RMS: How Much Surveillance Can Democracy Withstand? 264
Covalent writes "RMS describes how much surveillance is too much (hint: it's all too much) and how to combat, circumvent, and prevent future surveillance. How much of what is suggested is plausible? How much is just a pipe dream? Discuss!"
The article contains an extensive list of things we do that give too much data to centralized organization, and offers solutions to combat all of them. From the article: "The goal of making journalism and democracy safe therefore requires that we reduce the data collected about people by any organization, not just by the state. We must redesign digital systems so that they do not accumulate data about their users. If they need digital data about our transactions, they should not be allowed to keep them more than a short time beyond what is inherently necessary for their dealings with us."
that ship has sailed (Score:3)
Re:that ship has sailed (Score:4, Insightful)
If GMail says to me "You get free mail, in exchange we parse all your email to display you an advert" then I'm happy to lose that bit of my privacy - and with this knowledge in mind I won't use GMail for anything important.
The public cares, the problem comes when you think your communication is private, but it is actually being intercepted and stored by the US Government. Why does the US Government feel they are so special? I'd like to see the response if another government asked some of these providers to access their entire database.
Re:that ship has sailed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:that ship has sailed (Score:5, Insightful)
Eventually at some threshold everybody will care. We are just not there yet, fortunately.
Re: (Score:3)
FTFY.
Re: (Score:3)
I'll echo the parent's sentiment here; you really don't want to see what happens when a substantial portion of society gets extremely angry. I'm hoping the course can be reversed before it comes to that.
Re: (Score:2)
You're cute. I bet you clap for tinkerbelle every time. The point is that by the time everyone cares, it will be way past reasonably defensible.
And, given the 90% of people who will roll over and support anything that fights terrorism (pew study), we have a long way to go before that.
It's not defeatism to admit that there is not a sufficient corps of people with the type of pathos needed to make a difference. Nor to admit it is a large ship to turn around.
The moment https is everywhere because that's how yo
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The question may be whether the internet should die and be replaced by something better.
Simply implementing ipv6 isn't going to cut it for you?
Re: (Score:2)
The question may be whether the internet should die and be replaced by something better.
Simply implementing ipv6 isn't going to cut it for you?
I never minded having company meetings that included everybody. The internet is like a company meeting where people off the street are allowed to attend wearing a stocking on their head and screaming obscenities and nonsense and grabbing papers from the table, while everybody else is trying to accomplish something. Anything other than limited complexity is just toothpaste in a hole. Ten to the ninth factorial is a REALLY big number. It can never be operated by a competitive population. Maybe human V6 will
Re: (Score:2)
It has no core structure that could serve to regulate growth or partition against assault.
now a new system needs to be designed that has no middle man to pay.
So you want a middle man or you don't?
Proof pudding
Re:that ship has sailed (Score:5, Informative)
Tor (and Tor hidden services) can no longer be considered completely secure. It's much better than nothing, but if you become a target, the NSA and other government agencies can and have used methods to track people down who use Tor. The FBI has shown that they are willing to actively attack the Tor network by infecting innocent bystanders with malware. The NSA are making a big push on the Tor network, as revealed by recently released Snowden files. We need to rapidly develop and migrate to a new generation of anonymizing networks.
Re: (Score:2)
Short Answer: NONE (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Real answer to the question of how much surveillance can a society withstand is defined by whether it is from the top down or the bottom up.
From the bottom up of course those at the top will keep driving it further and further as long as they can isolate themselves from it. From the top down, well, those at the top will make sure privacy is the single most important right.
Out job is to force it from the top down. Fuck national security, it is the public's right, the voter's to invade the privacy at the
Faulty premise (Score:5, Insightful)
After more than a decade of the "war on terror" and its massive abuses, it's safe to say there is no democracy left to be withstanding anything.
Wise words, wrong source (Score:3, Insightful)
It's too bad that the eminently sensible advice in that opinion piece will be ignored by techies because it comes from a guy perceived as icky.
It's too bad that anyone who takes that advice seriously and wants to act on it, then seeks out RMS for help, will likely be repulsed at some point.
