I want Dianne Feinsteins metadata, then. Shouldn't be a big issue, after all Malte Spitz did it, and we didn't find out anything about him... except just about everything he did.
And even that was just the position data. It did not include who he called, it was just a simple newspaper (with limited resources) doing it, and it was not cross-checked with every other person in Germany.
They see public opinion as just another battlefield. Truths that may lead the people to oppose "necessary" action, e.g. wars, will be suppressed. Government embarrassment is a grave threat to national security that cannot be tolerated.
They've dug themselves so deep into authoritarianism that they see no safe way out, and so they just have to keep digging.
They didn't agree, they were forced. They were even advised that seeking a lawyer's advice before complying would be a crime.
You got to wonder, if they had quietly refused, what would have happened to them? After all, trying them in public could compromise the secrecy of this order. Even punishing them would be tricky, you couldn't tell anyone why you were doing it. What would the family get to hear? "My son the Verizon employee is in prison for disobeying unspecified secret orders"? or simply "One day, my son disappeared at work and hasn't been seen since" ?
Is that the future in the US? It is unless they change course on these insane secrecy demands, because it's simply not possible to implement without such measures as soon as anyone stands up to it.
It makes the East German Stasi look like like rank amateurs.
This is the most apt comparison. With total information awareness like this, the Stasi could probably have used a lot less force - you can get away with using very little force, when you know just the right place to apply it.
So just that the US government isn't torturing as much as the Stasi, doesn't mean their grip on society is less tight.
I'm pretty sure there's not just a dossier on, say, Glenn Greenwald. There's probably also a model estimating his impact, fed with legally and illegally (like this) trawled data. No need to fully and violently suppress dissent, when you can monitor and regulate its impact to such a level.
If so, why do they need to order Verizon to do it?
Because that's the least expensive. They could probably get all Verizon's data without their cooperation, but then they'd have the additional problem of hiding it from Verizon. Much easier to just command them to shut up (and not talk to their lawyer).
Stanley Milgram did no such thing. It's a big difference between convincing people to be evil to strangers, and convincing them to murder their loved ones.
While we're speaking of dictators: Every dictator on that list would have wept with joy if they had information on their citizens on par with what NSA has through Verizon (and others) now.
Even if you think Obama and his administration is completely to be trusted with information on this level, who knows what it will be used for in 10 years, and by who.
Lose their job? If Obama's attitude to leaks - uncontrolled leaks, that is - is anything to go by, they're probably going to round up and execute every 10th Verizon employee or something. And loudly proclaim that it's constitutional and necessary for national security reasons which you can't be trusted to hear.
"I am troubled by the possibility that leak investigations may chill the investigative journalism that holds government accountable." -- Barack Obama, May 23, 2013
It could easily be a way to obscure who they're surveilling, so that Verizon, for example, has no way of knowing which customer they're interested in.
Oh yeah, that's likely! They don't really want to spy on everyone, but they just have to. To not tip their hand.
Anonymous Coward, this is the time you look in the mirror and realize that what you see is a person who's going to laughable lengths to excuse government misconduct.
The androids are really bad in the book. Not only that, they follow a theme that they each have a particular trait which conceals their lack of humanity. For the opera singer Luba Luft, it's musical talent, the ability to deeply move people with her singing. For Garland, it's a "gruff but reasonable", somewhat paternal policeman image. For Pris Stratton, it's vulnerability. For Roy Baty, it's affection for his wife - you can like someone and be sad when they're dead without having empathy at all, Dick suggests (and it's probably accurate).
The higher power thing is very much a theme with Philip K. Dick too, but there it's not something you seek out, it's something that seeks out you, in whatever form you're capable of receiving it (memorably as advertising in Ubik). Dick's heterodox postmodern/semi-gnostic Christianity is very apparent in the book.
* Jesus suffers the ultimate public humiliation by being crucified. Mercer suffers the humiliation of being exposed as a fraud, he's really an alcoholic actor.
* Jesus transcends his apparent defeat by miraculously revealing himself to his followers. So does Mercer (to Deckard alone).
* Mercer (in the miraculous vision) does not deny that he was exposed and is really an actor. In the gospels, Jesus does not deny that he died.
For one thing, Deckard in DADoES is deeply religious, and religion is one of the main points of the book. He is also absolutely and undoubtedly human. In one subplot the replicants try to fool him into thinking he's one of them, but they fail. Also, the replicants are absolutely and undoubtedly not human. Sometimes, you may be fooled into thinking they are - especially viewed through the eyes of the brain-damaged J.R. Isidore - but if you look closely, what may seem like empathy in the androids is really just his projection. He sees Pris Stratton being vulnerable and afraid, for instance, and feels empathy with her, but he doesn't notice she doesn't return it. (Until she molests a real live spider, and Isidore's world comes crashing down in a big way.)
Isidore, by the way, is the second main character of the novel, and he's entirely left out of the film.
I'd say that means it has very little to do with the book.
