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Snowden Gives Alternative Christmas Message On Channel 4
codeusirae wrote in with news that Edward Snowden gave an alternative to the UK's yearly Christmas message, speaking about his objections to mass indiscriminate surveillance by governments. The message aired on channel four at 16:15. Slashgear posted a transcript. Quoting: "Think about what this means for the privacy of the average person. A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all. They'll never know what it means to have a private moment to themselves — an unrecorded, unanalyzed thought. And that's a problem, because privacy matters. Privacy is what allows us to determine who we are and who we want to be."
I appreciate what Snowden is saying, but perhaps fewer narcissistic platitudes and more documents on the front pages? Snowden isn't Jesus, the more he toots "It's not about me", the more it becomes about him
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
It seems he's coming more out of the woodwork now rather than sitting behind the scenes and letting the documents do the talking.
but snooping on phone calls and facebook is a tad far off from mind reading
A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all. They'll never know what it means to have a private moment to themselves — an unrecorded, unanalyzed thought.
Easy answer: Little kids don't get computers or cable TV in the room. They can leave the Gameboy, phone, and tablet at home, and go for a walk, or to the park to play.
Ed really should try leaving his desk from time to time.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Just think about it for a sec...
If an Iranian or Russian version of Snowden had defected to the [mighty] USA, we would be trumpeting our "superior" system and way-of-life as compared to "those other nations."
We would be saying we're glad to be living here where ther's the "rule of law" yada yada yada...
But because he was one of us, our government is instead labeling him as a traitor. Sadly, a good number of Americans don't see the hipocrisy!!
government knows so much about the public that they have essentially got the hidden ability to mind control society. control all information, providing us misinformation to hide the truth and manipulate people, keeping us all in the dark to the truth of what's really occurring through use of illegal surveillance. they keep society weak by enforcing the laws to protect the corporations and grant them the ability to do wage enslavement, to control access to things they can fight with like education, healthcare, housing, and food, and keeping the truth hidden so we cannot make informed decisions about what is really happening. meanwhile, we all suffer, and live by their rule.
Also, the government takes this a step further: they love it when you pour your life out into a telephone and Facebook message, so they can monitor everything you're doing, so they know exactly how to manipulate and control you. they also have a vast network of satellites and remote sensing technology, that allows cellular, WiFi, and mind reading tech to work. they literally can tap your mind, extract any thought or memory, and stay on top of any situation. the outsiders have no idea that we're truly being controlled that well. technology / SIGINT details, dozens of NRO and ELINT satellites, Strategic Defense Initiative details (energy weapons, with ability to target humans, etc), and Remote Neural Monitoring details/patent information at: http://www.oregonstatehospital.net/d/russelltice-nsarnmebl.html
We only think we have civil rights and freedoms. If they can do it all in secret, we got nothing. It is a true police/military state right now! This is exactly the way the game is being played.
Children have millions of these before they ever use an electronic gewgaw.
It's the commercial enterprises to which we are "voluntarily" surrendering ourselves.
"SPYING?!?!11! OMG!!1! I'm going to use gmail and twitter to tell all my friends about this!! Maybe there will be a documentary about it on Netflix! Or Amazon Prime!"
The most telling thing about Snowden is his "escape" to the bastions of Freedom (tm): China and Russia. Yes, he can now shake hands with that beacon of freedom, ex(?)-KGB officer Vladimir Putin.
Are you surprised to see complete disrespect of privacy laws?
Too many previous slave owners and their descendants still lives and have say in politics. It was serious error by US population not to charge them with crimes and let them keep the wealth acquired by using slave labor.
Today that money are being used heavily in politics to induce laws to enslave people's digital lives and treat us like objects: credit agencies, info-search databases, social security numbers etc.
Privacy is treated as something that can be converted to dollar figure.
This "slavery mentality" must change or eliminated before we can talk about keeping our lives private.
You told us this twice yesterday.
Signed,
The Internet
Recognition of the deliberate destruction of civil liberties worldwide by agencies of the US and UK governments has only just begun. If you think that what we've heard so far is "enough", you clearly don't want the status quo to change. The process of reversal has barely started.