In times of upheaval, ideologues are often the only people thinking straight enough to find a way out. Why did ours have to come wrapped in this particular package, a marketing nightmare that makes selling good sense so difficult even within the tech community?
I despair for the future and this is but one reason among legions.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I don't care. I'm willing to listen to him. I think he has a good message, for the most part.
In times like these, on this extremely important issue, when he writes really good opinion piece like this one, I think it's particularly important that people listen. Thus, I think it is fair to point out that a weird messenger can cause a good message to be ignored. It's lamentable but it's human nature.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Again the world needs open CPU's, open source software, file system options and quality encryption - topics average big brand software and hardware developers 'should' have been aware of for years.
The sock puppet/s really came out in force for this topic. Some individual, agency or brand must really fear wider traction on open hardware, open source software, an understanding of encryption and wider public comment.
Re: (Score:2)
Why did ours have to come wrapped in this particular package
Because the charming and whitty people spend all their time trolling /.
Nobody is the "wrong source" for wisdom (Score:2)
Stop believing that it's okay to ignore "eminently sensible advice" and you'll encourage others to do the same. Nobody is always pleasing to everyone. Your criticism against RMS here ends up reading as an ad hominem attack without evidence or a backhanded compliment which you think is more important to raise than the substance of the arguments presented. There's no reason to despair unless you are looking for a reason to do nothing but throw up your hands.
Eben Moglen is also giving a series of talks [snowdenandthefuture.info] about
Re: (Score:2)
Baby food jars? No way. I need 5-gallon buckets.
Democracy (Score:2)
Last I checked, Democracy is what gave us the Surveillance State.
Re:Democracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Last I checked, Democracy is what gave us the Surveillance State.
Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.
Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.
It's not exactly an accident that the NSA legitimized their mass surveillance through the PATRIOT act.
Re: (Score:3)
Obligatory Supplemental Educational Information: Chomsky - Manufacturing Consent. [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Nero original made himself a hero to the people of Rome by burning (what turned out to be just a copy) of the surveillance records that were kept by the government. That's the first example that comes to mind, however I'm sure it wouldn't take long to find examples even older than that. If you know your history you know what Nero's stance on Democracy.
Stalin had a surveillance state that was pretty much the very definition of a Communist dictatorship. The East Germans employed a significant portion of their
Only one way to stop this (Score:3)
The only way to stop surveillance of civilians is to have a clear and unequivocal constitutional amendment that strictly enshrines the right to privacy and limits surveillance of US civilians by our government.
This is a lot tougher than it sounds as previous language that was pretty plain language to the people that wrote them (read the Federalist papers sometime) about limiting the right of the Federal government from infringing the rights of the people. The first and second amendments alone have been trampled with literally tens of thousands of laws that take away or limit said rights (I haven't even touched the other amendments).
What you really need is an entirely secondary constitutional amendment that spells out in plain language that "Shall make / not" means exactly what the dictionary says it does. Once you can do that and wipe out tens of thousands of laws that have been written to take away the effective meaning of your rights to begin with you can have an effective right to privacy.
The right to privacy is a wonderful idea, but it's worthless until we restore the concept of the "right" to begin with.
Re:Only one way to stop this (Score:4, Informative)
limits surveillance of US civilians by our government.
It shouldn't just be US citizens, but innocent people in general.
Re: (Score:3)
limits surveillance of US civilians by our government.
It shouldn't just be US citizens, but innocent people in general.
It shouldn't just be US citizens, but people in general.
There fixed it for you... privacy is a human right, I'm not saying convicted criminals can't be tracked. But even such surveillance should have limit both in time and reach.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes. My point was that if you don't have a damn good reason (i.e. if you don't have evidence) to spy on someone, surveillance simply shouldn't take place, and your surveillance shouldn't impact innocent people when you do find someone.
