More Thoughts

This was inspired by rune_vampyr's comment to yesterday's post:

I only discovered the news about the new law yesterday by following a link from David Pogue of the NY Times though the law was signed on January 5th. The administration sneakily stuck this law into a different bill. I have seen nothing on this anywhere else on lj or the news. I can see that it might be useful against cyber-bullies and perhaps spammers but who/what defines annoy and is a nom de courriel like Shakatany or Rune Vampyr an identity or might they be considered anonymous?

Also the kowtowing to China truly angers me. I believed the freedom of the Internet would be liberating for all the people of the world. Instead it's turning into a tool of repressive goverments. I'd love to get the word out to those rogue hackers that instead of making pesky and sometimes dangerous viruses they should put their cybertalents to better use and find ways of circumventing government restrictions. It's all about control and power and power corrupts.

I was reading an article where a woman went to look up the term rent boy online (she didn't know what it meant) then hearing about the possible reporting of porn searches confessed to her boyfriend in case the authorities investigated. As a fan of slash should I also be worried?

I remember reading Robert Heinlein's "If This Goes On" years ago. It's set in an America in the grips of a thoecracy and at the time I thought the premise ridiculous; now I'm not so sure.

Ben Franklin wrote “They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security”. I fear we're on the way to becoming what we're supposedly fighting against.