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I posted this in response to the American being groped on travel to India, got -3 karma points: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6240211 https://news.ycombi

by logn 13y ago

I posted this in response to the American being groped on travel to India, got -3 karma points: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6240211 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6240211 Now I'm reading this story, in which pj explains her story which was exactly my point from the comment linked above. What's the deal? Anyhow, yes, when the sum of human communication is read by the US government (and other governments and private intel corporations) then it's incredibly destructive to the human condition and society. We're fucked. Time to start fixing this for real. Open up your IDE's and/or text editors and get to work. Make sure to open source (GPL or Affero GPL) everything. Work on decentralized P2P encrypted networking. Good projects: cjdns ... see you on the flip side. Hack the Planet!

jdbernard 13y ago
It was downvoted likely because it was off-topic and added nothing to that discussion.
grey-area 13y ago
Since you genuinely don't seem to understand, here's the deal: that story was about someone's personal experience of sexual harassment, and you posted a flippant analogy comparing it to invasion of online privacy. NSA surveillance is a big deal, but nothing to do with sexual harassment.
- logn 13y ago
  Thanks, I appreciate your feedback and the other commenter's. It didn't occur to me it would be interpreted as flippant or off-topic. Anyhow, IMO it was a serious and equivalent analogy, as I think pj's story shows. Anyhow, I was just curious, I don't actually care about downvotes.
  - grey-area 13y ago
    I think the problem is that it is no way equivalent, and sexual assault is psychologically far more damaging. I don't think you can compare the complex damage to body and self-worth triggered by that meaningfully to the limited intrusion most of us feel at having machines storing and cataloguing our every move. With respect, I don't think pg's story shows the two are similar at all - she's taken a decision to withdraw from being a conduit for leaks (probably because she doesn't want her life destroyed by a NSL), but has not had sexual contact forced on her. It's just a completely different thing. The biggest dangers I see with the surveillance state are more in the future, when complex filters are run on our data in decades to come, and segregate us into cohorts of users which can then be targeted and related at will. When that capability catches up with the data storage capability and starts to churn through decades of data, we truly will be in a dystopia far beyond our imagining today.

by logn 13y ago

jdbernard 13y ago

It was downvoted likely because it was off-topic and added nothing to that discussion.

grey-area 13y ago

Since you genuinely don't seem to understand, here's the deal: that story was about someone's personal experience of sexual harassment, and you posted a flippant analogy comparing it to invasion of online privacy. NSA surveillance is a big deal, but nothing to do with sexual harassment.

logn 13y ago
Thanks, I appreciate your feedback and the other commenter's. It didn't occur to me it would be interpreted as flippant or off-topic. Anyhow, IMO it was a serious and equivalent analogy, as I think pj's story shows. Anyhow, I was just curious, I don't actually care about downvotes.
- grey-area 13y ago
  I think the problem is that it is no way equivalent, and sexual assault is psychologically far more damaging. I don't think you can compare the complex damage to body and self-worth triggered by that meaningfully to the limited intrusion most of us feel at having machines storing and cataloguing our every move. With respect, I don't think pg's story shows the two are similar at all - she's taken a decision to withdraw from being a conduit for leaks (probably because she doesn't want her life destroyed by a NSL), but has not had sexual contact forced on her. It's just a completely different thing. The biggest dangers I see with the surveillance state are more in the future, when complex filters are run on our data in decades to come, and segregate us into cohorts of users which can then be targeted and related at will. When that capability catches up with the data storage capability and starts to churn through decades of data, we truly will be in a dystopia far beyond our imagining today.