Post by snatch on May 21, 2009 11:22:22 GMT -5
I believed, as Charles Dickens put it, that 'an English man's home is his castle' - except that I believed it should apply to everyone, not just to English men. Those days it seems are gone and are not likely to return again, every government has given itself thousands of reasons and rights for invading our privacy.
In 1984, many people laughed and said that Orwell got it wrong in his book 'Big Brother, 1984'. They claimed our governments were democratic and our laws would not allow them to spy on us.
Well, we all know how that scenario developed, whether we are English, American, German or any other nationality. All of mankind has lost out to the ease technology has provided for democracy to evolve into a new kind of dictatorship - the kind where we actually vote them in.
A man known as Cory Doctorow wrote a novel he called 'Little Brother'. I think that although it is fiction it is based on so much truth we need to learn about. I'll mention one point that is weird!
In the story he has his hero use a Linux distro that he calls 'ParanoidLinux'. Those who wrote/write Linux, read his description of how the OS protects its user and they decided to write the program. No three guesses what the program is called
Hint: Do a google for 'ParanoidLinux'
Here are a few snippets from the introduction by the author:
I wrote Little Brother in a white-hot fury between May 7, 2007 and July 2, 2007: exactly eight weeks from the day I thought it up to the day I finished it ........
......When I was a 17, the world seemed like it was just going to get more free. The Berlin Wall was about to come down. Computers -- which had been geeky and weird a few years before -- were everywhere, and the modem I'd used to connect to local bulletin board systems was now connecting me to the entire world through the Internet and commercial online services like GEnie........
........But 17 years later, things are very different. The computers I love are being co-opted, used to spy on us, control us, snitch on us. The National Security Agency has illegally wiretapped the entire USA and gotten away with it. Car rental companies and mass transit and traffic authorities are watching where we go, sending us automated tickets, finking us out to busybodies, cops and bad guys who gain illicit access to their databases. The Transport Security Administration maintains a "no-fly" list of people who'd never been convicted of any crime, but who are nevertheless considered too dangerous to fly. The list's contents are secret. The rule that makes it enforceable is secret. The criteria for being added to the list are secret. It has four-year-olds on it. And US senators. And decorated veterans -- actual war heroes.......
.........The 17 year olds I know understand to a nicety just how dangerous a computer can be. The authoritarian nightmare of the 1960s has come home for them. The seductive little boxes on their desks and in their pockets watch their every move, corral them in, systematically depriving them of those new freedoms I had enjoyed and made such good use of in my young adulthood.
If you love freedom, if you think the human condition is dignified by privacy, by the right to be left alone, by the right to explore your weird ideas provided you don't hurt others, then you have common cause with the kids whose web-browsers and cell phones are being used to lock them up and follow them around.
This book is meant to be part of the conversation about what an information society means: does it mean total control, or unheard-of liberty? It's not just a noun, it's a verb, it's something you do.
This book is meant to be something you do, not just something you read. The technology in this book is either real or nearly real. You can build a lot of it. You can......
Get the story, read it and then check the instructions and ideas for protecting yourself. as he says :
"Defeat censorship: The afterword for this book has lots of resources for increasing your online freedom, blocking the snoops and evading the censorware blocks. The more people who know about this stuff, the better.'
The story is not a long novel so it is easy to read it, even for those of you who don't do much reading. Here we go: Either get the book yourself at the following link:
craphound.com/littlebrother
In 1984, many people laughed and said that Orwell got it wrong in his book 'Big Brother, 1984'. They claimed our governments were democratic and our laws would not allow them to spy on us.
Well, we all know how that scenario developed, whether we are English, American, German or any other nationality. All of mankind has lost out to the ease technology has provided for democracy to evolve into a new kind of dictatorship - the kind where we actually vote them in.
A man known as Cory Doctorow wrote a novel he called 'Little Brother'. I think that although it is fiction it is based on so much truth we need to learn about. I'll mention one point that is weird!
In the story he has his hero use a Linux distro that he calls 'ParanoidLinux'. Those who wrote/write Linux, read his description of how the OS protects its user and they decided to write the program. No three guesses what the program is called
Hint: Do a google for 'ParanoidLinux'
Here are a few snippets from the introduction by the author:
I wrote Little Brother in a white-hot fury between May 7, 2007 and July 2, 2007: exactly eight weeks from the day I thought it up to the day I finished it ........
......When I was a 17, the world seemed like it was just going to get more free. The Berlin Wall was about to come down. Computers -- which had been geeky and weird a few years before -- were everywhere, and the modem I'd used to connect to local bulletin board systems was now connecting me to the entire world through the Internet and commercial online services like GEnie........
........But 17 years later, things are very different. The computers I love are being co-opted, used to spy on us, control us, snitch on us. The National Security Agency has illegally wiretapped the entire USA and gotten away with it. Car rental companies and mass transit and traffic authorities are watching where we go, sending us automated tickets, finking us out to busybodies, cops and bad guys who gain illicit access to their databases. The Transport Security Administration maintains a "no-fly" list of people who'd never been convicted of any crime, but who are nevertheless considered too dangerous to fly. The list's contents are secret. The rule that makes it enforceable is secret. The criteria for being added to the list are secret. It has four-year-olds on it. And US senators. And decorated veterans -- actual war heroes.......
.........The 17 year olds I know understand to a nicety just how dangerous a computer can be. The authoritarian nightmare of the 1960s has come home for them. The seductive little boxes on their desks and in their pockets watch their every move, corral them in, systematically depriving them of those new freedoms I had enjoyed and made such good use of in my young adulthood.
If you love freedom, if you think the human condition is dignified by privacy, by the right to be left alone, by the right to explore your weird ideas provided you don't hurt others, then you have common cause with the kids whose web-browsers and cell phones are being used to lock them up and follow them around.
This book is meant to be part of the conversation about what an information society means: does it mean total control, or unheard-of liberty? It's not just a noun, it's a verb, it's something you do.
This book is meant to be something you do, not just something you read. The technology in this book is either real or nearly real. You can build a lot of it. You can......
Get the story, read it and then check the instructions and ideas for protecting yourself. as he says :
"Defeat censorship: The afterword for this book has lots of resources for increasing your online freedom, blocking the snoops and evading the censorware blocks. The more people who know about this stuff, the better.'
The story is not a long novel so it is easy to read it, even for those of you who don't do much reading. Here we go: Either get the book yourself at the following link:
craphound.com/littlebrother