I think the term we're looking for is simply cyberpunk. "Japan-inspired neon with rain and grime" is also a pretty good description of William Gibson's books.
Blade Runner pretty much defined the cyberpunk aesthetic in cinema. That's why it's a great movie, even though it ignores several big themes in PKD's book, and gets the one it gets completely wrong. ("Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" isn't even cyberpunk, it's post-apocalyptic).
It's Google who are pushing a 7-day deadline for vulnerability disclosure. These companies are in effect saying "That's not fair, we can't fix our software that quickly!". It would be a real PR foot bullet if people understood what they're saying.
The reason FSF have all these disclaimers is of course that they're necessary in the present copyright regime. That does not mean they approve of it. FSF/Stallman would prefer a regime where even their copyleft licenses would be invalid. That is old news, and you aren't very familiar with the debate if you didn't know it.
But really, if copyrights are like property, the same logic should apply to them. If buying a program is like renting a lawnmover (and it would be, since a program is still someone else's intellectual property after you buy it), then could you get away with a disclaimer saying "This lawnmover may not be useful for anything at all, inlcuding mowing lawn, and if it malfunctions and attacks your family dog that's not our responsibility"?
It is of course possible to have a system where there are copyrights and they're not like property. But then you should lay off the property rhetoric and the property thinking, and accept that as you don't have the full obligations that come with actual property, you don't have the full rights either.
If I own a bull, and this bull gets loose in a china shop, I'm liable. Why should intellectual property be any different?
If you own a gene, and a virus is using that gene to kill people, well, it's your duty to stop that virus doing what it's doing, and if you don't, expect to pay damages!
(But somehow I don't think the champions of intellectual property want the property metaphor to extend that far.)
I think you are spending far too much time looking at how people can kill eachother and not enough at why they do it. Guns don't spontaneously kill people, and thats the whole point and its absolutely true.
True, in a sense. The problem with guns is what they do to people's attitudes when they're perceived of as something you should own for use on other people. If everyone agreed guns are only for hunting, for instance, they could have more guns than the US and still have few issues. (As I understand it, this is the case for some countries).
If you go around telling yourself every single day: "I'm entitled to kill if I deem it necessary, and I'm prepared for that extreme eventuality right now!" that probably does something to your attitude to other people. With potentially far-reaching consequences. Even if you never fire a shot.
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I want Dianne Feinsteins metadata, then. Shouldn't be a big issue, after all Malte Spitz did it, and we didn't find out anything about him... except just about everything he did.
And even that was just the position data. It did not include who he called, it was just a simple newspaper (with limited resources) doing it, and it was not cross-checked with every other person in Germany.
They see public opinion as just another battlefield. Truths that may lead the people to oppose "necessary" action, e.g. wars, will be suppressed. Government embarrassment is a grave threat to national security that cannot be tolerated.
They've dug themselves so deep into authoritarianism that they see no safe way out, and so they just have to keep digging.
They didn't agree, they were forced. They were even advised that seeking a lawyer's advice before complying would be a crime.
You got to wonder, if they had quietly refused, what would have happened to them? After all, trying them in public could compromise the secrecy of this order. Even punishing them would be tricky, you couldn't tell anyone why you were doing it. What would the family get to hear? "My son the Verizon employee is in prison for disobeying unspecified secret orders"? or simply "One day, my son disappeared at work and hasn't been seen since" ?
Is that the future in the US? It is unless they change course on these insane secrecy demands, because it's simply not possible to implement without such measures as soon as anyone stands up to it.
This is the most apt comparison. With total information awareness like this, the Stasi could probably have used a lot less force - you can get away with using very little force, when you know just the right place to apply it.
So just that the US government isn't torturing as much as the Stasi, doesn't mean their grip on society is less tight.
I'm pretty sure there's not just a dossier on, say, Glenn Greenwald. There's probably also a model estimating his impact, fed with legally and illegally (like this) trawled data. No need to fully and violently suppress dissent, when you can monitor and regulate its impact to such a level.
Because that's the least expensive. They could probably get all Verizon's data without their cooperation, but then they'd have the additional problem of hiding it from Verizon. Much easier to just command them to shut up (and not talk to their lawyer).
Stanley Milgram did no such thing. It's a big difference between convincing people to be evil to strangers, and convincing them to murder their loved ones.
While we're speaking of dictators: Every dictator on that list would have wept with joy if they had information on their citizens on par with what NSA has through Verizon (and others) now.
Even if you think Obama and his administration is completely to be trusted with information on this level, who knows what it will be used for in 10 years, and by who.
Secret legal "interpretations", then, if you insist on picking nits.
Legal interpretations so secret that you aren't even allowed to discuss them with your lawyer.
Yeah, right. The only checks on executive power right now appear to be blank ones.
Sure, they're not using that power to round up and torture you. Right now. Forgive me for thinking Obama doesn't deserve a prize for that.
Lose their job? If Obama's attitude to leaks - uncontrolled leaks, that is - is anything to go by, they're probably going to round up and execute every 10th Verizon employee or something. And loudly proclaim that it's constitutional and necessary for national security reasons which you can't be trusted to hear.
