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We have become Big Brother


Fidcal

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I got too depressed after Page 2... Damn. I shouldn't have said that should I? Now I'll be seeing anti-depressant adverts on my bog paper... Hell, they probably have them on high bridges.

 

Too depressed to carry on reading? Aww, man! You missed the best part. (The schoolgirl and her father. Joy joy!)

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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  • 1 month later...

Strictly speaking this is off-topic because it's not 'us' but the more conventional government that is Big Brother here:

 

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I reserve judgement for now. It is most likely a typical media over-dramatisation and it actually means a system will be put in place so they can monitor individuals as needed - probably with a magistrate's order or somesuch like now with a normal phone. But if it means all ISPs will be forced to record every website visit and every email, etc. and they will routinely be monitored then it really is Big Brother in a big way.

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Well, big brother systems wouldnt be much of a problem if we werent living under the opressive states we are right now. Consider what happens when you denounce atrocities from a major superpower, which has a lot of vested interest in that war; the person who leaked the material is locked up for life, if not executed; the person who posted on the public forums, is being persecuted around the world by more than one state (the Wikileaks case). As far as I can remember, american people has been heavily agaisnt all the wars I have witnessed their governments getting them into, and possibly dont even know how many their government is fighting "for them" right now. In Brazil politicians routinely gather together to discuss and raise their own salaries, and the ex-president (Lula) would travel the world prasing Brazil's immense natural richies and conservational efforts (amazonia, etc) while their government opened to doors to free exploitation, and was actually at the very same time the worst environmental offender both in absolutes and proportional terms, in the world (industry caused it, of course, not the people). American people didnt create a morgage bubble which sent the world into a crisis, portuguese, greek, spanish people didnt create any debt, in fact all they ever do is pay rivers of money in taxes; the governments and institutions did. I've been getting the feeling that whoever believes that their governments are out to do anything other then perpetuate their own self interest, and that of their true constituency (the private sector interest that actually put their food on the table), is not really looking. I used to pay very little attention to politics, but now it seems to me that this is an urgent thing to do. (Sorry about the rant, been reading one too many articles on the subject).

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Seems to be a contradiction in terms. Here in the UK there are longtime, on-going stories about email and phone hacking by the News of the World outraging the nation and likely bringing about changes in how the media is controlled - or at least, self-controlled. On the other hand the government just quietly slip this in and start doing it themselves and say they respect human rights. However, I'd like to know more details of how they propose to do it. If they have good reason to suspect someone and present those reasons to a magistrate on case by case basis then I have no objection if they are then authorised to surveil that person(s) by whatever means.

 

But this really touches on the dreadfully misleading, uninformative, sparse, badly-written, and ambiguous news reports we get in the media. Don't even get me started on that...

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ya2TmSmbUQI

 

http://rt.com/usa/ne...a-internet-175/

 

 

H.R. 3523, a piece of legislation dubbed the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (or CISPA for short), has been created under the guise of being a necessary implement in America’s war against cyberattacks. But the vague verbiage contained within the pages of the paper could allow Congress to circumvent existing exemptions to online privacy laws and essentially monitor, censor and stop any online communication that it considers disruptive to the government or private parties. Critics have already come after CISPA for the capabilities that it will give to seemingly any federal entity that claims it is threatened by online interactions, but unlike the Stop Online Privacy Act and the Protect IP Acts that were discarded on the Capitol Building floor after incredibly successful online campaigns to crush them, widespread recognition of what the latest would-be law will do has yet to surface to the same degree.

 

(...)

 

In a press release penned last month by the CDT, the group warned then that CISPA allows Internet Service Providers to “funnel private communications and related information back to the government without adequate privacy protections and controls.

The bill does not specify which agencies ISPs could disclose customer data to, but the structure and incentives in the bill raise a very real possibility that the National Security Agency or the DOD’s Cybercommand would be the primary recipient,” reads the warning.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, another online advocacy group, has also sharply condemned CISPA for what it means for the future of the Internet. “It effectively creates a ‘cybersecurity'’ exemption to all existing laws,” explains the EFF, who add in a statement of their own that “There are almost no restrictions on what can be collected and how it can be used, provided a company can claim it was motivated by ‘cybersecurity purposes.’”

What does that mean? Both the EFF and CDT say an awfully lot. Some of the biggest corporations in the country, including service providers such as Google, Facebook, Twitter or AT&T, could copy confidential information and send them off to the Pentagon if pressured, as long as the government believes they have reason to suspect wrongdoing. In a summation of their own, the Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan arm of the Library of Congress, explains that “efforts to degrade, disrupt or destroy” either “a system or network of a government or private entity” is reason enough for Washington to reach in and read any online communiqué of their choice.

 

(...)