Re: (Score:2)
The same could be said about US citizens. Fact of the matter is, if you don't have a damn good reason to believe they're not innocent, you don't conduct surveillance.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
I can't argue your point actually, and I think it's one that many people overlook. When you get down to brass tacks private industry does far more of the day to intrusion into peoples lives than the government does, and they arguably are a lot more effective at it. Your point can and should be addressed, but without the concept of having the right to begin with, how on earth are you ever going to protect it from private industry?
Re:Only one way to stop this (Score:5, Insightful)
The Fourth Amendment (Amendment IV) to the United States Constitution is the part of the Bill of Rights that prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures and requires any warrant to be judicially sanctioned and supported by probable cause. It was adopted in response to the abuse of the writ of assistance, a type of general search warrant issued by the British government and a major source of tension in pre-Revolutionary America. The Fourth Amendment was introduced in Congress in 1789 by James Madison, along with the other amendments in the Bill of Rights, in response to Anti-Federalist objections to the new Constitution. Congress submitted the amendment to the states on September 28, 1789. By December 15, 1791, the necessary three-quarters of the states had ratified it. On March 1, 1792, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson announced the adoption of the amendment.
Re: (Score:2)
Many people have argued that this is intended to give people the right to privacy, and I originally thought of posting your argument. Unfortunately it doesn't actually call out the word "privacy" and that is why in today's climate you need a separate and explicit amendment to that effect.
The more I thought about it though, the bigger is really the issue of plain "shall" being allowed to be trumped by Congress on a routine basis. Until you can restore the plain language meaning of the Bill of Rights as writt
Re:Only one way to stop this (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
And here I thought we already had one of those. Are you're saying this one was way too unclear and wordy?
The Fourth Amendment (Amendment IV) to the United States Constitution is the part of the Bill of Rights that prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures
Who defines "unreasonable"?
and requires any warrant to be judicially sanctioned and supported by probable cause.
The warrants are judicially sanctioned. And they find probable cause by snooping before asking for the warrant. Again, depends on how "unreasonable searches" is defined.
It was adopted in response to the abuse of the writ of assistance, a type of general search warrant issued by the British government and a major source of tension in pre-Revolutionary America. The Fourth Amendment was introduced in Congress in 1789 by James Madison, along with the other amendments in the Bill of Rights, in response to Anti-Federalist objections to the new Constitution. Congress submitted the amendment to the states on September 28, 1789. By December 15, 1791, the necessary three-quarters of the states had ratified it. On March 1, 1792, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson announced the adoption of the amendment.
Re: (Score:2)
Who defines "unreasonable"?
How much more clear can one possibly be? There is no way to make a huge blacklist of all the things the government shouldn't do, so what can be done there?
Re: (Score:2)
Who defines "unreasonable"?
How much more clear can one possibly be?
Well, that's the whole problem with this situation. The limit on federal power hinges on what is considered "unreasonable", and that is dependent on who provides the definition.
The NSA says it is reasonable to be able to gather intelligence on foreign terrorists. The military says it is reasonable to prevent attacks on our soldiers. Department of Homeland Security says it is reasonable to prevent attacks on our civilian population. So, when the government is defining "reasonable", they give themselves the m
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Unfortunately, the dictionary is not a programming reference and the English language is not a programming language. There is no such thing as an unequivocal 'plain language' meaning.
As above - there's no con
Re: (Score:3)
Actually the Constitution, Bill of Rights and other critical documents that the Founding Fathers wrote did come with what you could call a 'dictionary' where they spelled out their intent and meaning. The set of documents that was written where they described exactly what they meant when they wrote what they wrote, context of meaning and so on. These documents are called the "Federalist Papers" and have been available for anyone to look at online for many years. They arguably are among the most important do
Re: (Score:2)
Except for the part where it's not a dictionary, not a part of any statute or law, and wasn't written by the Founding Fathers (but rather by a limited subset thereof
Symmetry (Score:3)
All we need is a constitutional amendment that whatever the government does to the people, the people can do to the government.
If the government can read anyone's email, then I can read the email of anyone who works for the government. If they can listen to my calls, I can listen to theirs. If the can see my bank and medical records, I can see theirs.
FTFY
Bearing arms (Score:2)
All we need is a constitutional amendment that whatever the government does to the people, the people can do to the government.
