
Thousands dead, millions deprived of civil liberties? (2001) - k2enemy
http://stallman.org/millions.html
======
cs702
As usual, Stallman was not only ahead of his time, but also swimming against
the tide of conventional wisdom, immediately after the attacks of 9/11\. While
nearly everyone else was focused on more mundane concerns of immediate
importance, he was worried and tried to warn us about long-term, higher-order,
societal consequences. (He's always doing that -- worrying about long-term,
higher-order consequences -- so his warnings and antics strike more practical
people as being 'out of touch with reality.')

Like him or not, Richard Stallman is already a major historical figure,
because his impact on society (via the gnu, FSF, various manifestos, and
activism) will be felt for a very long time. Much of what he has said/written
in the past has gained stature with the passing of time.

\--

Edit: added last sentence.

~~~
spodek
What's sad is what he got wrong.

The 'm' in "Thousands dead, millions deprived of civil liberties?" should have
been a 'b'.

"Bush" in "Congress hurried to pass a resolution giving Bush unlimited power"
should have been "the Executive Branch."

Visionary as he was, history surpassed what he anticipated.

~~~
skore
Indeed, that makes it even worse.

Time and time again I see people scoffing at Stallman (and others like him) as
"radicals" who do nothing but impede our discourse with their outlandish
fantasies, trying to center it around their paranoia instead of finding quick,
pragmatic and ultimately self destructive "solutions".

I have a feeling Stallman would have liked to say more, but chose to make a
more modest statement. Turns out, he could have cranked it up to 11 and it
would _still_ be modest by what we know today.

------
kunai
This is why I get very angry whenever somebody calls Stallman a nut. He's not
a nut. He's a visionary; albeit a very pessimistic and dystopian one. Call him
crazy now, but in 2023 you'll look back at what he said now, and you'll see
how it's all right and wish you'd done something. Anything.

But no. Free software is not business-oriented. He's a nut because of his
privacy advocation; he must have something to hide. Let's just ignore him, and
start startups and get everyone to accept our vendor lock-in and remain
blissfully unaware how we're harming everyone.

~~~
astrodust
It's not that he's factually incorrect, it's that his conclusions are insane
and that's what makes him dangerous. Like Glenn Beck, he starts in the realm
of reasonable and ends up painting a picture that's surreal.

His solution to these problems is to disconnect, to remove himself from the
equation to the best of his ability. No cellular phone. No internet
connection. No credit cards. Cash only. Don't use web services. Turn off
cookies and JavaScript and Java. His answer to any problem seems to be to
boycott it, as if that'll change things. Who but Stallman can operate like
this? Not even secret agents are as paranoid, they're trained to hide in plain
sight.

What someone in his position should be doing is talking about how to avoid
this dystopian future by promoting standards, accountability, and more
transparency. They should be engaging with law enforcement to understand their
need for information and protect a person's right to privacy. There's a legal
framework out there that needs updating by people that understand technology,
but if they're all stubbornly opposed to co-operating, more stupidly out of
touch laws will be passed.

This is why the EFF and organizations like it are extremely important. They're
not advocating shutting down the internet just because it's being wiretapped.
They're not hiding in a cave while invasive laws are being passed.

~~~
leephillips
Your points would probably be better received if you did not exaggerate. He of
course does have an internet connection, as he uses email. Plenty of people
turn off some subset of cookies, javascript, and java (who has java turned
_on_?). I agree that better subversion comes through acting normal and
engaging people closer to their own terms.

~~~
astrodust
Maybe he's more flexible now, but I'd read that he browses the web by
downloading pages over email, and even when it came to email it was under very
strict self-imposed rules.

Honestly, he sounds like he's never given up on UUCP.

~~~
icebraining
Well, he posts on his website every day commenting on articles from other
websites, so whatever solution he uses, it seems it's effective enough.

