Cognitive Dissident: Interview with John Perry Barlow

Bob Hellbringer writes "Mother Jones Magazine has an online interview with John Perry Barlow of the EFF, on the things that all slashdotters love: 'the Total Information Awareness project, online activism, file sharing, and the prospect of a digital counterculture.'"

Re:speak for yourself

[doom]

Timothy wrote:

on the things that all slashdotters love: 'the Total Information Awareness project, online activism, file sharing, and the prospect of a digital counterculture.'

Twirlip of the Mists (615030) wrote:

Speak for yourself. I for one am utterly bored with the political direction Slashdot has taken in the past couple of years. And it's not even good politics! When the issues of the day are domestic and international terrorism, the war in Afghanistan, the prospect of war in Iraq and elsewhere, the economy, or even the space shuttle, the prevailing topics of discussion on Slashdot still center around that same list of drivel: the RIAA, Microsoft, and stories about "chilling effects" that are just barely more than "we hate the government but we don't know why" flamefests.

If Slashdot wants to get political, at least get political in ways that people give a damn about.

Yeah, why doesn't slashdot go into a feeding frenzy about the same hot button issues that the rest of the media is freaking out about? Why do they keep going on about irrelvent issues like intellectual freedom when we're all supposed to be focusing on hating the appointed national enemy?

Oh, and what's up with this Barlow guy? He sounds like he's not a patriot:

The Total Information Awareness project is truly diabolical -- mostly because of the legal changes which have made it possible in the first place. As a consequence of the Patriot Act, government now has access to all sorts of private and commercial databases that were previously off limits.

Re:And what about..

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, so that's OK then?

Another perspective of the TIA

[updog]

Another interesting persepective of TIA can be found here [sfgate.com]. It basically says that for every 250 people correctly identified as terrorists, there will be 250,000 people incorrectly labeled as terrorists. And, if 0.1% of these people are sufficiently traumatized, they could potentially become terrorists, and you now have 250 new terrorists, just as many as you found in the first place!

Not to mention the violation of privacy and civil liberties of those 250,000 innocent individuals...

Only in our time

[squared99]

could the songwriter for the Grateful Dead become the voice of reason. And a good one at that. Meanwhile "elected" officals are trigger happy, right wing, christian capitalists zeolots.

JPB:
There are a million virtual streetcorners with a million lonely pamphleteers on them, all of them decrying the war and not actually coming together in any organized fashion to oppose it. It strikes me that existing political institutions -- whether it's the administration or Congress or large corporations -- only respond to other institutions.

I hear a lot of complaints about slashdot being too political lately, not enough cool techy stuff. I disagree, if we have the resource of a forum like this one, we need to keep it going. We need to share this infomration, it affects a lot of us and it affects a lot of things to come. The information shared on this site has led to a lot of individual's political awakening, and those that awaken are starting to realize that they can make a difference, either by writing to an elected official, or making a donation to an organization like the EFF.

Keep it up slashdot. Cool toys and gadgets are great, but I like freedom more.

Re:speak for yourself

[doom]

Twirlip of the Mists wrote:

These rights are only extended to citizens of the United States. Non-citizens are basically at the government's pleasure. There are no guarantees in the Constitution that apply to non-citizens. So yes, basically the government can take any non-citizen and throw them in a bottomless pit forever. It's legal. It's distasteful,

The constitution, in fact, guarantees due process to "all persons", there's nothing in it about restricting it to citizens.

but sometimes it's necessary.

Right. Whatever Ashcroft says is necessary is necessary.

You might want to stop and consider how you would feel if another country grabbed some US citizens and gave them the bottomless pit treatment.

Bless the phamphleteers

[seven89]

JPB said:

There are a million virtual streetcorners with a million lonely pamphleteers on them, all of them decrying the war and not actually coming together in any organized fashion to oppose it.

On a purly practical level, this remark is off base. There was a long build-up to American-Iraqi War I, but there were no serious mass protests (that I can recall) until the bombing began. Then the bombing campaign and the subsequent mop-up ground action was over before the opposition could make much of a difference. Things are very different these days -- the opposition continues to build and the fighting has not even started. I suspect the war will proceed as planned, but at every escalation point the anti-war structures now in place will facilitate a great escalation of opposition from the general public.

Meanwhile, sites such as www.antiwar.com [antiwar.com] provide hundreds of thousands of people with information about what the Bush administration is doing, what's happening in Europe and in the Arab world. That kind of easy access to relevant news and excellent commentary simply didn't exist during any other war or buildup to war. True, today the guy who checks out antiwar.com every morning might not be doing anything else. But next month maybe he will be marching in streets in protest, and he will have absorbed a great deal of background information that will make a difference in subsequent "yeah, I was there" conversations.