I think that was the implicit point of the 2nd amendment.
Re: (Score:2)
There is no law you can pass that will accomplish this, as it depends on people to enforce it.
It was blatantly illegal to seize the property of and imprison American's of Japanese descent during WWII, but we did it.
In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, prior to the Patriot Act being passed, you think anybody bothered with warrants to listen in to phone calls, search locations, whatever, checking if any other attacks were imminent?
You think the police didn't search houses without a warrant after the Boston Bom
Re: (Score:3)
The only way to stop surveillance of civilians is to have a clear and unequivocal constitutional amendment that strictly enshrines the right to privacy and limits surveillance of US civilians by our government.
There already *IS* such a constitutional amendment. It is the fourth and it is quite clear.
What you really need is an entirely secondary constitutional amendment that spells out in plain language
And when you create that, over the years, twisted interpretations will eventually aggregate enough to where some bright bulb pops up and says we need a new constitutional amendment that is unambiguously clear and the process repeats.
The Constitution and the Bill of Rights is crystal clear on these issues. The federal government of the United States of America is clearly operating outside of the Constitution. Just beca
Re: (Score:2)
How is monitoring infringing on any rights at all?
They had no right to monitor all of that information to begin with, that's how.
Why do you hate freedom? Why do you want the government to have so many powers? Surely even minimal knowledge of the history of governments would tell you that giving them access to so much information is simply an awful idea, so why would you want to be such a rabid bootlicker?
Re: (Score:3)
No where is the constitution does it say you can't be monitored.
And that's not how it works. The constitution is not a blacklist.
Re: (Score:3)
Read the Federalist Papers, they are the ones written by the people that wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights was very much meant to be a 'literal' document, written in plain language, to set the tone for a new government. For example the colonial government (which was a very fragile group of very different people) was formed of people from very different religions and the only way to make sure that the other guy (Protestant, Catholic etc) didn't establish their religion as a st
Combine the ACLU, EFF, and NRA? (Score:2)
We could call it ARCFUELFAN! It would be positively electric!
how much surveillance do we want? (Score:2)
There was an article, or a cartoon, or something that I read once.
1970: You want to give every American a little tracking device so that we know where they are at all times, and can follow them as they move around? You're out of your mind if you think that will happen.
2010: I need another iPhone!
Too late (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
I loved those.
Linus's Law Applied to Surveillance (Score:3)
Internet-connected cameras often have lousy digital security themselves, so anyone could watch what the camera sees. To restore privacy, we should ban the use of internet-connected cameras aimed where and when the public is admitted, except when carried by people
I've actually thought that open and accessible cameras in public are a good idea - so long as they are accessible by the public. To me this would be akin to the many-eyes philosophy of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus's_Law [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3)
It's not the surveillance (Score:3, Insightful)
it's how that data is used.
We are going to be watched, because modern society is watching everything.
Democracy can handle the monitoring of everything, if protection and regulations are in place an enforced.
NSA? all that data they have in no way impacts democracy.
Re: (Score:3)
it's how that data is used.
Given that the people in the government are not perfect angels and that every government in history has abused its powers in horrendous, there is absolutely zero reason to believe that giving the government that much data could ever, in any conceivable way, be a good thing; this whole affair is an absolute disaster.
if protection and regulations are in place an enforced.
Even them possessing the data at all is dangerous.
Re: (Score:3)
And that is the issue. Snowden didn't reveal any wrong-doing.
Yes, he did; they're violating the constitution and collecting a massive amount of data on innocents.
but I trust the government to use the data for the benefit of society and prevent bad things from happening.
You are a naive ignoramus of the highest caliber. In the US alone, we had slavery, Jim Crow laws, general discrimination, Japanese internment camps, and it took quite a while for us to even grant women the right to vote; that isn't even all the government has done, either. There has never once been a government in the history of the world that hasn't abused its powers in horrendous ways; not one.
Why would yo
Re: (Score:3)
NSA? all that data they have in no way impacts democracy.
