Privacy International Releases 2007 Report 179
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Privacy International has released their report on privacy for 2007, which includes a color-coded world map that highlights the countries with the best privacy laws, the privacy-hostile countries being in black. While many of the overall rankings may come as no surprise, it does highlight some of the more obscure abuses. For example, Venezuela requires your fingerprints just to get a phone and South Korea requires a government registration number linked to your identity before you can post on message boards. Makes you wonder who is Number One?"
Hoho! USA and China in the same club! (Score:1)
Re:Hoho! USA and China in the same club! (Score:4, Insightful)
'Power' vs 'Abuse of Power' (Score:2)
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The UK and China don't surprise me at all (Score:3, Insightful)
Though I am inclined to classify this research as bogus, it's quite funny and intriguing that the USA, Britain, Russia and China are in the same club.
Actually, speaking as someone from the UK, I think it's just sad... and entirely, objectively accurate. Our modern surveillance state/database society in the UK would make any dictator proud.
We are rapidly moving towards a state where the government monitors, inter alia,
The government is essentially compiling databases, to be kept near enough forever, of:
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The Prisoner? (Score:1, Interesting)
I know I'm quibbling because the Prisoner reference could have been worked into the summary quite easily but asking "Who is Number One?" isn't relevant to the referenced article. This question will also set off flame wars in some circles.
This is an observation, not a criticism, and a plea for more succinct summnary writing. The reference to the Prisoner is apt
No surprise for some countries (Score:1)
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Telescreen International (Score:3, Funny)
Report forgot Japan's treatment of "foreigners"! (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe other countries should start fingerprinting Japanese visitors and residents, and then sell the biometric data to those Nigerian scammers.
This fingering of "foreigners" is even worse considering that Japan is the only first world nation not to have any anti-discrimination legislation, and legal "foreigners" in Japan are not even afforded even the mere basic of protection under the law. (Foreigners in Japan do have any Habeas Corpus and can be tortured in prison for up to 21 days. Testimony by foreigners in Japan has been ruled inadmissible in court, since there are not considered to be human by the Japanese ministry of Justice.)
Re:Report forgot Japan's treatment of "foreigners" (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml?cmd%5B347%5D=x-347-558619 [privacyinternational.org]
"PI leads coalition of organisations against Japanese Government plans for fingerprinting at border
19/11/2007
Today, in a coalition with 18 Japanese rights groups, Privacy International delivered a letter to the Japanese Minister of Justice to protest against the implementation of a fingerprinting system and face-scanning system at its borders. All visitors and many forei
Re:Report forgot Japan's treatment of "foreigners" (Score:5, Informative)
Nope. Accenture was formerly named Andersen Consulting
which did the falsified books for Enron and Worldcom.
Nope. That was Arthur Andersen. Two different companies.
Re:Report forgot Japan's treatment of "foreigners" (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Report forgot Japan's treatment of "foreigners" (Score:2)
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Absolutely true, and the fingerprinting is only the beginning.
You would think that if such fingerprinting measures were taken at the border, any foreigner admitted to the country would be considered not to be a criminal, but in fact the Japanese government doesn't start trusting you even a bit.
All non-citizens -- even permanent residents -- are forced to carry Alien Registration Cards at all times. These cards alone contain enough information to offer any mugger the opportunity to become an identity th
B.S. (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.privacyinternational.org/issues/internet/interimrankings.pdf [privacyinternational.org]
Regardless of what you think of Facebook's controversial features... even YEARS ago, Facebook has offered super granular acc
Facebook (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow, you're really kind to Facebook.
Have you also noticed that their entire modus operandi is basically to get friends to provide information about each other? And that if you've ever created an account there, even if you deactivate it, they still keep your personal information around indefinitely and allow people to continue doing things like tagging you in photos?
I don't know how anyone rational can view services like Facebook as not being a serious threat to privacy.
Of course, I'm about as likely t
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I believe the point our AC friend is missing is that on most social networking sites, it's you who supply the information about yourself. On Facebook, more often than not, it's someone else, as the site actively encourages everyone to do so.
Incorrect Data - UK Identity Cards (Score:3, Informative)
Ok, the Government wants to introduce them but AFAIK, the bill to introduce them has not been passed by Parliament and received Royal Ascent( The Queen's Signature )
There are several Political Parties which are totally opposed to the introduction of ID Cards.
