Apparently the latest shocking revelation on a jillion blog comments is that Cass Sunstein called for the government to violate peoples' online privacy.
In 2008, while at Harvard Law School, Sunstein co-wrote a truly pernicious paper proposing that the U.S. Government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-”independent” advocates to “cognitively infiltrate” online groups and websites — as well as other activist groups — which advocate views that Sunstein deems “false conspiracy theories” about the Government.
While there are real issues to discuss about this ANYONE WHO IS BLATHERING ABOUT IT ON A BLOG COMMENT THREAD OR IN A BLOG POST AS A VIOLATION OF PRIVACY IS TOO STUPID TO SWALLOW WATER UNASSISTED. And I'm nothing like a fan of Cass Sunstein or illegitimate violations of privacy. AND LOOK AT THE DATE, IT'S A THREE YEAR OLD STORY.
For the fans of the Snowden-Greenwald cult, who seem to be the model of a developing area of what is, unfortunately coming to be called "journalism" TO BE GOING ON ABOUT THIS ONLINE is incredible. It's as if these journalists don't read the news. If these people had any memory at all, they'd have seen this little story about St. Edward Snowden's brilliantly chosen safe haven of privacy:
In February 2011, Ai Weiwei tweeted that he would like to conduct an interview with an “online commentator”. Commentators are hired by the Chinese government or the Communist Party of China to post comments favourable towards party policies and to shape public opinion on internet message boards and forums. The commentators are known as the 50-Cent Party, as they are said to be paid 50 cents for every post that steers a discussion away from anti-party content or that advances the Communist Party line.
And if the Chinese government is doing this and, no doubt so, so much more, you can be certain that Snowden's owners in the Russian government aren't far behind them, if not far ahead.
If you don't realize that, you know, people you don't want to see what you write can see it online chat sites and message boards, you are are tinfoil hatted nut cases. If you don't realize that the person you're reading under the heading of Sunflower Seed or Caspar the Friendly Goat might be hired to do that by The Chinese or Belizian, Brazilian, Russian government or some Chamber of Commerce in Nigeria or anyone with fifty cents to spend you're totally too stupid to be participating in rational discussion or even what's found in almost all online discussions.
There are times you have a close to absolute right to privacy, its violation dependent on the government getting a legitimate warrant to violate it. BUT WHEN YOU ARE GASSING AND FUSSING AND FUMING AND FIGHTING ONLINE YOU HAVE NO REASONABLE EXPECTATION OF PRIVACY EVEN FROM THE GO'MMENT.
Do you really want law enforcement and security to ignore the blog chatter? Do you think they shouldn't have paid any attention to those sites and chat groups that were targeting abortion providers by name, with their personal information and the least veiled encouragement to murder them? Do you think that they might have no responsibility to try to discourage that? Because if you think that someone monitoring them for the police shouldn't discourage murder, I'm afraid I don't agree with you at all and I think you are an idiot.
There are legitimate issues to be discussed but if you're going to waste everyone's time by whipping up hysteria about privacy WHEN YOU HAVE VOLUNTARILY SURRENDERED ANY BUT THE MOST IRRATIONAL EXPECTATION OF PRIVACY YOU ARE OBSTRUCTING PROGRESS ON THIS ISSUE.
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