FYI, emphasis added is mine:<br><br><br>---------- Forwarded message ----------<br>From: Lauren Weinstein <<a href="mailto:lauren@vortex.com">lauren@vortex.com</a>><br>Date: Sat, Jun 8, 2013 at 8:00 PM<br>Subject: [ NNSquad ] Internet Shattered: Spies, Spooks, and Disgust<br>
To: <a href="mailto:nnsquad@nnsquad.org">nnsquad@nnsquad.org</a><br><br><br><br> Internet Shattered: Spies, Spooks, and Disgust<br><br> <a href="http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/001042.html">http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/001042.html</a><br>
<br><br>I've spent literally my entire adult life (and even before) working on<br>Internet technologies and policies, one way or another, reaching back<br>to early ARPANET days at UCLA -- a project rooted in Department of<br>
Defense funding, it's worthwhile to remember.<br><br>Over that time, there have been many related high points and low<br>points, events joyful or upsetting, but never -- not even close --<br>have I felt so completely, utterly disgusted with a situation<br>
associated with the Net as I am today.<br><br>The apparently true facts we're learning about our own government's<br>spying abuses against its own citizens are bad enough<br>( <a href="http://j.mp/13qeyu7">http://j.mp/13qeyu7</a> [Lauren's Blog] ). But we also are faced with<br>
stomaching the incredibly hypocritical and disingenuous pronouncements<br>of intelligence agencies, administration officials, and Congressional<br>leaders, as they point fingers back and forth about who knew what<br>when, who approved which program, and why we citizens shouldn't be at<br>
all concerned.<br><br><b>To make matters worse, mixed in with misinformation and purposeful<br>obfuscations, these actions have played directly into the hands of<br>conspiracy theorists who are now working overtime to damage the very<br>
parties most in a position to help hold back unacceptable government<br>prying into our affairs.</b><br><br><b>It is in fact the major Web services providers like Google, Twitter,<br>Facebook, and others, who have become the most effective holding lines<br>
against government overreaching. Most smaller firms or individuals<br>don't have the financial or legal resources to fight back against<br>overly broad data demands and other government abuses.</b><br><br>Thanks to the damage done by distorted dribbling of information over<br>
the last few days about telephone metadata collection, PRISM, and now<br>new stories and government generated gobbledygook explanations just<br>today, people all over the world are confused and upset, wondering how<br>deeply the USA is spying on the Internet and its users, the telephone<br>
system, and perhaps their supermarket loyalty cards.<br><br>Even though the major Web firms categorically denied providing "back<br>door" en masse data access to NSA, and accurately asserted that all<br>data requests are vetted by those firms (and sometimes pushed back<br>
against in court), the last few days' worth of false charges have led<br>to a torrent of people flooding comments and postings (not to mention<br>my inbox). Their rants proclaim that the firms are lying, they're in<br>
bed with the government, this is proof you can't believe anything<br>these companies say, and gigabytes of other assorted paranoid rot. I<br>won't even address these ravings here. They generally demonstrate a<br>
profound lack of knowledge regarding both global-scale software<br>engineering and the legal process. They're illogical, irrational, and<br>are most appropriately filed in Area 51, right next to the outer space<br>aliens' rumpus room.<br>
<br>The government has been feeding this conspiratorial mindset against<br>these firms for years. It has tried its best to scare the hell out<br>Internet users, by attempting to falsely convince them that cookies<br>are evil incarnate, open Wi-Fi access ports are somehow to be<br>
considered private, and that anonymous ad personalization systems will<br>kill the family dog, if not your children.<br><br>All the while, we see now that the real abuses have been orchestrated<br>and planned from within the Beltway for many years, by officials<br>
totally convinced that they are so much smarter, so much more worldly,<br>so much more entitled than the rest of us, that they've evolved the<br>art of political and bureaucratic hypocrisy and insanely exaggerated<br>
secrecy to a level unimagined by the most skillful con men and<br>swindlers in history.<br><br>In this case, we're not just being swindled out of uncountable<br>hundreds of billions of dollars being sucked into black budget<br>
