Stallman: Thousands Dead, Millions Deprived of Liberties (2001)

xlayn

Every time "these type of people" are dismissed as lunatics, as extremist and alarmist, time comes back to prove they were right. I frankly dismissed the idea of "a group of extremely powerful and rich pedos" under a pizza store... and yes there were none under any pizza store.

GMoromisato

Just to clarify because my own mental parser failed: He's not predicting that thousands will die because of mass surveillance--he's saying that the deaths of thousands in the 9/11 attacks are going to let the government deprive millions of their civil liberties.

basisword

I've never been super alarmist about this stuff. But recently was looking back and it really is staggering the amount of simple freedoms we've lost in the last 25 years. Partly through government overreach for 'security' and partly through technology becoming so pervasive. It really feels like rules get added regularly, and none ever get removed. Things just get stricter. And with technology we add a layer of self/citizen policing of everything. The 'disallowed' but relatively innocent things we could get up to as kids/teenagers just 20 years ago kids today could only dream of.

iamnothere

RMS was correct, as usual. Of course he could not have predicted the additional 1 million deaths due to military action (and estimated 3.5 million more from subsequent effects) in the resulting Middle Eastern/Central Asian conflicts over the following years.

maybewhenthesun

st iGNUtius called it, amen. :-P

aliasxneo

Wrote some of my thoughts somewhat related to this recently [1]. I've simply concluded that its a matter of numbers: the more centralized data becomes the easier it is for the government to coerce access. If the government could obtain the data of a million citizens by coercing or engaging in law fare against one or two companies, it's much easier done. If they had to individually coerce, sue, or otherwise hack into those same million customers, it becomes a lot more expensive and difficult. It sucks that's the way it is, but that's why I think the new internet has to reverse the rules and make authorities more particular about who they track rather than just casting a dragnet across N major providers. [1]: https://dntls.substack.com/p/the-new-internet

ParentiSoundSys

Along the same lines, "Welcome to the New and Improved Police State" by Dave McGowan, September 12 2001: https://centerforaninformedamerica.com/welcome-to-the-new-an...

svidgen

Whoa ... ... Slashdot still exists?

Thoreandan

Huh, small world, I'm the one who submitted that to Slashdot.

ryanisnan

> “Given that the human face recognition performed by the check-in agents did not keep the hijackers out, there is no reason to think that computer face recognition would help.” Even though I agree with the premise of the essay, this is absurdly false today. Computers are really good at this type of thing now, scarily so.

ChrisArchitect

alt link: https://www.stallman.org/millions.html Some previous discussion: 2013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5839549

7e

Stallman also wrote that a Jeffrey Epstein victim may have been “entirely willing.” Not a really a great source for anything. If you must cult, cult someone else please.