Awakening
October 29, 2009 – 11:30 pmI haven’t been writing for a while now. Last week I was visiting the UK and have had quite a busy schedule. What I witnessed in London scared the living daylights out of me, and it has taken some time for me to come back to earth from that experience.
Fortunately, we can practically forget about threats of shutting file-sharers off from the internet. Lord Mandelson (whom is widely despised), is the person responsible for this motion, which is to be submitted in 2011. His counterpart, Tom Watson, has a different and far more understanding approach in his position as Digital Engagement Minister-to-be at Tories.
UPDATE: My bad. Tom Watson is an MP for Labour, not Tory. I had assumed he was Tory since he is regarded as the next minister for digitalry. Thanks to Philip Hunt of PPUK for pointing this out.
I will be back shortly with thoughts on my experiences from London and Manchester.
One Response to “Awakening”
Eben Moglen, May 3, 2006:
“They did come in with that intention, mind you, it wasn’t September 11 which produced that intention, they came in, as you may recall, with a program called “Total Information Awareness”, which, in one of those games played in Washington, they gave to the most hated man in town. Admiral Poindexter, as I said at the time in my old classroom, wasn’t intended as the guy to *run* Total Information Awareness, he was intended as the guy to be *caught*, *pretending* to run Total Information Awareness, so after he had been lynched everything could be done much more quietly and much more efficiently, and as we are discovering now – at least the spore on the trail before they go and burn down the forest, to keep us from following it – that’s exactly what happened.
Total Information Awareness went away, oh, Terrorist Surveillance came in. Note that that was a very artful move, it was about the *idea* of specificity having been restored to searching, which was exactly *not* what was being done.”
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikisource/en/wiki/Free_Software_and_Free_Media
By X on Oct 30, 2009