 

 

;)

Edited by i30817
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Terrorists? Hardly... I was listening to a Noam Chomsky lecture the other day, from a while back, where there were questions to him about the revolutionary role of free information flow on the internet on allowing people to denounce, discuss and organize mass efforts to resist totalitarian policies and state agression (like Egypt, bypassing traditional means of international denounciation, and biased, unresponsive media corporations). He simply said that internet is a tool, and like any tool it can be used for legitimate uses like connecting people in a social struggle, or it could be used as a tool for opression and persecution, by states. We already know what states would like it to be, time would tell if people would actually allow them to turn what is essentially a free network into something they can control a lot better. There are already states that strongly limit access to internet and monitor what people use it for (China for example); I think we all can see why other states would like to have the same kind of power, even though they cant go all out like that, or they risk loosing legitimacy. Its not just about corporations telling them to do whatever is necessary to limit piracy online; the fact that people can organize themselves through it, and use it to spread information across the world in a massive, instantaneous manner, exposing state fraud, atrocities, intrigue (again, Wikileaks for example), and corporations secret communication, corruption, etc. Look at the humiliation they suffer whenever an internal document is publicly released. This of course makes internet a danger they cant afford to be left loose like that, I do believe this explains what we are seeing a lot better than simple "this is for security reasons, nothing you can do about it" propaganda.

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  • 2 months later...

Most news media do not give sufficient details of events so I wasn't sure whether a warrant would be needed (this is UK) to access phone calls and emails etc in the future plan. This latest report (which gives only a few sentences more than we already knew) indicates no warrant will be needed but police, security, and tax officials will be able to randomly scan most anything we do...

 

http://www.ellesmere...55940-31186018/

 

This is all wrong imo. I have no objection to any of the above services applying to a magistrate for a warrant in particular cases (as they do now for phone tapping or surveillance etc.) but to give thousands of officials the power to casually poke through our personal lives is evil. The terrorists have won.

 

All systems are abused in some degree and no doubt this will be too.

 

I guess this is a bit off-topic because it's the authorities who will have this power over us.

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This latest report (which gives only a few sentences more than we already knew) indicates no warrant will be needed but police, security, and tax officials will be able to randomly scan most anything we do...

The last I read about that, was that the Lib Dems forced an amendment that only the police could access these details and even then only with a warrant, and even then only if it was deemed necessary and does not affect the privacy of the family or other innocent people in contact with the person under investigation.

 

The last thing we need is some jumped up little cnut/bint with ideas above thier station that works for the Council or HMRC having access to info that they have absolutely no right to what so ever.

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Terrorists don't hate freedom. They hate the West/the infidels/non-Muslims. It's governments that hate freedom, especially if it's exercised via the internet.

 

http://scrapingtheba...s-the-old-boss/

http://scrapingthebarrel.wordpress.com/2011/08/28/the-internet-witch-hunt/

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Terrorists don't hate freedom. They hate the West/the infidels/non-Muslims. It's governments that hate freedom, especially if it's exercised via the internet.

 

http://scrapingtheba...s-the-old-boss/

http://scrapingtheba...net-witch-hunt/

 

Two good articles. I'm surprised nobody's click the 'I like' buttons in all this time. Probably everybody's too scared in case they get tracked.

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Two good articles. I'm surprised nobody's click the 'I like' buttons in all this time. Probably everybody's too scared in case they get tracked.

 

That seems to be normal with blogs these days. I have seen people with 4000+ Twitter followers tweet about a new blog entry, and when you actually view the entry there's no more than about 2 likes/comments combined.

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I tried but it seemed you have to be registered and I wasn't that bothered. But if I had been registered, yes, I'd have clicked them both. Human nature I guess. This reminds me of fan fiction where you can get thousands of hits on a story but only 20 or 30 post comments or even a thankyou. And they don't even need to be registered. Still, those few make up for it. There's probably an equation for someone to discover one day involving number of visitors, number of actual interactions, feedback etc. Human nature is probably fairly constant so maybe someone might reduce that to a value proportion in given situations. I'm rambling... Must get myself a blog.....

 

I've never really got into blogs and twitters and facebook type communities. Seems like an ocean of information to get lost in.

 

[EDIT this just reminded me of something else. A couple months back I came across two excellent essays and spent a couple of hours researching and writing a response. After posting, my comments seemed to have disappeared into a black hole so that's not encouraging to anyone wanting to give feedback.]

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That seems to be normal with blogs these days. I have seen people with 4000+ Twitter followers tweet about a new blog entry, and when you actually view the entry there's no more than about 2 likes/comments combined.

I will only click on "likethis" button on sites I trust, this forum being one of them as I know who controls the site and I trust them etc. otherwise google and like, not on your nelly!

 

Too depressed to carry on reading? Aww, man! You missed the best part. (The schoolgirl and her father. Joy joy!)

Yes the sory of Martha Payne and her little school dinners blog, that was a breath oif fresh air! The arsehole council had to backtrack and eat thier words when the story went viral on the web,

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  • 4 months later...

CleanIT - The terrorists win because they are smashing our freedom.

 

http://arstechnica.c...s-than-thought/

 

Some candy:

"On Voice over IP services it must be possible to flag users for terrorist activity."

"Internet companies must allow only real, common names."

"Social media companies must allow only real pictures of users."

 

WIP draft or not, please tell me my hard earned tax money is not used to pay these morons' salary.