"everything is called terrorism now!" ratholes, but we've been cheated<br>by the politicians, spooks, and spies out of something even more<br>important in the long run -- trust.<br><br>No matter how ostensibly laudable their motives, these officials and<br>
minions with their vast and secretive funding, are steadfast in their<br>belief that the American people cannot be trusted -- after all, we're<br>just the little people compared with the giant brains of Congress and<br>
the intelligence agencies. Pat us on the head, tell us some scary<br>stories (leave out the inconvenient details of course), and scoot us<br>all back to our rooms.<br><br>Now hear this!<br><br>We're on to you. Not just here in the U.S. but other governments<br>
around the world who are playing the same games with their citizens.<br>We don't need any wacky conspiracy theories -- the facts that are<br>demonstrable are sufficient.<br><br>We know that you desperately fear an Internet that you can't control,<br>
where every byte of data and every activity log isn't unencrypted and<br>available at your immediate beck and call.<br><br>We know you want to control what sites are available and what sites<br>say, dictate the results search engines may show, and generally treat<br>
the Net as your own global intelligence fetish supreme.<br><br>How about this? If you believe you can honestly make the case that<br>you need to know everyone we call on the phone, have access on demand<br>to virtually everything we do on our computers, and otherwise treat us<br>
with such suffocatingly, "loving" contempt -- get out here and<br>convince us.<br><br>No more hiding behind vast secrecy that serves your own desire for<br>agency empire building far more than actual national security needs.<br>
No more smoke screens blown at Congress pressuring them to approve your<br>schemes without details or debate on the theory that they're just too<br>secret for Congress to really trouble itself about.<br><br>And enough of trying to turn us against the very Internet firms that<br>
have the ethical and legal stamina not to let us be flattened like<br>worms under your national security steamroller.<br><br>While we're at it, oh spies, spooks, and affiliated politicos, one<br>other piece of free advice.<br>
<br>Go grab or download yourself a copy of the Constitution of the United<br>States. It's widely available, at least for the moment. Pay<br>particular attention to the Bill of Rights.<br><br>Take it home. Discuss it with your spouse and children -- your<br>
children in particular probably already understand it far better than<br>you do.<br><br>Those documents were written by a bunch of rather ordinary men of<br>extraordinary vision and resolve. They knew that even a well-meaning<br>
government can easily descend into abuse and tyranny, and they knew<br>that protecting fundamental rights requires not treating everyone as a<br>potential suspect, or everything they do or say as subject to access<br>and analysis by the King's representatives and sycophants.<br>
<br>They knew what freedom meant, while your actions now -- regardless of<br>your motives -- are treating their efforts with vast contempt.<br><br>We are proud to be Americans, but we are also enormously saddened and<br>
disgusted by your behavior.<br>
<br>And that's the truth.<br><br>--Lauren--<br>Lauren Weinstein (<a href="mailto:lauren@vortex.com">lauren@vortex.com</a>): <a href="http://www.vortex.com/lauren">http://www.vortex.com/lauren</a><br>Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: <a href="http://www.pfir.org/pfir-info">http://www.pfir.org/pfir-info</a><br>
Founder:<br> - Network Neutrality Squad: <a href="http://www.nnsquad.org">http://www.nnsquad.org</a><br> - PRIVACY Forum: <a href="http://www.vortex.com/privacy-info">http://www.vortex.com/privacy-info</a><br> - Data Wisdom Explorers League: <a href="http://www.dwel.org">http://www.dwel.org</a><br>
- Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance: <a href="http://www.gctip.org">http://www.gctip.org</a><br>Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy<br>Lauren's Blog: <a href="http://lauren.vortex.com">http://lauren.vortex.com</a><br>
Google+: <a href="http://vortex.com/g+lauren">http://vortex.com/g+lauren</a> / Twitter: <a href="http://vortex.com/t-lauren">http://vortex.com/t-lauren</a><br>Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: <a href="http://vortex.com">vortex.com</a><br>
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McTim<br>"A name indicates what we seek. An address indicates where it is. A route indicates how we get there." Jon Postel<br>