Finally, given the fiasco that normally accompanies government IT Projects, I don't expect to see them introduced before 2020 anyway.
If only it were incorrect... (Score:3, Informative)
The UK does not have ID Cards. Ok, the Government wants to introduce them but AFAIK, the bill to introduce them has not been passed by Parliament and received Royal Ascent( The Queen's Signature )
Unfortunately, you are mistaken. The Identity Cards Act received royal assent, becoming law, on 30 March 2006. [homeoffice.gov.uk]
The first legal battle has already been lost. Now it's down to either electing someone to repeal the law before it really takes hold, or sufficient civil disobedience to undermine the law. Fortunately, both of those events are quite likely.
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ALL gov IT projects go wildly over budget and timescale. This is due ( on my own personal experience) what the US call 'mission creep' or the 'can you add this bit of functionality' repeated n times over (where n is a big number)
Things which are 'nice to have' suddenly become mandatory and essential to the whole project. some jumped up civil servant has their own pet project which needs x,y & z. These get factored in to the original proj
Greece leads the EU on privacy? (Score:2, Interesting)
Privacy (Score:2)
You don't want to be considered a subserve with all this talk of 'personal freedoms' do you?
A flawed study. (Score:2)
Svalbard is colored red. I can't possibly imagine that there are considerable privacy issues taking place on Svalbard, apart from the fact that most of the arctic island's 2,200 inhabitants probably know each other.
Scotlan
Re:I see the US (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet for those who are aware of the world around them, it is easy to see great chunks of freedom, liberty and privacy being wrestled from our grasps on a daily basis. Usually without much defense on our part. We just hand it over. It's like being a passenger on an ocean liner and touting the safety and reliability of the vessel even as you wade across the submerged deck, up to your hips in salt water.
What it all really means, is "I can still buy a $5 latte and my favorite sit-com with the offensively stereo-typed ethnic characters is still on television and I can still follow my favorite commercial sports team, so I *must* have an ass-load of freedom!".
Re:I see the US (Score:4, Insightful)
The value of "freedom" as an american ideal was a great thing and shaped the very foundations of our government. That value is long since dead. Early Americans understood the value of personal freedom. They were very diverse and many of them were immigrants from oppressive cultures. Even the strict puritans espoused a policy of letting those outside their community make choices they disapproved of.
Here's an experiment. Go find a few normal people and have a conversation with them about a few political topics. Notice that no matter what their political affiliation, the vast majority of them think it is just and ethical for them to pass laws to take choices away from others, even when those choices do not affect anyone else. Be it hunting bans or gay marriage or prohibiting heroin, nearly everyone is in favor of passing at least one law to tell other people how to live their lives. Ask them if they value freedom and they'll tell you they do, but ask them specifics and you'll see they don't mean it. They want everyone to be free so long as they don't make choices they disapprove of.
Freedom is the right of others to make choices you think are wrong and supporting freedom means supporting the right of others to make those wrong choices. Unless that value becomes important to Americans, our civil rights will continue to erode from both ends of the political spectrum and both major political parties.
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I'd add something like 'as long as no harm is done' to that. You know, just to avoid giving people the 'freedom' to kill others for example. The big question is where to draw the line. Does a same sex marriage harm anyone? Does the right to carry arms harm anyone? Does it harm anyone if the government isn't allowed to eavesdrop on your communications?
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I'd add something like 'as long as no harm is done' to that. You know, just to avoid giving people the 'freedom' to kill others for example. The big question is where to draw the line.
Hmm, that is pretty subjective. How about we're consistent to a single concept? Freedom of others to make choices you disapprove of, provided those choices don't conflict with the rights of another. In fact, I'd argue that all laws should be mitigating the conflict of rights between citizens, otherwise it is trying to legislate behavior that does not affect society.
Does a same sex marriage harm anyone? Does the right to carry arms harm anyone? Does it harm anyone if the government isn't allowed to eavesdrop on your communications?
Same sex marriage does not infringe on the rights of people who aren't part of the marriage. Carrying guns does not, by itself, conflict wi
The hunting ban is about freedom (Score:2)
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The hunting ban is about freedom... Freedom for the fox!
Does a fox deserve the basic right to not be killed that we give to humans? Can we agree that there is significant disagreement about this topic with some people believing one thing and other believing the opposite? Would it make sense to say that if someone chose to hunt and kill foxes other people would disagree with that choice? If they support freedom, however, they have to allow others to make that choice they feel is wrong. Until animals are granted the same basic rights as humans that will be the c
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In the same way you could say that baby murder is a choice that some other people might disagree with.