Really? Ever heard of someone named J. Edgar Hoover who had files on everyone and manipulated politicians with it? Do you really think Obama and whoever replaces him are not/will not use this data to pressure opponents? Have you been living in a cave and not noticed the abuse the IRS has inflicted upon conservative groups at the will of this administration? Do really believe the administration will not use the NSA data to the same ends?
You are the "low information" voter everyone is pissed off at. You're a
Re: (Score:2)
Democracy can handle the monitoring of everything, if protection and regulations are in place and enforced.
False. Policies and procedures are paper-thin. They do not reflect social reality; they do not reflect organizational reality; and they do not reflect technical reality. And tomorrow--when the next witch hunt, the next red scare, the next 9/11 happens--all those high and mighty policies will be changed with the stroke of a pen or (more likely) no pen at all... just silent, expectant pressure from the top.
The only policy that prevents misuse of data is that of not collecting it in the first place. Even
No democracy with full surveillance. (Score:2)
We don't have a democracy in nations like the UK or USA. 'Voting' does NOT equal democracy. In the UK or USA you can ONLY bring one of a number of shell-entities into power that represent the exact same interests. Liberal, Labour or Conservative - Republican or Democrat - whoever the sheeple 'vote' for, the same force controls the nation. The same over-arching agendas are pursued and implemented.
In the UK, a party that had sought to win power for decades (the Liberals) on an unchanging ticket that access to
Re:No democracy with full surveillance. (Score:4, Funny)
"We fought for Freedom, and all we got was democracy." - Pieter-Dirk Uys, South African satirist
Digital Reconnaissance Management (Score:2)
He says laws are insufficient, and proposes that these surveillance technologies should have built-in artificial limitations that defy the will of the user. What does that sound like?
Solutions (Score:2)
We know the internet as a whole is watched domestically. The encryption offered by many top US brands is junk, the legal/commercial protections offered by US brands is junk. The coding skills of some US staff is very surveillance friendlily by design or lack of academic interest.
So what can people do:
Use a chip thats well understood: http://guiodic.wordpress.com/2008/09/17/richard-stallman-interview/ [wordpress.com] ~Lemote machine.
Use an open
Wrong from the first sentence (Score:2)
Hard question to answer (Score:2)
To simple. What is democracy? (Score:2)
Germany post WW2 is NOT a democracy for very obvious reasons. It is an "rechtstaat" or however that is spelled. Which means the law is the absolute ruler in Germany.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rechtsstaat
To be a modern liberal democracy, you first got to have the rule of law to curb the excesses of democracy. Democracy got to be curtailed, to survive.
But what is a rechtstaat? What is a law? A law is anything that is enforced. Good or bad. You can have a rechtstaat that sends people to the gas chambers.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Ad hominem much?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Looks like paid US shills are here already.
Re:How much privacy does RMS need? (Score:5, Insightful)
RMSDS
RMS Derangement Syndrome
Amongst other things, those who wait for any RMS story on Slashdot and pepper it with sockpuppet or anonymous posts attacking RMS in any way possible. Note the first two posts are like this.
Whoever you are, I hope this vitriol of yours doesn't bleed onto other people in real life. You do realize you have a personality disorder, I hope. There's nothing wrong with having such a disorder, it's accepting it and then getting help for it that shows the good person you really are inside.
In the meantime, please leave RMS and the rest of Slashdot readers alone. You'll never, ever be able to take away from him and us all the vast success of the FOSS/GNU movement, the fruits of which you undoubtably depend on every day, no matter what you say or do. You obviously know this, so please try and break the cycle and try to be a better person. Talk to someone about it, go and try to get some help, please.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Funny, I saw him speak at HOPE in New York years ago, and he did none of that and was a rather upstanding guy.
I even directly asked him a question and he was perfectly polite and not crazy at all.
Re: (Score:2)
That's because you actually saw him.
Re: (Score:2)
No, my problem is that he portrays himself as some sort of sage
Does he?
while others do the work
I would argue that spreading the word is work; it's certainly more than most people do.
