Slashdot Mirror
Legislation Requiring Tech Industry To Report Terrorist Activity Dropped
itwbennett writes: John Ribeiro reports that 'the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee has dropped a provision that would have required Internet companies to report on vaguely-defined terrorist activity on their platforms.' The draft legislation, which was unanimously passed by the Committee in July, was widely derided by the tech industry for its technical difficulty and by users for invasion of privacy.
Why is one single member of the United States Senate Intelligence Committee voting in favor of this legislation, let alone unanimously?
There is no circumstance in which a free citizen, not having signed any contract, should be required to report anything whatsoever to his government. My family was brought up under a dictatorship, and the reason that people were so successfully terrorised (i.e. felt fear and anticipated punishment) everywhere was not because there was a policeman on every street corner, in every bar, and in every home - though you did learn to shut your fucking piehole if anyone associated with the government was drinking on the next table. It was because the average Joe was encouraged to DO THEIR DUTY! and report - or, more often, misreport, because they simply don't like someone - suspicious behavior. Little fascists all saw it as their duty to keep everyone else in line.
The rolling back of authoritarianism comes not when the government turns its beady eyes away from your business, but when the citizens no longer consider themselves as servants of their government. In order for this to happen, citizens must disabuse themselves of the belief that there is some common enemy which warrants hiding under the protective wing of Mother State.
Now there are lots of people who are genuinely dangerous in personal and professional, public and private spheres: a mugger; an abusive family member who threatens you every time you try to get away; a jealous work colleague who misbehaves while logged into your account; a power-hungry politician who wants to make sure that something benign you're doing is criminalised, and can be recorded in advance, so it's just a matter of bringing up the data when needed; a psychopathic hedge fund manager who just bought control of your life-saving medication. These characters all have the specific features of being 1) identifiable actors; 2) with sufficient power; 3) taking specific relevant actions; 4) which either restrict your freedom immediately or have a chilling effect on your behavior. Bogeymen fail almost all these tests, while genuine threats do not.
They don't actually have to read the paperwork,
So, I put a clause in there about no brown M&Ms. Or the whole thing is null and void. I see one brown M&M, document it and their whole case will be thrown out.
Have gnu, will travel.