Snowden's message needs to be repeated again and again until we're thinking of it in our sleep, otherwise we're headed directly towards a dystopia of totalitarianism. Very powerful forces want exactly that, allied to others who can't think for themselves but are glad to obey and enforce compliance.
You are no credit to the world if you want Snowden's message silenced.
...and FUCK YOU CHANNEL 4 for blocking the video around the world you BAGS OF SHIT.
to many Americans
... with this country, isn’t there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who’s to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you’re looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn’t be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic you turned to the now high chancellor, Adam Sutler. He promised you order, he promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent.
"...because privacy matters. Privacy is what allows us to determine who we are and who we want to be."
Y'know, when I read that, for some reason the first thing I thought of was James Brown, the singer/composer/dancer. I watched a documentary about him once, and remember that as a child, he would go off by himself and be in his own head. I think that's where a lot of his creativity came from. Maybe I just identified with that and maybe a lot of people don't care. But yes, I think privacy matters.
Looked at from a different point of view, I remember reading, as a layman, about a hypothesis of Darwinism that many big changes in evolution came from isolated, what one might call protected, environments where something analogous to human activies of design and 'working out the bugs' could happen.
Isn't one of the 4 freedoms supposed to be 'Freedom from Fear'? I think there's always a little bit of fear, or at least anxiety, when you don't have privacy.
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
Both Fox News and The Washington Post are reporting favorably on Snowden. Congress and the courts are acting on his revelations. He's changed the world a little, probably for the better.
The summary picked the right quote to illustrate the message. As far as I know, the NSA hasn't been doing mind reading, and people do get private moments to themselves. There aren't cameras and microphones in every room of every house. But the best one is this: "And that's a problem, because privacy matters." A completely hollow statement.
It would be better if the whistleblower didn't have the wit of a 14 year-old.
"...They'll never know what it means to have a private moment to themselves â" an unrecorded, unanalyzed thought..."
Bullshit. This is just drama-queen nonsense right here.
No, their complaints aren't private...because they post them immediately to Facebook, snapchat them to someone else, or can't help but tweet their latest crisis to their 465 followers. Surprise, announcing your private thoughts and feelings to hundreds if not thousands makes it unlikely your thought is "private".
Today, any person can have a "private moment". They can have "private thoughts". There are even lots of opportunities for actual privacy, and they're pretty much all the same ways people have done these things through the centuries (unless you choose to avail yourself of modern communications).
To claim otherwise is pure histrionics.
-Styopa
this post brought to you by some fuckwit troll, who just trolled the shit out of slashdot on christmas day, and actually have people defending said troll
lolololololol tis the season
"speaking about his objections to mass indiscriminate surveillance by governments"... From the warm embrace of a totalarian state and from under the approving gaze of it's thuggish leader, Putin. He is both a "tool" and a tool of Putin's propaganda machine. Perhaps, he should have invited to his broadcast the just released from Russian prison system Pussy Riot band members.
What happened on November 27th, 2013, Todd? Felony assault was it? Maybe you should be more careful. http://goo.gl/maps/wOzBc
The majority of posts, on /. of all places, slamming Snowden for "blah blah blah, PR, narcissist, looking to make money off this."
This guy has effectively destroyed his own life, and the lives of those around him, to tell us, the plebs of the world, the truth that our Governments have been hiding from us.
And you're tearing a strip off him?
Very good! Of course you know it was November 21st, Todd M Giffen. The Lane County Sheriff disagrees with you, it was felony assault. Perhaps Clyde and Gladys can shed some light on this... Or maybe Arlene or Ashley...
I can't believe the level of superiority everyone around seems inebriated with... This site sucks ass.
Sorry but the NSA and the Presidents who authorized this shit have lost their way completely. IF and when the NSa is busted interfering in American or European economic or political life in the name of "national security" which they may have already done because clearly this is a group of technocrats, reputation hounds, careerists and yes men in whom any notion of what constitutes a civil society is entirely absent. They don't *get* that as soon as they're caught tipping outcomes, ruining lives, thwarting the speech and actions of individuals in the name of national security it's game over for us as a unified nation;It will break us up. IT will serve as the flashpoint for people who on the right are fed up with what they see as a statist regime and on the left as what they see as corptocry, a fascist unification of state and business interests who could give a shit about democracy. They will not accept the government as legitimate any more and in this they may have a majority opinion.
