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Comment by smokeyj | Hacker News Reader

A profile is being generated about you, slowly but surely. It starts out as a vague picture, but the more you communicate, the the more clearly you define yourself. It includes your political affiliations, interests you display online, who your friends are, your every movement, your sexual preferences, close secrets, and anything else that can be gathered about you. These profiles are stored in a government database that allow contractors to test threat-detection algorithms to identify potential threats to national security -- aka, status quo. These reports will be sent to the appropriate LEO to summon and indefinitely detain you. You will be sent to a secret prison. You will not have a court date. Get ready for the New America.

Edit - Yes, the hyperbole is strong in this one.

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And all I can think of is.

Holy Shit. Stallman was right.

Prescience is a dangerous gift for ones mental health. I like to think of RMS as driven mad by his vision not seeing vision because of being mad.

While I do appreciate your statement in the larger literary context (great artists and prophets deemed insane), and I don't think RMS is justified in everything he does...

I reject your allusion to his insanity. Neurotic behavior is not the same as out-of-control psychotic.

But do you know what the worst part is?

He is right and he was right on basically every count of batshit crazy IP/privacy "conspiracy" he ever conceived. And as crazy and repugnant as we find him. He probably is right about what is coming but we don't see it yet.

I think the actual "worst part" is that the guy who was right is a guy which most people find repulsive.

That's how it usually is, unfortunately. People don't like being told where dangerous things will lead them.

Except that the reason we find him repulsive is not because of him telling us "where dangerous things will lead them" but because of him as a human being, his behaviours and personal hygiene.

I have great respect for his thoughts and ideas, and his steadfastness in following his own rules/guidelines, but I don't like him. If he were to look more the part I would have an easier time telling people about his ideas and thoughts without having to worry about people asking "Is that the guy that eats stuff he pulls from his feet?". His outward appearance influences the way people see him, the way people treat him and how much they value his ideas and how seriously they take them.

That is unfortunately true for anyone in almost any situation.

I think manners, and not eating dead skin in front of an audience, is not incompatible with having foresight.

But being maladapted in other ways might well be part of being "prophetic". Prescience, it appears, has a price.

Too bad people are shallow enough to regard matters of hygiene and mannerisms on the same level as having the uncanny ability to foretell what will happen. When will people learn to just see through that, ignore that... People can be weird and still have something substantial to say.

This has absolutely nothing to do with rms and his visions. Which are wrong.

Apparently many of you think that being "open" helped Android to avoid troubles with Carrier IQ. Or that rms ir right because… because he is right, I suppose. Or he will be shown to be right in some distant future. Or he is right, because he cannot be wrong.

Guys, did you even stop to think what is he right about? Or if you did stop to think about it, did you also think how do you know that he is right? And if you do indeed observe something seemingly proving that he is right, did you consider other options why that particular phenomenon would take place?

On the other hand, seeing this "two legs is bad, four legs is good" mentality in action is absolutely amazing experience.

>>Yes, the hyperbole is strong in this one.

Considering the link below I'm not so sure:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/12/indefinite-military...

The most troubling part of this whole story is that Carrier IQ itself may be breaking Federal laws by logging keystrokes without getting consent from the user...and then the FBI uses that data in investigations. Wonderful.

It acts as a keylogger on some android phones, when Carrier IQ is put into a "debug state". The researcher apparently triggered that by accident without knowing. It's not the default log level. Carrier IQ is likely benign and this whole issue seems to be bad tech journalism and sensationalism.

Do you really think this is logical, or even probable, based on the FBI's past history with abusing "National Security Letters" and other forms of snooping? Note that FBI has a long-term problem with wanting to collect info on legitmate dissenters: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO

> A profile is being generated about you, slowly but surely.

In days of old, I would have agreed, but things like Facebook make me question the whole "sinister" aspect of the central database.

Have you noticed how, if the government is the one collecting data, then it's evil? But, give a person the opportunity to share all kinds of private information about themselves on the Internet, they'll do it very quickly and willingly?

Or, we used to worry about those secret chips being implanted in us that could be used to track our location. Well, I don't know about you, but I sure love my location-aware apps that constantly broadcast my location. Cause, of course everyone should where I am all the time! </sarcasm>

If it's the government collecting data, then it's surveillance and evil. But if it's just egocentric self-promotion, it's all good.

We live in a world of our own creation. There is no conspiracy but the one we empower others to create.

And yes, I'm going heavy on the hyperbole here as well, but I'm really sort of sick of people whining and complaining about this stuff all the time. But at the same time, they don't want to pay the very real costs associated with privacy, freedom and security.

The point of most legislation is that people can't always protect themselves. Whether it's from other people, or from large organisations with great power, such as international corporations or the government. Strict privacy laws in more leftist places outside the US protect people from this sort of thing.

The fact is, people don't actually know with whom they're sharing the personal information. They think it's just their friends who can see their status updates / employer / friend network / political affiliation / sexuality. If the CIA called them up and asked them completely straightforwardly to volunteer that information for a national database I'm sure most would immediately refuse outright.

... And you can't 'escape' it. Eventually a lack of data on you will be suspicious in and of itself.

There's an easy way around that, though: speak, act, live and think in a manner that's patently inoffensive to anybody.

* I guess I'm being too subtle with my sarcasm, huh. Well, I'll be Larry Literal from now on.

Yes, exactly what every corrupt regime likes, people who don't need to be pushed around, but instead get out of the way of their own accord.

People like that invite tyranny upon themselves.

It wouldn't surprise me if that, in and of itself, was an identifier.

I find myself thinking of coin-flip experiments, where it's trivial to discern who ran some sort of legitimately random test, and who just made up Heads and Tails, because humans are terrible at approximating randomness.

The usual solution to that is automation. While it is obviously nontrivial to automate creating all the data of a normal human life, it's hardly impossible.

Unless you have an AI living a low key, nonthreatening virtual life for you.

It is entirely possible that the FBI is investigating Carrier IQ at the request of the Senate and has documents about what they have found regarding how Carrier IQ uses its data. Those documents would be part of an 'ongoing investigation.'

Still I appreciate the attempt at a FOIA dump.

> Get ready for the New World.

FTFY. I'm sure this is happening all over the world.

>These reports will be sent to the appropriate LEO to summon and indefinitely detain you. You will be sent to a secret prison.

it may be not the worst what could happen to one. Reading about Kennedy/Oswald/Ruby, i've been wondering how much of a precisely targetted influence one is needed to be made behaving in a specific way. How much of our actions are really "ours"?

It's a bit scary how quickly our brains stop thinking when these topics come up..

If you have infinite knowledge/power over someone, locking them in jail is about the least profitable or fun thing you can do.

I think most of us come from a sort of middle class, well behaved background that prevents us from conceptualizing what it means to be corrupted by power.

>I think most of us come from a sort of middle class, well behaved background that prevents us from conceptualizing what it means to be corrupted by power.

from the background i come from it isn't always "corrupted by power", worst/bloodiest outcomes were result of "to have enough power to change the world [or a chunk of it] to the best [as the one having the power sees it]". The unchecked/unlimited power is the main core of the issue, not the specific intentions/people it is being used for/by.

I hope they don't confuse me for suspected terrorist A.H. Tuttle.

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