World's leading authors: state surveillance of personal data is theft

[taosaur]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Thank goodness they brought in the heavy-hitters to analyze the (il)legalitiy/constitutionality of this state-sponsored nonsense!

With world-renowned authors on top of it, I have no doubt everything will be cleaned up lickety-split.

It's kind of common for a society's authors--particularly the contemplative, activist variety, which seems to be the trend here--to act as its conscience. People listen to them because they have demonstrated having well-developed ideas and penetrating social insight. Better that we leave it to the lawyers?

That said, can we stop throwing the word "theft" at bits and bytes? Is invasion of privacy not bad enough, that we have to tack on irrelevant epithets? Why not rape? Writing over my Call of Duty game save is rape!

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by taosaur

That said, can we stop throwing the word "theft" at bits and bytes? Is invasion of privacy not bad enough, that we have to tack on irrelevant epithets? Why not rape? Writing over my Call of Duty game save is rape!

I guess the brainwashing by the **AA organizations is taking hold. Copying is theft.

[CommonReader]

Isn't "theft" a far to benign term to describe what is going on here? How about "State surveillance is the Victory of Terrorism". "The West: the Soviet Union with Shopping Malls." What we have seen over the past decade is the wholesale destruction of the values the West supposedly stands for by our ruling classes. What we have seen instead are state sanctioned surveillance, torture, assassinations. Yes, there has always been a gap between proclaimed values and reality, but there has never been such a blatant and open disregard for the values we supposedly stand for.

[HarryT]

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