[liberationtech] It's about time we publicly declared privacy was never dead.

[Moon Jones]

Shava Nerad:
> Well, that is what the young people have been carefully taught but the
> makers and a great many more feel something missing.  They are creating
> their own tribes and communities because no one left a copy of the social
> contract near the remote control, or maybe they clicked through the EULA
> too fast?

There is no social contract, no EULA.

> If these young people could dream together, on and offline, some hero's
> journey -- to change their world reasonably peacefully, fighting dragons,
> taking all that world building F&SF they love and putting that modeling to
> work IRL?

Sounds like a Stalinist/1984 goal. I find your stance puzzling. You seem
to be against the current political way, yet you are pushing for a far
more totalitarian society.

> Why aren't more of us working on that?

Us? Who?

> We can be academic and clever and analytic.  But law and software and
> academic papers will not get rid of the USA PATRIOT Act or tame the cycle
> of constitutional abuse in Congress and the IC.

The Patriot Act is a law. Another law can just erase it. It's quite
simple. Just enough people have to care. No need of mysticisms.

> We need a popular movement, and today that requires social tools,  funds,
> will within our networks, and a great deal of the Art of the Possible.
> Sausagemaking, my friends.  Not just clever language and fine speechifying.

This paragraph is precisely that: clever language and fine that thing.

We? Who?

Nobody need a movement. The movement is there. Or is not.

Funds? Than you are a corporation. You need to raise capital to siphon
some resources from one side to another. Power is one such resource.

> I saw what, a couple/few thousand people in DC on the Capitol lawn a week
> ago and the press made us look huge compared to the body count.  That's
> momentum going by.

Spend some time thinking outside the TV box. Many, few, has no meaning.

Imposing one's will upon another is plain sh*tty no matter what's the goal.

> If privacy's dead, or undead -- shut the damn list down.  Liberation's
> impossible in a despot's floodlight.  Hand Evgeny his Nobel and shut down
> the Peace Prizes, or give them all to one big recipient for pacification
> efforts against those pesky troublemakers in their misguided efforts in
> Eurasia.

The Peace Prize, whatever the brand, is just a way to gather some
publicity for some war tool. War is a racket, and a good one. But it has
to be kept alive. Kindled, if you'd like the amazonian joke. As people
do not like war. Like a good fight. Like some gossip. Even lynching a
few. Not war.

> If privacy's not dead, who will plant the wheat with me?  What are our next
> steps?

Privacy is a concept. It can't be alive, dead, eating, sh*tting, f*ckin,
and so on.