Eben Moglen: Social Networking "Creating Systems of Comprehensive Surveillance" 236
An anonymous reader writes "Eben Moglen, founder of the Freedombox project, has taken to yelling at journalists reporting about social networks. One wonders if this messaging will work to end proprietary, centralized social networks or not."
Re:Moglen is right (Score:3, Funny)
Someday, people will wonder why we ever felt compelled to hide so much of our lives from each other.
Re:It was the height of folly (Score:4, Funny)
But, this is web 2.0 now. Completely safe.
Re:Moglen wasn't particularly helpful (Score:2, Funny)
If I happen to upload pictures of a couple of my friends (I generally don't) and those friends, unbeknownst to me, happen to be on the run from the Myanmar secret police (who are "evil"), then I've informed on them and they're going straight to the Ministry of Love.
Coulda used a slightly more concrete, real-world example, myself, by hey, I'll keep the warning in mind.
The probability that your friends are, unbeknownst to you, on the run from the Myanmar secret police, or that they are secret freedom fighters waging an important campaign to end the tyranny of some evil regime, is approximately as great as the probability that your friends are terrorists/bank robbers/criminal masterminds and in some way deserving of arrest. Neither of these greatly exceeds the probability that they are also race car drivers or test pilots with sixteen inch pleasure tools. The latter is a common fantasy, and so are the former: all are manifestations of the desire to be more important than one really is. It's pure ego-tripping to think that you're selling out your friends to some dangerous secret agency, especially a foreign intelligence service or police force. Your friends are not James Bond, nor are they Nelson Mandela or leaders of a peaceful but misunderstood resistance force. This is not the end-times, nor are you or your friends protagonists in any global drama. You are boring.
As evidence that your are boring, consider the fact that you spend a good portion of your life on Facebook.
Re:Moglen is right (Score:2, Funny)
Moglen is right, and that reporter is a moron.
The reporter is actually a troll.
Your ideas (Score:4, Funny)
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your facebook group.