FBI Target Puts His Life Online 324
After the FBI mistakenly targeted him as a terror suspect five years ago, art professor Hasan Elahi began recording his entire life online for the perusal of government agents or anyone else who wants to look in. "I've discovered that the best way to protect your privacy is to give it away," he says, grinning. "It's economics. I flood the market."
New religion (Score:5, Interesting)
Nice, clever, but still not right (Score:5, Interesting)
Killing time? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:New religion (Score:5, Interesting)
information countermeasures (Score:3, Interesting)
This principle is similar to Rivest's winnowing and chaffing [mit.edu] cryptographic system, or the military countermeasures used to confuse self guiding missiles.
(*) but not fake terrorism, that would be counterproductive in his case :)
It's Not Worth It (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Clearly, he's guilty as sin! (Score:5, Interesting)
In the case of "Hasan Elahi" that's close enough to "Hassan Elashi [google.com]" that it's probably "close enough for government work". I'd be willing to bet this is the source of his trouble.
In the early 80s Bayan [google.com], Ghassan and Hassan Elashi had a little company that made computers for the royal Suadi family. My boss was Jewish and he and I were the only white guys there; we did all the software. All the Elashi's are in jail now on what appears to me to be trumped up charges. Trivia: the Elashis paid for the only decent UUCP node in LA at the time; they held the
Let me be less subtle. We ran their computers and were nosy. If they're terrorists then I'm Stephen fucking Hawking.
Re:Slashdot points (Score:2, Interesting)
>1) Doing ANY research on an innocent individual is obviously completely illegal for the police
Well it should be, it should be as hard as possible for the police to do their job, that way they might actually not misuse their powers
>2) If any individual actually commits a crime, that's a failure of the police, not a problem in this individual
I wouldn't say the police alone, what causes property crimes? The existence of property...
>3) nobody, not even convicted murderers, are guilty
Plenty of convicted murderers (let alone people who were convicted of other "crimes") aren't actually guilty at all... Why? Two reasons, incompetence and malice. For example, the police and prosecutor fucking up the evidence. Or the jury and/or judge being biased towards the defendant (racist perhaps), or the police framing the defendant, or whatever. The police don't often care if who they get is the actual criminal, they just want a conviction...
>The things the police is allowed to do should be well-defined, and respected, by "us", meaning the parliament.
I don't know about you, but I'm not represented in any parliament. In fact, the only true way for be to be represented would be if I was in their myself! No parliament is the answer, government by the people (not the "people's representatives", who are actually often just bought corporate shitheads) is the answer.
>On the contrary, while I do not agree with the argument that his current actions are violating the rights of the state (of the police if you will), he is danguerously close to doing just that.
Care to explain, 1) how the police or state actually has any rights at all, 2) how his actions are borderline close to violating these (non-existent) rights?
(And for all the trolls who think they might jump in and mention the Cold War, fuck off. I'm an anarchist, who ever won, the people would have lost. The only winning move is not to play.)
Noise = good hiding place (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Sorry, no. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Nice, clever, but still not right (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, the article gave a couple good examples of how laws are being abused.
"A homeless person showed Rick van Amserfoort his collection of 30 fines. The harvest of one month on the streets: crossing against a red light, smoking a joint in public, loitering on a bench in front of the Amsterdamse Muziektheater. Van Amersfoort works at the bureau Jansen en Janssen, which grew out of the squatting movement, and critically follows the work of the police and the intelligence service. You and I wouldn't receive a fine, but this homeless person is difficult, so the police are always on to him."
and another example:
The legitimatieplicht (=law requiring everyone to carry ID in public) is according to Brenninkmeijer a good example. Warnings that the police would misuse this law were waved off. "Now you see that police ask protesters for their ID. It has become a tool of repression."
--
Simon
Nazi Germany (Score:4, Interesting)
Basically the Nazi system wasn't all that dissimilar in it's inner workings to the tactics employed by Senator McCarthy and his goons except it went much further. Those who got named weren't merely socially ostracized as they were in the USA, in Nazi Germany and the cooupied territories they got sent to a camp and executed. There was actually a group of people both in Germany it self and the occupied countries who made a tidy business out of regularly informing on anybody that acted even mildly suspiciously. Once the Gestapo did lock in on you they were practically guaranteed to find _something_ to hang you with. Believe it or not, purely out of fear of a Gestapo visit, people both Germans and non Germans sorted the scrap paper they used on the toilet in case it contained any leaflets or other printed material from politically unreliable elements or, god forbid, contained a picture of Adolf him self. People today may find that funny but there were actually people who did long stretches in KZ camps or even died there for the simple offence of insulting the visage or persona of the 'Führer'.
Does freedom imply privacy? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Clearly, he's guilty as sin! (Score:3, Interesting)
There is alot wrong with this. (Score:3, Interesting)
First off if this guy has not committed a crime, why is the FBI watching him? Where do they get the authority to do this if they have nothing on him? If they *DO* have something on him, why haven't they arrested him and charged him formally? What ever happened to Due process.
Secondary.. he has given up his privacy not willingly but under threat of imprisonment and torture in Guantanamo, where he would not get a trial to defend himself at all. This is like saying you gave the mugger your cash willingly and the gun he was pointing at you is irreverent. Like a mugger.. the government is pointing an invisible gun at this man and some of you cheer the fact that he has given up his privacy, sugesting that we all do the same?
Have you people lost your mind?
Re:Let me tell you a story (Score:3, Interesting)
Give the state the powers of prison guards, and the entire country becomes the Gulag.
Re:Come on... (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, no.