Of course Spaf is skeptical of whatever has been said of
PRISM. He should
be, as everyone should. But in our
skepticism, we can draw diverging
conclusions.
Even as an open source advocate, he is also a
cyber-security control freak who advised the President, and
--if accounts
coming from all sides of the press are
accurate-- PRISM is an extension of such
Panopticon-like
vision of what the internet should be.
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/p
rogram/284210-7
This is basically Spaf agreeing with Spaf,
theoretical
existence of PRISM agrees with the vision he influenced as a
Presidential advisor.
If you can get the New York Times, the Washington
Post, The
Guardian and Julian Assange to agree on something,
*anything*, there
is very likely at least a hint of truth in
it.
Others like Marcy Wheeler
(a.k.a. @emptywheel)
disagree in
that it's a spying
programme a la pre-crime, but she thinks it's more of a
wholesale data mining operation which allows NSA to
understand how events came
into being after the fact. She
doesn't disagree in that it does indeed exist
and that the
law has been bent to accomodate the vision of post-hoc
pervasive
surveillance of individuals.
Whether that's justifiable or not, that's a
matter of
separate debate. Patriot Act, FISA and associated
interpretations of
the law are really thick pieces of
legalese and Orwellian speak that need
several books of
their own to dissect them in detail.
But now with Eric
Schmidt telling us in very simplistic
language that Google absolutely did no
evil because they
only follow court orders.
Phu-leeeese... is that not the
ultimate insult to our
collective intelligence?
We have refused to take the
same insult from others before,
why should we accept Schmidt's? Because he's a
benevolent
half-open source dictator?
When you really want to learn
about truth, you just can't
trust the people you like. Not *exclusively* those
you like.
Even less so the very powerful people who would have us
believe
they're heroic fighters for justice and all that is
just in this world.
For the simple reason that not even them can ever be that
perfect, they
are generally the first to fail at living up
to their very principles.
I choose to trust the knowledgeable and honest, albeit
quirky and fallible
individual first.
Like I know I can trust you, PJ.
And other individuals, but
never, ever any dinosaur
organisation on the brink of losing its way in the fog
of
history.
--- --- the vruz [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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