Well, well. Larry the Twitter bird was forced to tweet the I.P. addys of Guido Fawkes, @p0isAn0n, @OccupyBoston and all of the folks who #BostonPD during a short week in December. One wonders how many folks retweeted anything identified as #BostonPD. Kudos to the ACLU for speaking out though.
On top of that, a twit who stated that he wanted to have S&M sex with a woman named Michele [why oh why?] will have his identity turned over to a grand jury. If he had merely stated his intense infatuation with her and that he wanted to marry her, would his 140 word claim to fame had been adjudged a possible threat?
Lamar Smith's "Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act" is up, just biding its' wait time until the House of Rep can get to it. And yes, it is just another way for the Government et. al. to spy on Joe Average or Not-So-Average Citizen. Much as demanding the e-mails of the #BostonPD hash tag users who were either actively participating or retweeting a conversation under the guise of looking for possible criminals, this Act is just another witch hunt without any specific suspects being targeted.
In the interest of convenience to mili police departments everywhere and perhaps also to giant advertising corporations, Facebook's timeline will be mandatory by this time next week. No opting out of that one. Six days remain to purge anything that you don't want included on your timeline. I sneer at Facebook.
Two Louisiana State University students weigh in on Anonymous-- one pro and one con-- for their school e-pub Isureveille. Both students can be followed on Twitter of course. [ @TDR_dscheu and @TDR_ccrockett ].
I don't think Anonymous deserves the National Security Agency designation of "terrorist organization." Furthermore, the fact that a script kiddie can help bring down a website via a tool that he or she can download from the internet (without knowing a bit of code) is total FAIL on the parts of the folks who are in charge of making sure their company websites are not prone to attacks. The problem is security vs. privacy. Even large brand name companies have been found to be lacking in following common sense ideas. Paypal's usage of plain text to store their customers' passwords springs easily to mind. And I am supposed to trust that my ISP, Google +, and other sites are good at keeping my wallet info secure? Uh, no. That is ridiculous.
Comparing the hacking of websites to burning down a building is a bit of a stretch. I find that to be a piss poor analogy. Not too many revolutions are accomplished without bloodshed and destruction. Many people have died for freedom. And many more will. I am willing to die for freedom. Freedom is under attack these days. The freedom that is under attack is much bigger than the sharing of information being circumscribed. We need information in order to create change. The status quo is against the free flow of information because the status quo wants to remain the status quo. Business as usual is not okay. Legislating morality: shoving the morality of corporations such as the Roman Catholic Church down the throats of their secular employees is not okay. Corporate "personhood" should never trump an individual's conscience. We the people need to know what the higher ups are doing. Business as usual allows government figures to wiretap offices for their own purposes. Business as usual does not want us to know about it.
Over protests by business as usual, the Pentagon papers were published in book form designed for consumption by the general public. Wikileaks gives anyone with access to a computer the ability to read what some governments and agencies would rather us not see. Anonymous is a meme that points out the flaws in a system that very often divides people up on the bases of who they are and who they know and how much of the local currency they have been able to amass.
Against this backdrop of fouled tweets and bad legislation hiding under the coats of "oh but we must save the children" and the sharing of the poisoned NSA sacrificial well water, there arises songs for freedom as beautiful as those composed by Beethoven and his pet starling. My own atheist non-soul was immediately won over by The Church of Reality website. How refreshing it was for me to find this bastion of wisdom in the midst of other internet clutter! The bird of freedom flown by the Church of Reality does not bear the first name of Larry.
This morning I also found the EFF's https add-on for Firefox and a list from 2007 of hosting sites that will stand by freedom of speech. Although the list is old, I do plan to go through it with the idea toward finding a place to mirror my blogs and to move my blogs should that ever become necessary.
radical sapphoq says: radical sapphoq already said it today. Scroll up.
Today is March 2, 2012. Don't forget to participate in Black March:
Don't buy any books, cds, movies during the month of March. Send a clear message to Big Hollywood that we resist any attempts to control where we go and what we do here on the Internet.
Kudos to my s.o. who has decided to join the boycott in spite of not knowing what I am talking about most of the time. Love ya, sweetie.
http://blog.sfgate.com/crime/2012/02/29/tweeter-cant-stay-anonymous-judge-rules/?gta=commentlistpos#commentlistpos
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view/20220302twitter_surrenders_data_in_hack_probe/
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9224668/Advocacy_group_takes_aim_at_anti_porn_bill_requiring_ISP_data_retention?taxonomyId=144
http://www.lsureveille.com/news/facebook-timeline-to-become-mandatory-1.2693873
http://www.lsureveille.com/opinion/head-to-head-civil-disobedience-is-not-an-act-of-terrorism-1.2709146
http://www.lsureveille.com/opinion/head-to-head-anonymous-is-evil-and-threatens-freedom-1.2709190
http://www.churchofreality.org/wisdom/welcome_home/
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
http://whdb.com/2007/free-speech-hosting-11-web-hosts-that-wont-dump-you-at-the-first-sign-of-controversy/
