“Our choice isn’t between a digital world where the agency can eavesdrop and one where it cannot; our choice is between a digital world that is vulnerable to any attacker and one that is secure for all users.” Bruce Schneier regards ubiquitous surveillance as a quixotic undertaking that does nothing to keep us safe and does everything to undermine the very societies we seek to protect.
Tag: freedom
This structure of surveillance will stop us doing things which are right
“We now face the greatest threat to our liberties since the second world war. We are sleepwalking into despotism. Because of the amount of material that is being collected, because these databases, which are not about tiny items of information, will be used and not just by governments. Snowden was working for a corporation. They will be accessed by others in government and because, that’s most important of all, people will start to self-censor. We will find that the very fact of the total surveillance of our activities means that we are going to sort of … it’s not a question, as the foreign minister said, of ‘if you haven’t done anything wrong you have nothing to fear’. [sic] This structure of surveillance will stop us doing things which are right, that we know we should be doing.” Anthony Barnett appearing on yesterday’s BBC Newsnight programme.
In praise of pessimism
“We do not arrive at any idea of what is best for the collective unless we are prepared to seize the day and practise it on our own behalf. Most mature individuals understand what this means in respect of themselves—it’s just all those feckless others that they don’t trust to act appropriately.” Things may be for the worst in a less-than-perfect-world, but Will Self is determined to hold on to his idealism.
The special dread of terrorism for Muslims in the West
“Contrary to some hyperbolic depictions of Muslim minorities as a nefarious fifth column within society, the average Muslim has about as much control of, or connection to, the vile actions of terrorists as the average white American does to school shootings or movie theater massacres”, contends Murtaza Hussain.
The truth about dishonesty
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“We all have the capacity to be quite bad—under the right circumstances.”
Dan Ariely
Seeing terror risk, US asks journals to cut flu study facts
“Ever since the tightening of security after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, scientists have worried that a scientific development would pit the need for safety against the need to share information. Now, it seems, that day has come.” Denise Grady and William Broad report on moves by the US government to effectively censor influenza research.
Der Anruf des Bundespräsidenten
“Für alle, die keine Fans der ‘Bild’ sind, ist es schon schwer erträglich zu lernen, daß der Bundespräsident das Blatt als eine Art Verfassungsorgan behandelt. Besonders deprimierend aber ist der Umstand, daß er auch in dieser einseitigen und insgesamt übersichtlichen Kommunikation zu keinem klaren Wort fähig ist.” Nils Minkmar explores Christian Wulff‘s attitudes towards the editorial independence of the press.
“German President Wulff reportedly sought to prevent tabloid Bild from publishing a damaging article about his private loan arrangements.”
The curse of TINA
“Think Tanks surround politics today and are the very things that are supposed to generate new ideas. But if you go back and look at how they rose up—at who invented them and why—you discover they are not quite what they seem.” Adam Curtis looks at the history of the Think Tank in the UK and asks why modern politics, for all its Think Tanks, seems so paradoxically short of new ideas.