Slashdot Mirror
Greenwald Criticizes Universities' Funding-Driven Collaboration With NSA
An anonymous reader writes Speaking at "Secrecy Week" at the University of Utah, one of the two journalists who helped disseminate Edward Snowden's revelations about the scope of National Security Agency surveillance has criticized universities which open up their campuses to government agencies in exchange for funding. Ex-Guardian journalist and lawyer Glenn Greenwald, one of Snowden's first contacts after his flight from the NSA, commented: "Even if you think that you're the kind of person who does not have things to hide, just living in a world where you think you're being watched and recorded it changes your behavior from being a free individual. I would submit, and I don't think that it's in dispute, that we are far closer to the tyrannical model than we are the free model."
Eh, people are tyrants, whaddya gonna do? Either we will evolve out of it, or we won't.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
So...what you're saying is that university officials are giving the NSA my dick pics I sent over my campus email in exchange for funding?
No, government control doesn't necessarily mean a loss of privacy, which I think also helps explain why right-wingers aren't against it: It's a gross invasion of privacy (which at least neoconservatives don't care about, because they "have nothing to hide" and don't mind the government in their bedroom) but it's not any kind of government control structure (in itself).
Furthermore, the NSA roughly falls under the "defense" part of government which in the eyes of the right, gets every free pass in the book of free passes and cartes-blanche.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Agreed, it's totally curious and contradictory, unless you're capable of holding two thoughts in your head at once.
The government isn't simply "too big" or "too little", as if it's either one or the other. Some parts of the government have atrophied while others have expanded and become tumorous. Dealing with health care and commerce is usually a government's job anyway, unless you want to live in Somalia.
seems to be largely a concern of the left
Rand Paul has spoken out against the NSA more consistently than nearly anyone else, even more than Ron Wyden. Rand Paul is not part of "the left". Opposition to the NSA is not confined to the left, but it is confined to the extreme fringes. Privacy is unlikely to play any significant role in the 2016 elections. The vast middle doesn't care, and the fringes have no where to turn.
Think of it this way - conservatives are opposed to social change, liberals want social change.
Surveillence cements the status quo as embodied by laws so things like marijuana legalization which depend on people breaking the law to discover for themselves that the law is bogus are harder to accomplish. See also the way the FBI tried to blackmail MLK jr with their surveillence. Nobody ever gets blackmailed by the state for supporting the status quo.
Methinks you misunderstand what the left's trying to do.
The idea behind the left, at least in America, is for the government to provide services to the citizens in liu of corporations where it makes sense to do so. The argument within the left is "where does it make sense to do so." They tend to favor regulation more than the right, especially when it will create what they think of as a "level playing field."
The left believes that things like health care will never be properly provided by the free market, and want the government to provide it instead.
The left, in general, are not after government control of the populace. That's actually more associated with the right - specifically the religious right. The leftist politicians that support government control everywhere do so not because they're left, but because they're politicians - they wouldn't be politicians if they didn't want power over people.
People tend to get the "American left" confused with "global left", which is another thing entirely (communism, welfare states, etc.). There are some lefties in America that do believe in those, of course - just like some Americans believe in the extreme right - but they're very much in the minority. What we have here is the problem you get with a two-party system - everything tends to fall into one or the other party and gets associated with it. Gun control is a perfect example - Americans tend to think of it as a "left" issue, but it's really not - it's just associated with the Democratic party.
Then there's "California left," which wants to control what color of paint you can have on your car. Sometimes I think the whole state over there is one big overgrown neighborhood association.
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
The university officials are taking money to let the NSA fish the campus for possible dick pic thieves that they can hire.
Research funding for is mostly coming from the US DoD and intelligenace agencies these days. As funding for NASA and civilian focused projects dries up, Congress keeps throwing money at the DoD and 'black box' agencies. If you want to fund your research universities you often have to take the military and intelligence money.
Private companies, by and large, do not want to spend money on R&D, they would rather externalize those costs to the taxpayer. If they REALLY believed in research they would spend some of their off shore ~1.8 trillion USD on pure research.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+