Re: (Score:2)
"However, every single piece of the kit that I depend on is put at constant threat by patent trolls, where is RMS? Making an enamored speech does not cut the mustard."
I sort of agree with this actually. I think enamored speeches can be extremely beneficial, but not in these contexts. I think he should personally lobby for his cause. Even though a lot of lobbyists are immora/amoral assholes, being able to summon passion about the subject helps persuade. I'm sure some of the politicians are bought, but not al
Re:Preventing terrorism is a legimate reason (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a lot more worried about the US's homegrown religious fundamentalists than I could ever be of the middle-eastern ones that you seem to fear so much.
For starters, there's a whole lot more of them. Most are not individually dangerous, but they are collectively doing a lot more long-term damage.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
OMG! Those dangerous people start political debates about the contents of science in textbooks!
And actually --- they are right! Science deserves to be continually challenged --- because science deserves to be continually challenged -- that is why it is science because science is skepticism! I think any true science can hold its own against skeptics fine, that
Re:Preventing terrorism is a legimate reason (Score:4, Insightful)
Engaging in historical revisionism to try and change how things were to how they think things should have been. Biasing it to twist the philosophies of historical figures and to retroactively smear the reputations of people they consider their enemies. And then try to push that shit on students all over the country by abusing their position.
They do nonsensical shit like try to put creationism into science classes, where it doesn't belong at all.
Except you give them too much credit. That's not what they're on about - they aren't capable of challenging things like evolutionary theory. They're all about letting teachers push their religion and allowing students to ignore science in favor of whatever they've been indoctrinated with by their parents.
Not to mention that our Fundamentalists also push crap like Quiverfull (breeding a Christian Army), Oathkeepers, and the Christian Dominionists who see the Federal government as their enemy and a barrier to their control. The only difference between our fundamentalists and theirs is they just haven't started shooting yet.
Re:Preventing terrorism is a legimate reason (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, I plead guilty of hyperbole.
However "The absolute worst you can claim about American religious fundamentalitists, as far as terrorism goes" is where we diverge.
You're looking for terrorists. I'm looking at people who fundamentally threaten the next generations by undercutting education, libraries, women's rights, and critical research that the US could be at the forefront of (instead of letting other countries pass us by).
I haven't even mentioned their indirect influence on people who start wars, and their direct influence on causing major unrest and hate against the western world (Quran-burning, anyone?)
The most damage the foreign terrorists have done to the Western world is to turn us against ourselves, while they pop some corn over the fires set by our drones, and watch our "civilized and democratic" model being consumed by corporatism and paranoia, under the illusion of fighting to preserve our unsustainable way of life.
We are our own worst enemies.
Re: (Score:2)
Pull the other one [go.com]. It has a bell attached!
Re:Preventing terrorism is a legimate reason (Score:5, Insightful)
Destructive technology already existed in Jefferson's time (and besides, it was Benjamin Franklin who said it, almost twenty years before the United States of America declared its independence), and religious fundamentalists have existed since the dawn of religion.
As I see it, the biggest problem is that no matter how soft and simple lawmakers make it for the government to pursue avenues of investigation with legal checks-and-balances (ie, FISA court) those investigating are unwilling to follow those rules. It doesn't matter that FISA laws have provisions that allow investigators to follow phone or data traces or call routing and still obtain a legal warrant after the fact if they never bother to get that warrant, let alone get them in advance.
Blanket surveillance of everyone seems to me to violate rules that are supposed to guarantee people rights to privacy in their persons, papers, and effects without due-process. I am not a judge, but if I were, I'd interpret that to mean that the government isn't allowed to maintain anything more than basic vital records or basic direct-interaction records with people unless there's a reason. Investigating crime is a reason, but simply having a huge database to analyze after-the-fact is not.
Re: (Score:2)
> Blanket surveillance of everyone seems to me to violate rules
I think that goes without saying.
But if your holding the gavel, where do you draw the line? When they come to you and ask, hey, no one is keeping track of phone data long enough, can we just preserve that data, so it isn't lost before we catch the bad guy.
