

Tim Berners-Lee scolds 'hypocritical' West over spying - titlex
http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/father-web-scolds-hypocritical-west-over-spying-6C10459397

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D9u
Secret courts, secret judges, secret police, secret torture, secret wars...

These acts are not what one would expect of a nation which was once the
bastion of freedom for all the world, and I agree that the US & UK have been
acting hypocritical for far too long now.

Can the "American Dream" survive the current state of affairs?

~~~
mpyne
The nation that:

* inflicted syphilis on unsuspecting black people,

* tapped MLK Jr.'s phone calls while conducting continuous surveillance on him,

* imprisoned thousands of Japanese and Japanese-Americans for the crime of being on the West Coast at the wrong time,

* forced the Chinese and Irish to work under horrific conditions building the nation's railways,

* evicted the Native Americans from their native lands, which they had inhabited for thousands of years,

* disobeyed a _direct ruling from the Supreme Court_ in order to do this,

* brutally ( _brutally!_ ) put down a rebellion in the Philippines after "liberating" the archipelago from the Spanish,

* oh, and held millions of black people in abject slavery, and later poverty and the constant fear of _death_ ,

does not warrant your label of being _more_ "the bastion of freedom for all
the world" compared to even our modern state.

I get it, you're mad, but if you're going to talk about American history could
you at least know a little about American history?

FISC (and its judges) have been around since 1978. I don't even know what
"secret police" you're talking about. Torture is always wrong, but America has
been there before (e.g. aforementioned brutal Philippine wars). Somehow the
"American Dream" survived that.

So what's your goal? To give up? Just to say that America sucks (if so, you'll
need to take a number, there's about 200 million Americans ahead of you in
that particular line :P)? Or do you want to make it better?

Because making it better requires meaningful political advocacy, of the kind
that helped make parts of DOMA unconstitutional today, and not simply whining.

~~~
steauengeglase
True, we learned from these mistakes.

Slavery is an unforgivable stain on our souls, something we'll have to live
with for eternity. The same goes to the relocation and genocide campaigns
against Native Americans. We've never allowed ourselves forgiveness for those
sins and we never should.

The brutality in the Philippines sickened Americans to that point that the old
colonialism had be traded in for quiet skullduggery. We also learned from the
internment camps. When cries came out to round up everyone of middle eastern
descent after 9/11 we ignored them and made new mistakes.

Deep down we Americans know that if there is a Hell we probably deserve to go
to it, but that doesn't stop us from trying to learn from our mistakes. We are
fatally flawed, not essentially evil.

That is the real battle over all of this. It isn't state secrets, but a
generational shift. The young live with the cynicism and pain of past mistakes
and can't figure out why the old continue down broken paths. Unfortunately,
today's young will have to let the generations that follow walk with the
knowledge of our mistakes. And what doozies we've handed them: Eternal War,
torture and deep resentments and distrust between state & citizen and citizen
& state. I wish them luck.

~~~
mpyne
> We are fatally flawed, not essentially evil.

That's my point. And I wouldn't even claim that we deserve to go to hell or
that we are fatally flawed.

We are in the spotlight in the world and I swear I wish people would remember
that when they evaluate the USA vis à vis other nations.

We should set the highest of standards for ourselves. And like any good
'American exceptionalist' we should _achieve_ those high standards we set for
ourselves.

But when we fail to achieve that standard we need to remember to evaluate
ourselves in the context of the world at large, and in our own nation's
history.

If the _worst thing_ that our government did to us today was to `tee` our
Reddit memes to /dev/utah and then not look at them then _maybe, just maybe_
we're not as screwed as HN thinks we are. Even my own grandma knows that the
Internet Never Forgets.

As I've said before, we may look at these programs and decide to switch up the
controls, gut them all, or something in between. But this place can be such an
echo chamber sometimes... and the cynicism is absolutely toxic, especially as
it mixes and interferes with the very-necessary skepticism that should be
often employed.

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tome
Tim Berners-Lee's opinion on this matter is as valuable as yours or mine, that
is to say indeed valuable, but not to be made the subject of a news report.

~~~
lukifer
The more people standing up to call bullshit on the NSA, the better.

I'd like to live in a world where ideas are discussed on their merits and not
based on the people proposing them, but we don't live in that world. When the
"creator of the web" says something, it makes news in a way that it does not
when you or I say something.

~~~
tome
This may well be true, but it's hard to reconcile with Hacker News's latest
meme of "It shouldn't be about personalities, it should be about facts".

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peterclary
Consider the use of the word "scolds" instead of "blasts", "criticizes", etc.

------
Create
TBL himself is also hypocritical: British people read other people's mail at
CERN without their (even posterior) knowledge. I would be surprised indeed, if
he wouldn't know a thing about it -- yet he kept shut about it too.

~~~
redblacktree
He implicated "The West" which very much includes the United Kingdom. He is a
citizen, like you, who is just now seeing proof of what one of these
governments has been up to. He knows that the UK is doing it as well.

