situation in the US - personal infomation is an asset that can be bought and sold like any other - but you should recognise that the rest of the civilised world does not share this lackadaisical approach. It always puzzled me that in the land of the free, there is barely any protection for individuals' privacy.
My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
The Republican party boldly defends the freedom of multinational corporations from all those dirty peasants, but because you hate America and want the terrorists to win, you want the nannystate to get on our backs and tell us what we can or cannot do. So of course to support your bashing of Real Americans(TM), you spin the facts to make it sound like Republicans would be doing something bad by defending our freedoms.
It's not just "bias", it's blatant spin!
[/ELABORATERIGHTWINGSTRAWMAN]
Everyone here assumes that the Republicans would do this. Why? Because of their track record. We have a Democrat doing the opposite, and here you are with a straight face pulling out the old "Democrats are just as bad!" argument.
This is a double fallacy because even if the Democrats are just as bad, this does not excuse the Republicans. The other side of the fallacy is that the Democrats usually aren't just as bad when arguments of this sort are used, and this instance is no different.
Yes, it's true that a lot of Democrats are more beholden to corporate interests than the interests of we mere peasants, but you have to be more than a little out of touch with reality to imply that the Democrats are "just as bad" as Republicans in this regard.
My theory? I just took a guess at what the OP meant. Sheesh.
In any case, how the hell did you get from that to the Iraq war to corporations that are too big to fail? Your objection to a proposal for a new political system is that the current one doesn't work?
Basically, I'm convinced that whatever side you're on, opposing you is probably the thinking man's position.
It actually just shows you don't listen. Here I will explain: The government in this case IS your enemy. Do you think all those lobbyists and congress critters and 50 bazillion leeches and relatives sucking on the government teat is just gonna say "Oh you and the American people are 100% CORRECT in everything! Even though my family will make millions and I'm set for life let me just get out of you way."
In reality because those in power have the WMD known as propaganda they won't have to EVER worry about that because YOU and your progressive ideas won't get that far. What will happen is anyone that is seen as a figurehead for this "new idea" will have so much muck raked up on him/her it ain't even funny. They'll make sure your "movement" is seen as nothing but a bunch of nuts and idiots, ala truthers, teabaggers, etc. In the end you will have FAILED, and THEY will continue on the broken path that makes them $$$$$.
What I was trying to point out is that as long as your enemy has propaganda and you don't have firm solid plans in place to counter or destroy that propaganda then you will lose and nothing will change. All these groups offering new ways of doing things always seem to do great on the technical, losing on the social and strategic thinking parts. Remember there are those out there making billions on the status quo and they WILL use any weapon they have to oppose you. If you don't have solid plans in place to deal with this threat (which from what I've seen from the Meta-government is nothing but naive belief that "rightness" will win ) then you simply have NO chance of building the critical mass required to get this beyond the bullshitting and into the actual changing the system phase.
So let's hear how YOU will combat this threat to your movement? How will YOU keep the idea of metagovernment from becoming another teabagger style fringe joke on every daily broadcast? Because without any real solid ideas on how to combat this you are doomed to fail, no matter HOW good your idea actually is.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
If it's so obvious, then surely you can easily convince me as to its truth. What makes you so sure that not one person actually thought about the policy? I can only assume you have some sort of mind-reading ray that you've secretly developed. I simply can't see how you would reach that conclusion any other way.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
People like you will end up giving away our freedoms in the name of 'fairness'. America was never meant to be safe and never meant to be fair. It was meant to be free. Coddled children like you wouldn't get that.
How does it feel to be a liar with pants constantly on fire?