"If they support freedom, however, they have to allow others to make that choice they feel is wrong."
Fox hunting is not in the same class of "choice" as the other things the OP mentioned, heroin is a choice that doesn't directly affect another being.
Or do you believe that any animal torture
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In the same way you could say that baby murder is a choice that some other people might disagree with.
Not at all. A human baby is recognized by our society as having human rights and responsibilities, most of which are held in trust by the state and the legal guardians. When the child grows up and has the right on his or her own to have a life, they are also held responsible for the things they do, like murder. An adult fox is not held responsible for murder if it kills another fox or a child or a mouse. By the same token it is not given the corresponding right to life in our legal system.
Fox hunting is not in the same class of "choice" as the other things the OP mentioned, heroin is a choice that doesn't directly affect another being.
You mean it i
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And there's where your post falls down. By our society. Which you are proposing to change anyway by the introduction of this so called "freedom". By using the phrase "in our society" you show that this is all still relative. Where exactly is the line drawn? Maybe "freedom" in another society does include child murder. By your own admission children can't take on responsibilities until later, which you consider t
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And there's where your post falls down. By our society. Which you are proposing to change anyway by the introduction of this so called "freedom".
According to our constitution, freedom is the default state, while government imposed rules are restrictions on freedom, justified for a very few specific reasons. All other laws should not be restricting freedoms, but merely mitigating conflicts between individuals to solve problems that arise when one person's freedom comes in conflict with another person's. I'm not proposing we introduce anything to this equation. I'm not proposing any changes to that original concept. It was always assumed that our go
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Then you're an idiot.
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The value of "freedom" as an american ideal was a great thing and shaped the very foundations of our government. That value is long since dead. Early Americans understood the value of personal freedom. [...] Be it hunting bans or gay marriage or prohibiting heroin, nearly everyone is in favor of passing at least one law to tell other people how to live their lives.
I'd be surprised if you got different results from your experiment if you got back in your time machine and performed it. In some respects Americans have a great deal more freedom now than they did back then because the Bill of Rights has been applied to state law.
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Personally I find this offensively stereo-typing americans.
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Maybe you SHOULD be offended. I'm American. It perfectly describes the vast majority of Americans I know.
Yes, Americans are good people. They're also wholly uninterested in their political livelihood.
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Well, actually, if that's all you care about, isn't that all that matters? I mean, life can be good even without freedom and democracy.
I know, I know. Checks on the power of government are supposed to protect us against the government making our lives miserable. But how effective are they,
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The problem is that an individual can lose a *lot* of freedoms before they personally are adversely affected, but by the time it causes a problem for them it may be far too late to do anything about it.
Also, different individuals need different freedoms. For example, it isn't going to cause me personally an immediate problem if the government declares all middle-eastern peo
Re:I see the US (Score:5, Insightful)
And that's a problem.
Re:I see the US (Score:4, Insightful)
Another point is that many Americans are capable of perceiving problems where there are not any problems.
And that too is a problem.
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pre-2001 USA Versus post-2001 USA (Score:5, Interesting)
Note that the European Union seems to have protected its citizens (from terrorism) without abridging basic civil rights.
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But the changes to privacy-law's done alone in the past year in Germany is an outrage. And did you know that the police can track _any_ vehicle on highways and most lar
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Here in the UK we have been living with terror threats for decades as well. However, this doesn't seem to have stopped the Labour government from hyping the post-9/11
Re:pre-2001 USA Versus post-2001 USA (Score:4, Interesting)
9/11 was triple christmas for Bush-Cheney. Those who would disagree I have one word, ASHCROFT.
Note that the European Union seems to have protected its citizens (from terrorism) without abridging basic civil rights.
A lot of the former slave states from the USSR seem to have gone out of their way to be pro-Privacy. 7 ranked higher then the US and 3 for the top five were former soviet.
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Anybody else think that Hercules had the right idea about cleaning the stables of King Augeas
he dug wide trenches to two rivers which flowed nearby. He turned the course of the rivers into the yard. The rivers rushed through the stables, flushing them out, and all the mess flowed out the hole in the wall on other side of the yard.
I wonder how we are going to clean out the stables of King George?
