[liberationtech] eternity USENET (Re: Internet blackout)

[Jonathan Wilkes]

On 06/28/2013 12:28 PM, Eleanor Saitta wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA256
>
> On 2013.06.28 04.21, Rich Kulawiec wrote:
>> On Fri, Jun 21, 2013 at 04:56:24PM +0100, Michael Rogers wrote:
>>> I agree - "no smartphones" is sound advice. "No phones" is even
>>> better. But the problem is, nobody follows that advice. So we
>>> have to be pragmatic.
>> [snip insightful comments]
>>
>> I would like to agree with you -- and in part, I do.
>>
>> But I'll suggest that the yardstick for "pragmatic" has moved
>> considerably during the last few weeks.
> And yet, the yardstick for what users will accept hasn't moved more
> than a half inch.Yes, we're going to get more people to try to use
> better tools now.  They'll still fail, because the tools still aren't
> designed for them and they still do actually have other jobs to do.
> We're exceptionally unlikely to get people to stop carrying entire
> classes of devices most of the time when they still live in a world
> which all-but-requires you to carry them.
>
> Did you know that there's a private bus line going in in San Francisco
> that you can't ride without an iPhone?  Now, what was that again about
> telling people to not carry phones?

That's anecdotal evidence.

The vast majority of the smartphone userbase just learned the
word "meta-data" a few weeks ago.  The news about
the scope of NSA surveillance is revelatory to non-specialists.
The scope of the surveillance is unprecendented.  There are not
yet any peer-reviewed articles on how these revelations affect
users' relationship to their smartphones, nor how those relationships
may change as they more fully understand the dangers of wide-net
surveillance.

-Jonathan