Then they ask, remember that phone data, well we need to do the same with internet data, honest we won't look at it until we get a warrant.
Oh, well we missed these people who got flight tr
Re: (Score:2)
You've already lost, because you've qualified the "basic vital records" with the words "basic" and "vital". That's how we got where we are.
Re: (Score:2)
I ask because I don't have a problem with birth certificates and death certificates. As vital records are the basis for proof of identity and are really the only true line that prevents someone from establishing an ironclad new identity and abandoning an old one and whatever obligations they've piled on themselves on that identity, I don't see another option.
Re: (Score:3)
Why do you despise freedom?
Re: (Score:3)
Destroying the economy? you mean the economy that that by any measure has done nothing but improve for 6 years?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Give organizations tons of data and the government will have the data as well. We've seen this countless times.
Re: (Score:2)
Why? why won't it survive? there is no rule that states you can't have an equally monitored democracy.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, from a basic reading of his statement, it doesn't claim they are related for good or ill. Simply that a new version of one will arrive after the downfall of the other. No more related than saying "I woke up this morning after the sun came up."
Re: (Score:2)
Re:More than you can provide or articulate (Score:5, Interesting)
In this instance, for the first time in many years, I agree with RMS. I now believe companies should retain the minimum possible data about customers, and lets solve the usability problems that come from that separately.
Don't like to re-enter your credit card and shipping info every time you buy from Amazon? It's just not that hard to solve that problem without Amazon keeping your data.
Recommendation engines? It's just not that hard to solve the problem of finding other products like this one without keeping customer data (remember when Netflix and Amazon had "lists" where customers would volunteer to group like items together - that was great!).
Targeted advertisement? Does anything think that has worked out well, rather than just being creepy and still failing to get the "time" aspect of targeting right?
Sure, I can accept that there is still info that a company needs to accumulate to do business well, especially for subscription-based businesses, but just like we now code with "least privilege" in mind, can we not also code with "least customer data" in mind?
Re: (Score:2)
Three months is the expiration date for my PII. If I'm interested in something today, I'd probably not be in three months. If I'm interested in something for longer, I probably know everything there currently is to know about it by then, and wouldn't need advertising to tell me.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah I pretty much agree with you...though I don't know a solution to holding financial data.
I believe that a large part of the problem is as follows:
Even a if a company starts out small if it has the opportunity to collect mountains of data, it is practically expected to sell them to 3rd parties now. Any time you have something bad that literally "everyone is doing" you're going to have a bad time.
Re:More than you can provide or articulate (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll never understand the hate for RMS entirely. As far as I've seen in several videos and interviews he actually seems fairly level headed. He seems to understand very well that what he chooses to do is his own personal belief. He thinks that belief adopted by others would be better for those individuals, but he's not trying to cram it down anyone's throat. At least I personally, after watching a few hours worth of his videos feel that way.
He definitely is a bit pretentious ("I wouldn't even accept an iBad as a present"), but the guy graduated magna cum laude at Harvard, and then went to MIT (to not finish his degree.) It would be hard not to be a little pretentious, and have more than a bit of an ego.
At least he's not Torvalds.
Re: (Score:3)
I read a few of the articles you talked about, and I sort of understand the hate now. His speaking style doesn't translate very well onto paper.
Re: (Score:2)
I did come across something pretty insane that he apparently does (according to wiki.)
"he uses wget and reads the fetched pages from his e-mail mailbox,"
He doesn't use a web browser for a site he doesn't know for certain isn't spying. That combined with the phone thing...that's a lot of dedication.
I think RMS has become something of a techno-survivalist. I never thought I would say those words, but some of the things he has said scream it. Very similar underlying philosophies at least.
Re: (Score:3)
I have met him, and while I wouldn't say I got that close, I got no such impression. In fact, at the time he was spending a lot of time self-grooming, specifically picking at knots in his hair to the point that it was almost distracting from the conversation, except that he was, in fact, completely keeping up and engaged with the conversation while grooming himself.
He may often have a lot of hair and beard (since then when I have passed him at the con, he has had shorter hair, but its easily been long enoug