"I am troubled by the possibility that leak investigations may chill the investigative journalism that holds government accountable." -- Barack Obama, May 23, 2013
Oh yeah, that's likely! They don't really want to spy on everyone, but they just have to. To not tip their hand.
Anonymous Coward, this is the time you look in the mirror and realize that what you see is a person who's going to laughable lengths to excuse government misconduct.
The androids are really bad in the book. Not only that, they follow a theme that they each have a particular trait which conceals their lack of humanity. For the opera singer Luba Luft, it's musical talent, the ability to deeply move people with her singing. For Garland, it's a "gruff but reasonable", somewhat paternal policeman image. For Pris Stratton, it's vulnerability. For Roy Baty, it's affection for his wife - you can like someone and be sad when they're dead without having empathy at all, Dick suggests (and it's probably accurate).
The higher power thing is very much a theme with Philip K. Dick too, but there it's not something you seek out, it's something that seeks out you, in whatever form you're capable of receiving it (memorably as advertising in Ubik). Dick's heterodox postmodern/semi-gnostic Christianity is very apparent in the book.
* Jesus suffers the ultimate public humiliation by being crucified. Mercer suffers the humiliation of being exposed as a fraud, he's really an alcoholic actor.
* Jesus transcends his apparent defeat by miraculously revealing himself to his followers. So does Mercer (to Deckard alone).
* Mercer (in the miraculous vision) does not deny that he was exposed and is really an actor. In the gospels, Jesus does not deny that he died.
The setting isn't really the same either! Blade Runner is classic cyberpunk (and really great cyberpunk aesthetic), but the book is post-apocalyptic.
Or Buster Friendly.
No. (Spoilers, by the way).
For one thing, Deckard in DADoES is deeply religious, and religion is one of the main points of the book. He is also absolutely and undoubtedly human. In one subplot the replicants try to fool him into thinking he's one of them, but they fail.
Also, the replicants are absolutely and undoubtedly not human. Sometimes, you may be fooled into thinking they are - especially viewed through the eyes of the brain-damaged J.R. Isidore - but if you look closely, what may seem like empathy in the androids is really just his projection. He sees Pris Stratton being vulnerable and afraid, for instance, and feels empathy with her, but he doesn't notice she doesn't return it. (Until she molests a real live spider, and Isidore's world comes crashing down in a big way.)
Isidore, by the way, is the second main character of the novel, and he's entirely left out of the film.
I'd say that means it has very little to do with the book.
The sets may be non-overlapping, but there's a not too implausible transition path somewhere in there ;)
(For all I know both claims are totally made up wrt. this actor, by the way).
> The term you're looking for is Tech-noir.
I think the term we're looking for is simply cyberpunk. "Japan-inspired neon with rain and grime" is also a pretty good description of William Gibson's books.
Blade Runner pretty much defined the cyberpunk aesthetic in cinema. That's why it's a great movie, even though it ignores several big themes in PKD's book, and gets the one it gets completely wrong. ("Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" isn't even cyberpunk, it's post-apocalyptic).
It's Google who are pushing a 7-day deadline for vulnerability disclosure. These companies are in effect saying "That's not fair, we can't fix our software that quickly!". It would be a real PR foot bullet if people understood what they're saying.
The reason FSF have all these disclaimers is of course that they're necessary in the present copyright regime. That does not mean they approve of it. FSF/Stallman would prefer a regime where even their copyleft licenses would be invalid. That is old news, and you aren't very familiar with the debate if you didn't know it.
But really, if copyrights are like property, the same logic should apply to them. If buying a program is like renting a lawnmover (and it would be, since a program is still someone else's intellectual property after you buy it), then could you get away with a disclaimer saying "This lawnmover may not be useful for anything at all, inlcuding mowing lawn, and if it malfunctions and attacks your family dog that's not our responsibility"?
It is of course possible to have a system where there are copyrights and they're not like property. But then you should lay off the property rhetoric and the property thinking, and accept that as you don't have the full obligations that come with actual property, you don't have the full rights either.
If I own a bull, and this bull gets loose in a china shop, I'm liable. Why should intellectual property be any different?
If you own a gene, and a virus is using that gene to kill people, well, it's your duty to stop that virus doing what it's doing, and if you don't, expect to pay damages!
(But somehow I don't think the champions of intellectual property want the property metaphor to extend that far.)
True, in a sense. The problem with guns is what they do to people's attitudes when they're perceived of as something you should own for use on other people. If everyone agreed guns are only for hunting, for instance, they could have more guns than the US and still have few issues. (As I understand it, this is the case for some countries).
If you go around telling yourself every single day: "I'm entitled to kill if I deem it necessary, and I'm prepared for that extreme eventuality right now!" that probably does something to your attitude to other people. With potentially far-reaching consequences. Even if you never fire a shot.
Hah, no! It's lack of oxygen to the brain that kills people.
And less useful. Literally one-shot.