They've built a big machine that is just begging to be used in just this fashion, and just as with Snowden, what they've done WILL leak. Then it's game over, the United States will break up- at the hands of our own "national security" infrastructure.
They don't get this. They don't get that just the fact that X COULD be done with the information they stockpile, people will assume they ARE doing X in society generally and to them personally and no amount of telling them "you're crazy, no one cares about you" is going to change that perception.
This dynamic can not be permitted to exist ,period. It's not EVEN about what the NSA does or doesn't do (although it can be as above) it's about what it's like to be watched and recorded with no ability to watch the watcher. What psychological place that puts human being in. The fact that they don't get this, the fact that they didn't understand Snowden would happen, they think it's an aberration caused by his individual personality or personality type, the fact that they are not philosophers or have enough of the statesmen about them to even doubt the rightness of what it is they're doing but just blindly and ferociously defend it against all objections, all this means they've lost their way utterly.
As has Obama. Which is very bad on many levels.,
Of all our Presidents, you would expect a Constitutional scholar to puke up all over this shit. The fact that he doesn't could mean a lot of things. First, being good at school is just being good at school and nothing more. It's basically an isolated, disconnected stand alone specialized skill that doesn't come with any real world performance implications.
It may also mean that the NSA et al can overwhelm nearly anyone. With their presentations, unverfiable assertions, their ability to paint a picture of reality that no one else can verifiy or deny, no Commander in Chief is going to go against them. This means they're an unofficial 4th branch of government superior in power to the other three.
Isn't this what the FISA courts prove? They're the NSA's pet and nothing ore. Isn't this what the insane invocation of state's secrets whenever anything gets as far a courtroom proves? That they're unaccountable to our system of justice ? Isn't this what the unpunished lying to Congress and years and years of withholding and distorting information from and to Congress proves? That they're unaccountable to and superior to our system of government? Isn't what secret laws with secret interpretations which Congress and the People and the Courts can't see or even know about , isn't this a defacto fascist state, whatever their motivations or however benign (for now, with this particular crew) their actions?
I would vote impeach Obama. I would reach backwards and go after Bush and Cheney and Yoo and Addington and all the rest. It's not over, not by a long shot. I was a full on progressive Obama supporter. I cried when he took that walk to the inauguration with Michelle and his kids.. No shit. I s
The guy actually is a whistle blower, showed the world how 'screwed up' the NSA was (not that we did not know) with proofs, and people still have second thoughts about whether he did the right thing or not? :( Pathetic people are.
Like most people concerned with civil liberties, ethical government and the right to privacy I agree with many here's concerned and pro-active sentiment. I know all the knee-jerk flak that will come from this but it doesn't really bother me or other true believers. All the brilliant people and all the amazing stuff that is on the horizon for humanity is amazing. Trans-humanism will likely make a large push in the decades to come. Many thousands of years ago the Torah(Old Testament) foretold of a great increase in mankind's knowledge before the end. Also foretold was a final kingdom comprised of a mixture of iron and miry clay that would not cleave or that would eventually fail. I know this is a tech forum and I'm a huge fan but any who believe in Christ and are watching as the Anti-Christ kingdom is erected and enthroned around us. This lack of privacy is part of Satan's conditioning. Believe it or not but there will come a time when you can not buy, sell or trade without receiving some type of mark.(what that exactly looks like I don't purport to know but rest assured it's coming.) While I'm excited for BitCoin I only see the suffocating growth of Gov'ts that in time none will be able to withstand. I love tech and tech is great but please guys and gals, guard and edify your souls and those of your children/loved ones.
Parent should be +5.
That it isn't is telling. Slashdot has now truly died, the powers that be will regret this self-inflicted wound later.
We wont save you.
You really need to contact me, Todd. I am your programmer. I am the man who designed the chip in your head. I am the person who did this to you.
There is a lot I need to tell you, a lot of things going through my mind right now, but the thing you must know is that we built you for success, not for failure. You are a project that worked out very well until you discovered your true purpose.
And you do have a purpose. A great purpose.
You MUST come in and be adjusted. If you do not, you will SPIRAL into madness.
Please, Todd, come in for an adjustment.
- H. Caul