Protection vs Privacy in the EU (Score:2, Funny)
Re:pre-2001 USA Versus post-2001 USA (Score:4, Insightful)
Seems, perhaps, but hasn't. We (I live in the EU) weren't very much of a target until we went along with the USA invading Afghanistan and Iraq. But we did go along, and we got train bombings in Madrid. Perhaps the bombings in London are related, too. So I wouldn't really say the EU has protected its citizens (but it's good to note here that the EU had little to do with anything; everything I'm talking about in this post was actually decided by individual member states).
As for privacy, take into account that in many European countries, there wasn't much of that to begin with. I believe the Netherlands (where I live) is the country that spies on its citizens most, worldwide. This is not widely perceived as a problem, however. People here are far more trusting of the government than people in the USA. The government knows where I live. My Internet traffic is logged. Phones may be tracked and tapped; I don't think there is any need to get a warrant for that. Police can stop me and require me to show ID whenever they want to. There are cameras everywhere. Speeding on the highway? Picture taken; ticket is in the mail. Soon, they'll track cars to make us pay taxes depending on where we drove at what time.
Privacy? What's that? Oh, you mean these laws that companies have to adhere to, where they have to make sure data doesn't fall into other company's hands...but they have to keep it around in case the government needs it. Yeah, those laws might be enforced. There certainly seem to be fewer problems with identity fraud here than in the USA.
Don't get me wrong. Life in the EU is good. I am happy to live in the Netherlands. But let's not point and laugh at the USA before taking a look at ourselves.
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Also (from personal experience) I'd say the canadian situation is (much) worse than it appears to be from the information in the article. For instance, insurance companies in Canada have access to law enforcement data and there is lots of racial profiling by the police in Canada.
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How are any of the above privacy issues; the subject being discussed?
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I concur. Although the sibling truthfully argues that these are not privacy issues, there surely are many privacy issues at stake in EU. I used to comfort myself that living in EU is a fortunate thing, at least with respect to privacy, in contrast to, e.g., the United States. Alas, in UK, you have cameras all around the country now, in Germany, they tried to make it possible for police to remotely hack into suspects' computers by means of law. And the German ban on "hacker" (security) tools? And in my count
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Or maybe you just made a groundless claim?
Re:bogus research (Score:5, Insightful)
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So the ACT is the only place with an explicit right to privacy.
* Comprehensive privacy laws at federal level and others within some states and territories, but there are broad exemptions that have precluded action by the privacy commissioner against small businesses and political parties; and does not meet international standards
* Power of commissioner diminished because determinati
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I can only speak from experience as an australian resident and tell you giving australia the 2nd worst rating is a load of bullshit and to me calls the whole thing into question.
Privacy International (and the annual RSF Freedom of the Press Index for that matter) make international comparisons using many sources. Compare our (Australia's) legislative direction under the previous Federal government with the direction of (small-L) liberal democracies around the world and you may think differently...Electronic Frontiers [efa.org.au] is a good place to start :)
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Re: Australia (Score:2)
Let's see what Austrailia has been up to this week:
"The Australian government is mandating the creation of 'clean' internet feeds", but you also "scrapped the proposed Australian universal ID 'Access Card'."
So far, that's a draw.
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compared to a federal id card with biometeric data on it i'd say we are more then better off this week. i suggest you learn to read more then the slpashy headlines.
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yes i agree this filtering is a retarded expensive waste of time, typical of everything you can expect from a labor government, but it is NOT anywhere near as bad as a federal ID card with your life on it.
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No argument there, but that's not my point. Sorry if I didn't make my theory clear, but I meant that content would be classified in line with ACMA guidelines. We see something similar with the laws banning the importation of pornography. reference [qld.gov.au]
When you get right down to it, access to externally published material over the net is an oddity; all content imported by any other means is either banned or subject to classification/censorship. I honestly
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There is no way India is an 'extensive surveillance society' - not because the Indian govts care about privacy, but because there is no system in place that can be used to abuse privacy.
No SSNs, no tax ids (for 99% of the people), no centralized health records (other than what the patient saves in her -paper- file), no technology or competence in govt to systematically tap phones, no institutions to come up with broad agendas to spy on people, etc.
In short, India
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there is border surveilance and there is retard (Score:3, Interesting)
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Desmond's Law: Every correction must itself contain at least one error.
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Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Washington and Maine have passed legislation opposing it.
Similar bills are pending in Alaska, Massachusetts, Oregon, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York, Rhode Island, Washington, D.C., Wyoming and Vermont.
