[ExI] The NSA's new data center

[The Avantguardian]

>________________________________
>From: Kelly Anderson <kellycoinguy at gmail.com>
>To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> 
>Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2012 8:16 AM
>Subject: Re: [ExI] The NSA's new data center
>
>2012/3/28 Stefano Vaj <stefano.vaj at gmail.com>:
>> But in the meantime, the regulations in place are pretty useful to limit
>> transparency, blackmail people, indict whistle-blowers, try and control the
>> circulation of information, etc.
>
>In the LONG term, isn't absolute complete transparency of everyone and
>everything the only real answer?
 
No. The real answer in the long term is to spread ourselves across so many star systems that NOBODY can kill all of us with weapons of mass destruction. We need multiple offsite backups of the species or of individuals, it doesn't matter. 
 
> The trend seems to be away from
>personal privacy, away from government secrecy, towards open sharing.
>Is this trend something that can be stopped? Is it something that
>SHOULD be stopped? When individuals obtain the requisite technology to
>wipe out all intelligent life, is privacy sustainable?

Select individuals have had the power to destroy civilization with the push of a button for over fifty years now. What is it about THOSE people that make them so much more special or trustworthy than you or me? That at the time, someone paid millions to put them into high office to make sure special favors were done in return? 
 
You ask if privacy is sustainable in such a world where individuals can wipe out all intelligent life? I ask you is individuality or intelligent life itself sustainable in such a world? And furthermore, why does a society of beings so powerful that the lowest amongst them can extinguish them all, insist upon treating their lowest so shabbily that they would want to extinguish all their fellows? Have we learned nothing from over 5000 years of recorded history? What goes around comes around so I assure you the end of oppression will be the end of fear.
 
 
>Asking it a different way. If everyone in the world had a button, that
>if pushed would end the world, how long would the world last? Knowing
>that the answer is "seconds, if that long"... and knowing that
>individuals will likely obtain such technology some day in the not too
>distant future... Could privacy survive in such a world? Should
>privacy be allowed to survive in such a world?

More people have the nuke now then ever. I know how much you loved how special it made America feel for something like 50 years now. I enjoyed it too. But it's time to let it go and come up with the next big thing. America cannot be the goose that lays golden eggs if we obsess over any one egg. The world never will be safe no matter how much freedom or dignity you sacrifice to the government. We just have to learn to cope with risk as we go, rather than using it as an excuse never to leave the cave.
 
>My motto, "Privacy is dead, get over it."

That sounds a little like "Mao won the Cold War" to me.
 
>If DCFS would install and monitor cameras in every room of my house, I
>would let them. Why? Because it would protect me from their wild
>imaginations! I'd rather let them in on all my so called "secrets"
>than have them assume that I have secrets that I don't possess in
>actuality. That's because they have absolute power over everything I
>really care about, my family.
 
Let no parent come between the state and its future voters. They are no longer your children. They are now "children of the sun". I heard that one before only it was in a different language. So why would you tolerate anybody having absolute power over your family? And if you are going to tolerate someone having absolute power over your family, why would you choose a faceless beauracracy? I mean if a person abuses power, you can always guilotine them. When a bureaucracy abuses power, they just lose the paperwork, and you don't even know who to blame. 
 
I might request that I have my own
>little private space for bathing and personal time... but eventually,
>I think I could get over even that. Look at how quickly people on
>reality TV get used to the cameras and just get on with their lives.
>We'll ALL be reality TV stars in the future is my prediction.

Yes, we will all be humiliated on television before the rest of the world so that society can find its one true winner. Until next season of course.
 
>In no way would I give up rights, but I don't see privacy as an
>absolute right. Then maybe we'll get over this idea that we're not
>just smart bipedal apes, but rather somehow special.

Huh? I quote The Constitution:
 
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
 
Are not my words and my deeds truly mine? If not, then why hold me responsible for them? If so, then why seize them and search them unreasonably without a warrant? Spies are powerful weapons of war. Why does my government make war against me?   
 
 
Stuart LaForge

"The state that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards, and its fighting by fools." -Thucydides.