On Mon, May 5, 2008 at 4:13 AM, Udhay Shankar N <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > But 17 years later, things are very different. The computers I love > are being co-opted, used to spy on us, control us, snitch on us. The > National Security Agency has illegally wiretapped the entire USA and > gotten away with it. Car rental companies and mass transit and traffic > authorities are watching where we go, sending us automated tickets, > finking us out to busybodies, cops and bad guys who gain illicit > access to their databases. The Transport Security Administration > maintains a "no-fly" list of people who'd never been convicted of any > crime, but who are nevertheless considered too dangerous to fly. The > list's contents are secret. The rule that makes it enforceable is > secret. The criteria for being added to the list are secret. It has > four-year-olds on it. And US senators. And decorated veterans -- > actual war heroes. > > The 17 year olds I know understand to a nicety just how dangerous a > computer can be. The authoritarian nightmare of the 1960s has come > home for them. The seductive little boxes on their desks and in their > pockets watch their every move, corral them in, systematically > depriving them of those new freedoms I had enjoyed and made such good > use of in my young adulthood.
<snip> I hope Cory's book is instrumental in creating a new generation of civil libertarians and cyber activists (a la what _The Hacker Crackdown_ did to a previous generation). However, I cannot help but nitpick Cory's comment about 17-year-olds understanding the peril. While they may know the dangers of surveillance by TLAs, I am amazed to find the naivety with which my young nephews and nieces happily live their lives publicly on Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Orkut and a dozen other social networking sites. I wonder if the public exposure (and recording, indexing and preserving forever) of highly personal lives in social networking sites today is merely the next incarnation of injudicious flame wars on Usenet of my generation. Somehow I cannot help but think that there is a difference between the two. Nobody could accuse Usenet of getting a nerd laid. Thaths -- Bart: We were just planning the father-son river rafting trip. Homer: Hehe. You don't have a son. Sudhakar Chandra Slacker Without Borders