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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Speaking of this topic, sobering quote from the New York Times a few days ago:

"If the C.I.A. director can get caught, it's pretty much open season on everyone else."

MARC ROTENBERG, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, on cybersecurity investigations.

 

 

I mean effing hell, the CIA director of the USfrickin'A had to resign because of needless exposure of private emails about an affair for a completely different purpose. What does that say for the average Joe user? (And how is an affair for him any worse for him than Monica Lewinsky was for Clinton?)

 

Edit: Another one of my friends asked: Why is it that people are labeled heroes for killing, and criminals for loving?

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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Didn't that guy have wife & kids? You need to be pretty impeccable and reliable to hold a post like that.

 

If you can betray your whole family in a blink of an eye, what else can you betray? If you show your morals are loose and you can be easily corrupted by your sexual urges, of course you can't expect to hold positions of trust.

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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Are you speaking seriously? He was director of the CIA. Do you know what the CIA actually does?? Their whole modus operandi is deception. They probably use deceptive sex all the time to get information. Also, if it's true this woman would have gotten secrets for bad ends (his biographer & greatest admirer? hard sell), but isn't Lewinsky's affair with President Clinton 100,000 times worse. He was the president. He should have been hung as a traitor if *this* is bad.

 

Also, in this day and age adultery shouldn't be a crime. How do we know he "betrayed" his wife and kids? Many marriages these days are open marriages where spouses are quite open about this kind of thing and give each other permission. But anyway, the important thing is it shouldn't be the gov'ts job to tell people how to run their own marriages. If he thought it was ok for his own marriage, that's for him & his wife to discuss, but keep the gov't out of it!

 

Edit: I mean it's understandable the gov't would keep tabs on his life to make sure it's not a security threat (apparently at first they tried; they found out about the affair in June). But I don't see any more reason for him to step down than Clinton because of it ... unless it was for personal reasons. This is the "Big Brother" thread. Gov't collecting private information to harass people is supposed to be a bad thing we're railing against here.

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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I am dead serious. In my view, if you give promises, you are supposed to stick to them. Honor and stuff: it is very finnish I suppose. Maybe I am a bit old fashioned, like you suggested.

 

If you break against your standards once, it is easier to transgress later. If you break your trustworthiness in one field, it is rational to expect miserable failures in other fields as well. I don't like the idea of having people that are this easily corrupted in high positions.

 

That said, I know only vague details about this case and I agree that it is not the goverments business to actively monitor the private lives of their citizens.

 

But I do believe people of high status should exhibit resilience against corruption and thus a high status person cheating on their wives and children for as petty thing as banging someone else is and indication that the person is likely to 'play not by the rules' in other cases as well.

 

Also, I am talking about the morals of an individual and its effect on general reliability of the individual, not the morals of an agency (CIA).

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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I'm not overly worried about the whole thing. Politics and public offices have been run this way and have been subject to "scandals" of various types, sexual or otherwise, since long before I was born. If you take a job like that, you become a "person of interest". The larger issue in relation to the "Big Brother is watching you" thing is that normal people like us don't become "persons of interest" as a govt control mechanism. He was a member of the Party, we are the proles. We're supposed to be below scrutiny. What happens between the Party and the Party member is their business. Business as usual, all is double plus good.

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I am dead serious. In my view, if you give promises, you are supposed to stick to them. Honor and stuff: it is very finnish I suppose. Maybe I am a bit old fashioned, like you suggested.

 

I don't think it's old fashioned per se. I have no intention myself to ever do anything behind the back of my wife if I ever get married. But I'm on the libertarian end on this and think that there are a lot of different life situations out there. People value all sorts of things and have all sorts of living situations -- some people marry out of mad love, some cohabitate out of friendship or convenience, some are whatever nBohr's situation is... And none of them are "right" or "wrong" (in an "official" sense) if they personally tolerate it. This too is probably a very American pluralist perspective.

 

I think that matters of (private) romance and religion are on a completely different plane than *real* (public) concerns like national security, like a military regiment trusting its leadership will look out for them, or a political officer acting in good faith with the trust put in them for the position and not being corrupt. I don't have a problem trusting people to be reliable on important matters and realizing they'll be human for human matters. I mean women make men do stupid things; it's practically a truism of life. But is he trustworthy in his duty? This guy had one of the most solid reputations in the military over like 30 years, and one of the highest decorated careers you could get ... and suddenly all that's tossed out like it was nothing. Seems like what's important is skewed IMO. His public record speaks louder than his private secrets on his character, I think, in this case anyway. But interesting to see the difference in values on this. Thanks for posting your thoughts.

 

Edit: In any event, actually my original point wasn't about this general at all, but that quote. If the CIA director can be brought down after digging into his private life, what hope do the rest of us have? I was actually more worried about the state collecting private info to hold against people than his specific case anyway. It might have been this guy couldn't have stayed in his job even if people had been tolerant. It would have just opened up too many problems down the road. But normal Joe users shouldn't have to worry about this for their mid-management jobs.

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What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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