Have been a big fan of the EFF for sometime, and am very impressed with them using the popularity of YouTube, etc. to help get one of their recent campaigns across. Excellent concept, appealing strongly to tech-savvy parents, who I presume is one of their largest demographic groups; excellent distribution planning. It’s this kind of thinking about how to talk to real people in the ways that we all enjoy that makes all the difference!
Now _this_ is useful - 2 good solid things that could be done right now by SE’s to limit the ability of governments, (i.e. Beijing, The Bush Administration) to make you party to their immoral, and what should be illegal, acts:
1) Figure out a way of how to get by without cookies / user profiles / click-through redirects, (certainly more than a tad problematic re: relevance, and nukes the possibility of user-adaptive search, but certainly worth experimenting with and seeing how much actual effect it would have vs. the gain of actually _not having_ this kind of info, even if subpoenaed).
2) Set all activity to use SSL to make it more difficult to spy on info traffic, (’course, am sure each and every government will try to put up barriers to this use of SSL - Bush would say that being able to snoop this info is critical to finding someone who’s doing research on how to build a dirty bomb, Beijing to find someone who’s trying to figure out how best to promote self-determination for Taiwan and / or Hong Kong).
I’ve largely tried to resist posting things about politics, etc., here for quite some time, (at great angst to my younger, much more politico self) but after reading this in my newsreader this AM, this is just too much. I had to post it to assist to raise the profile of these kind of disgusting abuses of power, or, in being silent, only assent to its existence.
I find myself truly and deeply disgusted at how much the Bush administration has taken the country that I was so proud to live in, (and still have great hope again for once 2008 comes) the original, and still largest and most difficult Grand Experiment on populist rule, and whether indeed that could over the long term remain a country worthy of the high ideals upon which we were founded, or whether it would descend into despotism.
And no, I’m not just another left-wing wacko, I was a strong Reaganite in college, and a very proud member of the Republican Party, as it then stood - fiscally conservative, socially progressive. With Bush’s ascension, I formally deleted my association with the Republican Party…..
Anyway, this isn’t supposed to be about me, it’s about further helping to publicize the continued unacceptably dark road that we tread when we abandon what we stand for, falling prey to the Great Purveyors of FUD, (”Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt”).
“Time of War” my tail - you could have used the same logic with the same level of argument to support this kind of behavior in the Cold War, (especially the McCarthy Era) as well - that went on for 50 yrs….
So, without further ado, an appeal from what we once were to what we have become…
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“U.S. military officials at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, strapped hunger-striking prisoners into restraint chairs for hours to feed them through tubes and isolated them in cold cells, The New York Times said on Thursday. More
Can’t wait until we find those secret recorders in his oval office….
President George W Bush has admitted he authorised secret monitoring of communications within the United States in the wake of the 2001 terror attacks.
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