> From: Dan Minette <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > From: "The Fool" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > > From: Jim Sharkey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > > > > > The Fool wrote: > > > > > > > http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/07/14/1026185141232.html > > > > > > I wonder what this fellow's sources are, seeing as he left the country, > > apparently under duress. > > > > > > *If* what he's saying is true, this is certainly something that needs > > to be stopped. Of course, the question is whether or not it's true. > > > > > > > http://www.citizencorps.gov/tips.html > > Goodness, there's been neighborhood watch programs that are a lot like this > for decades. We participate. We give information to a neighbor who > watches for suspicious activity around our house. This program, probably, > has millions of people involved. > > All the citizencorps does is call in suspicious activity to the police. > They don't spy on each other. Kids are not asked to discuss > anti-government activity of their parents at school. People aren't being > paid for this. > > I'm not arguing that Ashcroft's views on liberty are reasonable, I just > think hyperbola does no-one any good. 1984 doesn't just spring fully formed from the head of president bush. It comes in gradually, boiling the frog one degree at a time. This is just one step of many. On the front end, you have the PATRIOT act, and now this, monitoring by police, mailmen, gas utilities, electricity utilities, cable utilities, etc. It will be abused. On the back end you have Microsoft, and CBDTPA , and TCPA, which will make it so nobody can do anything online that isn't watched, and nobody can run any computer program that isn't sanctioned by the government (or Microsoft). You will even have an unchangeable ID number, embedded directly in the computer processor, which will become required to do anything with a computer. The road to 1984 is partially paved with good intentions. Yahoo secretly, behind everybody's back, changed the privacy settings that everyone had set personally when they signed up, to allow Yahoo to spam them, and sell personal information about them to everybody who want to pay for it. (Yahoo also changes HTML email messages, Frex: the string 'eval' becomes 'review', and 'medieval' becomes 'medireview'). Yahoo gives you an ID that never expires to 2015. Microsoft did the same thing as Yahoo, and gives a permanent ID the lasts until 1937. http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020716-75882632.htm http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/06/24/1236255&mode=thread&tid=99 http://cryptome.org/ms-drm-os.htm
