Anthony & Yo's-

Big Brother's cannibal menu is large, so there's no shortage of places to remove ourselves from it.  Whether or not it's possible to remove ourselves from all of it at once, isn't a good reason to declare pre-emptive surrender and give up all hope and all resistance.

The FBI can prosecute you for crimes, but you can cross-examine them in court, in front of a jury.  But what happens when you get turned down for a job, or an apartment, or a mortgage, or credit, because of something in your online "profiles"?  The Bradley Mannings and Aaron Swartzes of the world are seen by many as heroes, whose struggles become causes.  But the unemployed and homeless of the world are seen as "losers," whose struggles are attributed to their own personal failings rather than the logical result of the oppressive grinding of the gears of oligarchy.

More and more, employment applications and even credit applications are decided on the basis of "profiles," aka dossiers, that the privatized control-state collects on each and every one of us with our every mouse-click and typed word. 

Which consequence is more likely to happen to any of us or anyone else we know?  That they'll become a political cause? or that they'll become an economic casualty?   How many people have been dragged off to Gitmo, vs. how many have been fired and foreclosed or evicted? 

The fear of Gitmo is like the fear of being in an airplane crash: a horror to be sure, but a highly unlikely event.  But the fear of unemployment and homelessness is so pervasive it's like the stink of garbage for someone who lives next to a landfill: it's in the air we breathe to the point where we almost don't bother commenting on it.  None the less it lingers in the background, stinking up our homes and clothes, interfering with the taste of our food, causing a constant low-level headache to the point where popping aspirin seems like the normal state of affairs. 

The private-sector Stasi, the private control-state, is where the power is, and where the power is actually used, on a mass scale that impacts millions of lives including each of our own.

As for "every telephone conversation," why do you think I'm trying to build an alternative telco?  The mason works with concrete, the carpenter works with wood, the plumber works with water pipes, the electrician works with wires, and the roofer works with shingles.  Each by themselves can't build the whole house, but all of them working together, can. 

-G.


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On 13-05-05-Sun 10:20 PM, Anthony Di Franco wrote:
We should be clear that the part of our collective memory that is made publicly searchable by Google et. al. is only a slice of the feast on Big Brother's cannibal menu:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/04/telephone-calls-recorded-fbi-boston

BURNETT: Tim, is there any way, obviously, there is a voice mail they can try to get the phone companies to give that up at this point. It's not a voice mail. It's just a conversation. There's no way they actually can find out what happened, right, unless she tells them?

CLEMENTE: "No, there is a way. We certainly have ways in national security investigations to find out exactly what was said in that conversation. It's not necessarily something that the FBI is going to want to present in court, but it may help lead the investigation and/or lead to questioning of her. We certainly can find that out.

BURNETT: "So they can actually get that? People are saying, look, that is incredible.

CLEMENTE: "No, welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not."

"All of that stuff" - meaning every telephone conversation Americans have with one another on US soil, with or without a search warrant - "is being captured as we speak"




On Sun, May 5, 2013 at 7:06 PM, GtwoG PublicOhOne <g2g-public01@att.net> wrote:

Rabbit & Yo's-

Here's another vote for "yes we should have a list that's not indexed by Google." 

Given the choice between posting to a list that's a direct surveillance-feed and one that isn't, many of us will take our discussion to the latter.  (Would you rather cuddle with your friends under a surveillance camera, or under a tree?)

But let's not call it "ephemeral," because that word, in this context, is a white flag of surrender.  It's surrender to the idea that Google is the one and only keeper of cultural memory, and anything else is merely transient.  It's surrender to corporate power and the control state. 

We should assert the right to our own collective memory, stored on our own devices, accessible to our own community.  The place for the kind of broadcast that becomes an appetizer on Big Brother's cannibal menu, is when the broadcast is something that'll give Big Brother indigestion. 

Let Google eat our manifestos, proclamations, and press releases.  But not our soul-searches, our occasional bickering, our existential angst, or our vulnerable self-revealing philosophizing about sex, religion, and the meaning of life. 

-G.


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On 13-05-05-Sun 5:16 PM, Rabbit wrote:
Just a reminder that the archives of this list are indexed by Google.


(For this reason I'm keeping pretty quiet here.  Would anyone else like to have a list which is not indexed?  How about "sudo-ephemeral"?)


-Rabbit



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