That kind of talk directly adresses a fundamental weakness of the Bush people -- the mass consent, such as it is, they have engineered is based primarily on the shallow propaganda technique of constant repetition. Saying "Saddam has got to disarm!" and "weapons of mass destruction!" over and over again creates in the minds of many people the notion that Iraq is just as dangerous as, say, North Korea. BUT, quite often, really, conversation with more knowledgable fellow citizens can disabuse people from such impressions.

As to the "phamphleteers," if there really are a million of them, that's wonderful! Getting intellectualy involved with issues, formulating one's thoughts, putting them in words, putting them up, almost literally, before the whole world -- those things are often precursors to more active forms of involvement. And I bet some of them have some worthy ideas, too.

Re:Speaking of getting political

[Zoop]

And such an effective political institution it is.

Oh, wait:

<sarcasm>And such an effective political institution it is.</sarcasm>

When, oh when, is the EFF going to get a DC office? A friend of mine called about volunteering. Neither of us had great sums of money, but we had time. Their response?

"Oh, we only accept local volunteer help."

"That's OK, we're in DC."

"Um, we only have an office in SF."

"???"

Helloooooo--the political capital of the U.S. is in Washington, DC, not Berkeley, CA. You don't even have to rent space in the District to be effective. The NRA has a massive complex in Fairfax, VA. So why, oh why, is the EFF only in SF? Do they think that Ashcroft is going to come to them to ask them what they think? Are they going to get videoconferences with congresscritters? Do they think the'll have any political influence without playing the political game? Not with all the more money they bring to the table.

I like the ideals of the EFF, I just find it to be a fairly lackluster effort. I'd give time and what little money I can spare to an effective organization, but at the moment, my charitable money is better given to the Institute for Justice [ij.org] (politically unpopular with Slashdotters, I know) and the ACLU [aclu.org].

It's not as if there are no successful models to follow, people.

Re:speak for yourself

[chimpo13]

No one I know has a minumum wage job. Or are you speaking of the 'freedom' to be unemployed? Check the unemployment figures.

You have a good life. Most people I know are working minum wage jobs or a dollar or two over minimum wage. I'm not fresh out of college either. But I know a lot of musicians which pretty much leads to a low paying job for some reason.

Just as not ALL countries in Europe turn a blind eye on smoking pot, not all States in the US toss you in jail for it either. Learn a little before you make such sweeping statements.

I'm confused on this one. What states don't toss you in jail for it? I don't mean to make such a sweeping statement -- I've only been to 40 states, so maybe it's the other 10 I haven't been to.

Whose country has posted border guards in another country, ostensibly to stop illegal immigrants?

Yeah! That's us! Stay away Mexicans! We've been doing that for years. 50 years ago we tossed the Japanese in internment camps. 100 years ago it was the Chinese. Based on that short record, we'll be tossing Muslims into jail shortly.

How about the 'freedom' to pay crushing taxes to give the slackers of society a free house. Or the 'freedom' to give to every family a monthly child benefit, regardless of need. I'd rather the money go to those who actually need it, not a government handout to a banker in London.

That's us again! Federal tax, state tax in most states, sales tax, gasoline tax, dmv fees, entrance fees to national parks, parking ticket fees, inheritance tax, blah blah blah fees & taxes. The US might not take 70% of what we make all at once, but it's got to be pretty danged close.

And welfare? That's mostly for large corporations. Corporations take way more than our poor people. But you probably don't know that since you don't know any minimum wage earners.

How about the 'freedom' to be forced to give your employees several weeks of vacation, regardless of merit? Yes, it is nice to have significant vacation time, but should I as an employer be forced to do that?

Yes they should. Why should employers be forced to make us work 40 hour weeks? Why, just a few decades ago, that was unheard of! The humanity of it all!

Should we have kept our military home during WWII? (and no, we did NOT win the war singlehandedly) You'd all be speaking German. The ones left alive, that is. Why did you beg for us to help out in Kosovo? Because you lacked the collective political will to do it yourselves.

That is a completely asinine question. I really don't know where to start with that one. I hope someone else takes it on.

Grow up a little, and get some time perspective. Learn what actually happens.

Yes, please grow up a little. It's easy to say America sucks, because it sucks. There's no country in the world that I'd rather live in, but being critical of the US government doesn't make me a pinko commie liberal.

You should learn how America works. Learn what actually happens. You tell the guy to quit watching the horrorshow on teevee -- which is good -- but how are you learning stuff? USA Today? Time magazine?