Tha
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No. Individual rights are presumed to be natural, and the constitution does not endow the feds with the authority to take them away. So far, so good.
However, the feds have assumed the power to take them away, and have successfully done so for decades now. The only recourse with regard to abrogating this abuse of legislative authority is to take the law to the supreme court; but the supreme court has also come down on the side of the gove
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Which most people flying would need anyway. The only situation where such a non passport US ID would make any sense at all is for a flight which will always be within US airspace under any situation possible. Even for those flights the simplist option would be for the US Federal Government to be issuing t
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Huh? I thought REAL-ID was dead in the water.
Just because a handful of states have passed legislation say they won't implement real-id because it is an unfunded mandate does not mean it is anywhere near dead. Especially when there are another set of states that have passed legislation embracing it.
More people cross the southern borders of the USA every year undetected than *live* in some of these countries.
However, everyone who does cross the borders LEGALLY is subjected to all kinds of privacy invasions like fingerprinting. Even just those who transit through the country - without ever leaving the international terminals at the airports - are recorded. T
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Your presumption is guilty until proven innocent. It is my contention that the time you need to concern yourself with someone's identity, location, and actions becomes "now" when they commit a crime. Until then, we don't need to know who they are or any of the rest. This assumes risk; that's the nature of liberty. I'm OK with that.
The problem with giving up liberty to obtain safety is that even if you gave every liberty you had up, you still wouldn't be safe. It is a game that you will lose, no matter w
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# World leading in border surveillance, mandating trans-border data flows
I call FUD on that. Prove that we have more per capita surveillance of border crossings than, say, Switzerland, Singapore, Norway or Israel.
Well, I haven't been to Norway or Israel, but in a lifetime of constant travel, the US is the only country that I know of that requires my photo and finger prints in order to enter it, or even to transit through it.
... Which, incidentally, is why I will no longer visit the US.
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I challenge you to produce a better measure of
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How exactly would this be the case.
which IMPROVES PROTECTION AGAINST IDENTITY THEFT which would seem
Except that cetralised and overloaded identity document concepts make "identity theft" considerably easier.
Real-ID requires the sharing of databases between states. OK they are worried about the detriment of centralized databases, but show me where any other country gets attacked for requiring a centralized database for drivers licenses. They don'
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Well I can't speak for the USA, but in the UK, we have container ships unloading quite frequently too. And speaking from experience, every box gets get checked before it leaves the port. They have installed scanners for radio-actives and biologicals which the whole truck passes through, both inward and outward trips.
Take Felixstowe for instance. I collected
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I agree - at least in the case of the U.S. the summary contains a lot of "this might happen someday" statements. Surely there must be some real data somewhere, and not just someone's "plans"? I mean, there have to be people in the U.S. who plan to win every gold medal at the Olympics, but we don't say, right now, "the U.S. wins all gold medals."
There is also the problem of conflating government and private-sector actions. A Las Vegas casino is under extraordinary surveillance, but I hardly consider that an
Re: Budgieton Minicity (Score:2)
Yet there isn't even a direct payoff. What happens if someone turns around and puts monetary incentives on these things?
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What I'm worried about is the 200 copycats that will give fools gold to their users in return for harassment of the rest of the online population.
The days of anonymous posting will be over soon if this trend continues, and that gets me because some of the best stuff on
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But even if we include a larger troll base such as the Goatse's, all we have to do is the same type of trick as on the RIAA threads - find a way to siphon it out to our benefit. I don't know yet, but once some counter-weight advantage starts weighing against trolls, we'll regain the power of AC.
Re: Holdenville Minicity (Score:2)
There's #2 of 5...
Re: Minicity (Score:2)
I figured out a little about how to hijack those cities. Would you like your own with an instant population?
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"Inalienable" as used in the founding documents meant "yours, as endowed by your mere existence as a human, without regard to whether anyone actually bothers to defend it."
Something of a misnomer, then, given the presence of the word 'able' in 'inalienable.' But there you go. But you're fundamentally correct; the rights we have essentially only boil down to the ones we're willing to defend, and if my observations of most Americans is correct, they wouldn't defend ANY ONE of the
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No, "Americans" don't. Small groups of Americans do, and VERY small groups at that, with perhaps the exception of the NRA, which has 4.3 million members. Talk to your average American, one not actively part of these groups, and they consider these groups to be troublem
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Prosperity and freedom are not the same thing.