For those concerned about Eastern European crime syndicates uploading info from their computers, or who've watched a meltdown caused by an e-mail attachment or clicking a bad link, take heart. Your government doesn't care, and they won't do anything to help you, though they may be willing to sell you the information they have in their files from spying on you. The problem isn't real criminals, as you might think, but "High-Tech Terrorists" like WikiLeaks, whose real crime is revealing things that the government doesn't want us to know.
In that spirit, we get this kind of mindless, handwringing rhetoric and misdirection, as CISPA winds its way through Congress, aiming to take away our civil liberties:
Do people really believe this drivel? The lady doth protest too much, methinks. It's a sad commentary, that politicians have managed to combine two words they most fear, yet know the least about.
Perhaps you doubt that politicians are scared by the things they don't understand, by the "new technology" and the "information age." Perhaps you are right. But first consider, if you will, a young man named Aaron Swartz, a 26-year old genius who, at the age of 14, helped to create RSS, revolutionizing internet content distribution. He did a lot more than that (see links at end of this post). Ultimately, however, he faced more than 50 years in prison for downloading academic articles, charges the content owner, JSTOR, found so ridiculous that it refused to participate in the prosecution. His real crime was being one of the most outspoken opponents of SOPA, and a major architect in its defeat. His keynote address at the Freedom to Connect conference in Washington, DC, where he tells the story of defeating SOPA:
(The full video, which includes additional news stories, is at www.democracynow.org)
The first part of the video is a news summary of Swartz's battles with censors and overly zealous prosecutors. His keynote address at the conference begins at 21:00; a little after 36:00, he tells of his interactions with a US senator, the dialogue of which should be eye-opening to any American who believes in freedom as a tenet of our democracy. If you're on Facebook, or reading this blog, or simply sending e-mails to your friends and family, then make no mistake: that politician is talking about you.
Aaron Swartz spent two years fighting the charges, and trying to plea them down, but was unsuccessful because he was going to be made an example of, to all those people doing "terrible things" on the internet. Unlike JSTOR, MIT, which was also a party to the case, failed to step up and defend Swartz, saying they wanted to drop the charges, but the administration wouldn't let them. Isn't that what the nazis said at the Nuremberg trials? Following orders? Just curious, I wasn't alive then, so maybe I have my history wrong. Much as Aaron predicted at the FTC conference, now we have CISPA, while at the same time law enforcement has lobbied to have US citizens' text messages retained for two years, and for more warrantless wiretapping and internet spying, all in the name of fighting terror, not by jihadists, but by Americans. on American soil. And no, CISPA, and the slippery slope of other bills that will follow it, won't protect your home computer from malware or Eastern European organized crime syndicates.
The government cares about your computer viruses, and malware, and online security threats, it really does. That is, in much the same way it cares about convicting those on Wall Street or TBTF* banks that destroyed the lives of millions, by precipitating the subprime mortgage crisis. In other words, it really couldn't care less, not while it's busy persecuting and crucifying a 26-year old computer genius whose contributions were groundbreaking internet innovations, and whose transgressions were that he tinkered with how things worked, so that he could change them.
The essence of creative genius is that it almost always happens outside of the lines created by those who stifle it. And if they can't stifle the genius, they stifle the man. Aaron Swartz hanged himself in his Brooklyn apartment on January 11 of this year, a young, and by all accounts, gentle man who single-handedly did more to destroy SOPA than just about any other person. And his reward from those with the cart blanche to abuse their power, is to be driven like a dog to the point of hopelessness, to a dark cliff from which he saw no return. It's true that suicide is an individual act, but there's often a cathartic moment, a turning point, a sinking below the waterline where life still sails. And when the cage is manmade, one must ask who made the cage, for often it is manufactured in the name of Justice, as if justice is the exonerating explanation for any cruelty you wish to inflict on another human being.
But the Justice Department doesn't have time for that. They need to get on the stump and stop the likes of WikiLeaks and Anonymous (see last link before the jump), just more things they fear, but don't understand. It's too bad for Aaron Swartz, though, for he was no match for the machine. He was simply a single voice, calmly cutting through the cackles of stupidity, and for that crime, the crime of being smarter, and funnier, and more capable than his persecutors, he was put through a living hell.
You can also read a short eulogy and plea from his friend and lawyer, Lawrence Lessig, at his blog. It gives a bit of color to why millions are outraged by this miscarriage of our judicial system, in the hands of those who fear what they cannot understand.
Believe me if you want, or conduct your own research. Then, I encourage you to make your voice heard:
Oh, and some additional fun reading about Carmen Ortiz, and her fantasies of someday being reincarnated in the form of the Marquis de Sade: I Don't Care Who Dies, So Long as I Get Ahead.
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*TBTF: Too Big To Fail, a "Chicken Little" straw-man argument made by your elected politicians when they voted to bail out the country's largest banks (too big to fail), rather than its citizens, in the largest wealth transfer in history, from the middle class to this century's robber barons. This even included some foreign banks; meanwhile, Americans are saddled with a debt crisis that is just beginning to rear its ugly head.
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