4 ms·

No one deserves to feel unsafe, especially in their own home. Just because they haven't literally harmed his person doesn't mean that they're acting morally.

tomp 13y ago
That's not a particularly good argument, because one of the main point of people protesting the NSA surveillance (which Google is a part of) is that it makes them feel unsafe. It's all a matter of perspective.
- arebop 13y ago
  These protesters are themselves just as much a part of the NSA surveillance as Google is.
- nollidge 13y ago
  I'm not sure how I feel about the protest in general, but I was reacting to the idea that they "haven't hurt anyone". As far as my system of morals is concerned, making someone feel unsafe is still hurting them.
  - tomp 13y ago
    Isn't that kind of the point of a protest? The threat of revolution?
    - aaronem 13y ago
      Of course. The essence of the argument is whether or not threatening to maim and murder as necessary, to produce whatever result the protesters hold dear, is a morally sound tactic.
    - diydsp 13y ago
      If one takes "kind of" to mean "not," then yes. Otherwise, no, the point of protest is not to threaten anything or anyone, including revolution. Seriously, just look up protest in a dictionary. It's an expression, a communication. It's a chance for people to respond. It's a visible, recordable effort, as opposed to an anecdote.
      - aaronem 13y ago
        Your argument suggests a certain naïveté, or else a desire to claim there is no subtext whatsoever in organizing a mob to serve as the medium of the "communication" to which you refer. Whatever the overt message, and especially when the purported message is as confused and vaguely threatening as in this case, in the act of arranging that someone should awaken, to find a crowd surrounding his house and shouting imprecations, there cannot but be a subtextual implication which amounts to "And you'd better listen to us, or else!" Of course, I'm sure that, finding yourself in the position poor Levandowski did, your first instinct would be to argue semantics with the mob! What more reasonable response, after all, could there possibly be? And what more reasonable creature, than a shouting mob, with which to carry on such a discussion?
        diydsp 13y ago
        My argument parrots the dictionary. Yours smuggles in all kinds of baggage, such using a weak definition of the word "mob" while implying the strongest and saying "surrounding" when they were likely only in front of. Your suggestion that a subtext exists would be useful if there were a history of protestors at Google employee's houses. However, there is none beyond what you are imagining in your creative (how do you evidence your statement that they were shouting?) mind. In fact, now that a peaceful demonstration has taken place outside a Google employee's house, a precedent has begun to form in which the subtext is that employees should NOT feel threatened by protestors. I would not have realized this myself had not you not mistakenly claimed its opposite, so thank you and have an up vote.
        aaronem 13y ago
        You talk of parroting the dictionary as though that were desirable. While a dictionary is a good and useful thing, there is much of value which is not to be found in such a book. In particular, a dictionary concerns itself with what a given word is currently agreed upon to mean, and not with the history of the phenomenon that word might happen to denote; your apparent desire to constrain such historical consideration, to include only incidents in which a protest occurs at a Google employee's house, is quite neat, I suppose, in that it neatly sidesteps any concern over the implicit threat of violence which is part and parcel of any deployment of the tactic. But I don't find such circumscribed historiography particularly compelling.
- nostrademons 13y ago
  You understand that Google is protesting the NSA surveillance? http://www.mediaite.com/online/read-the-8-biggest-tech-companys-joint-open-letter-on-nsa-surveillance-time-for-a-change/ http://www.mediaite.com/online/read-the-8-biggest-tech-compa... http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/what.html http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/what.html http://www.zdnet.com/google-engineers-rage-at-nsa-7000022874/ http://www.zdnet.com/google-engineers-rage-at-nsa-7000022874... http://blogs.computerworld.com/cybercrime-and-hacking/23090/google-security-team-drops-f-bombs-nsa-internal-google-cloud-data-surveillance http://blogs.computerworld.com/cybercrime-and-hacking/23090/... http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/11/googlers-say-f-you-to-nsa-company-encrypts-internal-network/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/11/google...

tomp 13y ago

That's not a particularly good argument, because one of the main point of people protesting the NSA surveillance (which Google is a part of) is that it makes them feel unsafe. It's all a matter of perspective.

arebop 13y ago
These protesters are themselves just as much a part of the NSA surveillance as Google is.
nollidge 13y ago
I'm not sure how I feel about the protest in general, but I was reacting to the idea that they "haven't hurt anyone". As far as my system of morals is concerned, making someone feel unsafe is still hurting them.
- tomp 13y ago
  Isn't that kind of the point of a protest? The threat of revolution?
  - aaronem 13y ago
    Of course. The essence of the argument is whether or not threatening to maim and murder as necessary, to produce whatever result the protesters hold dear, is a morally sound tactic.
  - diydsp 13y ago
    If one takes "kind of" to mean "not," then yes. Otherwise, no, the point of protest is not to threaten anything or anyone, including revolution. Seriously, just look up protest in a dictionary. It's an expression, a communication. It's a chance for people to respond. It's a visible, recordable effort, as opposed to an anecdote.
    - aaronem 13y ago
      Your argument suggests a certain naïveté, or else a desire to claim there is no subtext whatsoever in organizing a mob to serve as the medium of the "communication" to which you refer. Whatever the overt message, and especially when the purported message is as confused and vaguely threatening as in this case, in the act of arranging that someone should awaken, to find a crowd surrounding his house and shouting imprecations, there cannot but be a subtextual implication which amounts to "And you'd better listen to us, or else!" Of course, I'm sure that, finding yourself in the position poor Levandowski did, your first instinct would be to argue semantics with the mob! What more reasonable response, after all, could there possibly be? And what more reasonable creature, than a shouting mob, with which to carry on such a discussion?
      - diydsp 13y ago
        My argument parrots the dictionary. Yours smuggles in all kinds of baggage, such using a weak definition of the word "mob" while implying the strongest and saying "surrounding" when they were likely only in front of. Your suggestion that a subtext exists would be useful if there were a history of protestors at Google employee's houses. However, there is none beyond what you are imagining in your creative (how do you evidence your statement that they were shouting?) mind. In fact, now that a peaceful demonstration has taken place outside a Google employee's house, a precedent has begun to form in which the subtext is that employees should NOT feel threatened by protestors. I would not have realized this myself had not you not mistakenly claimed its opposite, so thank you and have an up vote.
        aaronem 13y ago
        You talk of parroting the dictionary as though that were desirable. While a dictionary is a good and useful thing, there is much of value which is not to be found in such a book. In particular, a dictionary concerns itself with what a given word is currently agreed upon to mean, and not with the history of the phenomenon that word might happen to denote; your apparent desire to constrain such historical consideration, to include only incidents in which a protest occurs at a Google employee's house, is quite neat, I suppose, in that it neatly sidesteps any concern over the implicit threat of violence which is part and parcel of any deployment of the tactic. But I don't find such circumscribed historiography particularly compelling.
nostrademons 13y ago
You understand that Google is protesting the NSA surveillance? http://www.mediaite.com/online/read-the-8-biggest-tech-companys-joint-open-letter-on-nsa-surveillance-time-for-a-change/ http://www.mediaite.com/online/read-the-8-biggest-tech-compa... http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/what.html http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/what.html http://www.zdnet.com/google-engineers-rage-at-nsa-7000022874/ http://www.zdnet.com/google-engineers-rage-at-nsa-7000022874... http://blogs.computerworld.com/cybercrime-and-hacking/23090/google-security-team-drops-f-bombs-nsa-internal-google-cloud-data-surveillance http://blogs.computerworld.com/cybercrime-and-hacking/23090/... http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/11/googlers-say-f-you-to-nsa-company-encrypts-internal-network/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/11/google...