Reknamorken wrote:
]
] That's not sarcasm. I'm talking about
] counter-counter-intelligence.

Hrm, well then I get to respond.

First off, I agree with Tim May that the people who are focusing on Poindexter are missing the point. He is just some guy. He is not even running an operational system. He is just developing a technology.

This project would be a bad idea if it was run by Mother Teresa. Don't let people get it in their head that this would be OK if he wasn't running it.

The policy decisions, and the actual administration of this thing if it were to go live, would be handled by a totally different set of people.

What Gilmore has done is pretty much a serious violation of Poindexter's personal privacy.

Imagine if that was your address, phone number, and map up on that site. There are enough people who are pissed off about this that if it were me, I would be seriously afraid that some idiot might show up at my house and try to hurt me and my family. My thought would be that there ought to be a law.

And there OUGHT to be a law.

If its not ok for people to be running around with MY personal information in this manner, then its not OK for people to be running around with Poindexter's personal information in this manner.

Yes, there OUGHT to be a law, and thats the whole point. Poindexter is building a surveillance system, and Gilmore wishes to make him think critically about it by putting him on the other side of the fence.

As a demonstration of a political point its interesting. As a general matter of policy, its not.

If I should be safe from this sort of intrusion into my personal life, then everyone else should as well, no matter how much or how little money or power they might have.

As it stands, it is only illegal to do this if you are inciting violence against the people you are providing information about, and even that case was controversial.

I'm not exactly sure what the right answers are. I know that there are all kinds of rules about what I can do with a company's copyrighted media, but there are little or no rules about what that company can do with my personal information. I don't think thats right. However, if we set a standard, it should apply to everyone. companies, individual citizens, rich, poor, black, white.

We cannot in the same breath argue that it is wrong for someone to do this thing to us while we do it to others. At that point it becomes us versus them, and there is no fundamental moral basis from which we are operating.

RE: Eyeballing Total Information Awareness