A recent piece from Alvaro Bedoya on the very real things that people have had to hide in American history:
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/1...
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/1...
It's totally fine to see problems, even with our highly progressive and forward-looking society. Dissent is the highest form of patriotism. But we are a nation of laws, and there are established procedures for changing those laws. We have the ballot box instead of the Anonabox, and for good reason.
If you are a good, loyal citizen, true to the ideas of the founding fathers and possessed of respect for the rule of law, there is no reason to be anonymous. Either you are right, and the democratic voice of the people will join you in a chorus of freedom, or you are wrong and if you continue to inflict harm on our society it will be forced to defend itself.
You are incredibly optimistic here. The US government has the ability to monitor the communications of darn near the entire planet. This is new territory for human beings. Just because things are good for most of us right now, doesn't mean they always will be.
> Those things might have been reasonable in the past, but we live in 2014. We live in a country that has an ethnic minority president, the first nation anywhere in the world to be progressive enough to do so. We have abolished racism, sexism, homophobia, and classism. We live in an equal, classless, democratic society.
In what world do you live that we have "We have abolished racism, sexism, homophobia, and classism" because I can tell you all 4 of those are still going strong today. Please don't associate the abolishment of slavery with the abolishment of racism, it's so wrong that it's just sad that you seem to think that they are one in the same. Just because we elected "an ethnic minority president" it doesn't mean we get to whitewash history or pretend that racism is dead. As for sexism and homophobia I have witnessed both of these first hand within the last month easily and probably within the last week if I really thought about it. And lastly I would argue classism is actually on the rise, in the US at least (Probably elsewhere but I'm only going to say the US for sure right now).
> It's totally fine to see problems, even with our highly progressive and forward-looking society. Dissent is the highest form of patriotism. But we are a nation of laws, and there are established procedures for changing those laws. We have the ballot box instead of the Anonabox, and for good reason.
"established procedures for changing those laws".... Yeah how is congress doing on that front again?
> If you are a good, loyal citizen, true to the ideas of the founding fathers and possessed of respect for the rule of law, there is no reason to be anonymous. Either you are right, and the democratic voice of the people will join you in a chorus of freedom, or you are wrong and if you continue to inflict harm on our society it will be forced to defend itself.
Majority != Right. It wasn't too long ago that voicing support for homosexuality could have easily gotten you killed (there are many parts of the work were this is still the case) and law enforcement wouldn't have batted an eye. There are and always will be the need for anonymous speech/dissent because it is impossible to change unjust/unfair laws without being associated with the thing you want to change. If you remove anonymity then you also remove the ability to change the laws that you mention we have an "established procedures for changing". Democracy cannot exist without dissent and dissent cannot easily exist without some form of anonymity or dissenting will immediately bring a mob/law enforcement to your front door.