------
methehack
I had the same thought at about the same time. I think a lot of people saw
this coming. Uber-surveillance has been a old standby for dystopian popular
entertainment for a good while. It's almost like NSA spooks have been
consulting to hollywood to make a little coin on the side.

What I admire more than Stallman-the-visionary is Stallman-the-idealist. The
guy speaks his mind even when it's really difficult. Further, he appears to
live in accordance with his thinking as best he can even though it's pretty
inconvenient. These are both really very difficult to do consistently over the
long haul.

At the time Stallman wrote this, it was a very unpopular thing to say. He was
not just considered a crackpot but drink-in-the-face-at-parties unpatriotic.

For better or worse, I'm more of a pragmatist. I often experience the idealist
as a pain in the ass and standing in the way of 'getting things done'. It's
good for me to be reminded that the idealists must be listened to carefully.
It might just be that I'm trying to get the wrong things done and I should
slow down and listen.

~~~
foolrush
I would only add that "pragmatic" versus "idealist" is privileged language in
the classically Foucault sense.

Stallman in many respects is being pragmatic in the pursuit of his ideology.

Conversely, the NSA and like organizations are working toward their idealist
beliefs.

The risk of being pedantic over language should at least be tempered against
the realization that privileged language is at the core of much of this
discourse[1].

[1] "Terrorist"

------
winter_blue
Wow, Stallman sure has a way of predicting the future. This isn't the first
time he's predicted the future with such accuracy -- remember the story that
he wrote about a dystopian world far away in the future where books were under
DRM? It's so funny that story came true so much earlier than expected.

~~~
nolok
Every time I think about that, I remember Amazon remote deleting bought copy
of 1984 from the owners' kindles some time ago. You can justify it with
legalese all you want, at the end of the day it's such a perfect example of
how awful that whole thing is that it wouldn't pass as real in a story.

------
fennecfoxen
I'm just going to quietly leave this quote here.

"Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of
government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the
root of all our problems. They’ll warn that tyranny is always lurking just
around the corner. You should reject these voices."

(The Ohio State University commencement address)

~~~
GuiA
This is from Obama's commencement address (May 5th 2013, OSU). Full quote:

“Unfortunately, you've grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of
government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that's at the
root of all our problems. Some of these same voices also do their best to gum
up the works. They'll warn that tyranny always lurking just around the corner.
You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave,
and creative, and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with
which we can't be trusted.

We have never been a people who place all our faith in government to solve our
problems. We shouldn't want to. But we don't think the government is the
source of all our problems, either. Because we understand that this democracy
is ours. And as citizens, we understand that it's not about what America can
do for us, it's about what can be done by us, together, through the hard and
frustrating but absolutely necessary work of self-government. And class of
2013, you have to be involved in that process.”

([http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/05/05/obama_to_o...](http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/05/05/obama_to_ohio_state_grads_reject_voices_that_warn_about_government_tyranny.html))

------
ChrisNorstrom
I have to bring this up.

I'll never forget growing up on reddit and digg during the Bush Era. People
were talking about this stuff all the time, calling Bush Hitler and the
Patriot Act evil, Gitmo unconstitutional, and raising awareness of the
uncivilized wild-west Republican and Conservative Parties. I mean Redditor's
honestly thought the USA was coming to an end. Then after Bush left and
Democrat Obama got in things continued to get worse. Attacks on privacy and
constitutional rights, drones, surveillance increased yet the backlash isn't
there. Think of all the terrible things you read about Bush, now come to the
realization that Obama is continuing this behavior yet people (Democrats in
particular) aren't complaining. Because their party is in power.

That was the moment I realized the worst thing about America was the 2 party
system. Each party is oblivious to it's own flaws, blames the other party for
everything. It's called "Ingroup Bias"
[http://www.alleydog.com/glossary/definition.php?term=Ingroup...](http://www.alleydog.com/glossary/definition.php?term=Ingroup%20Bias)
This same "Ingroup Bias" is what's preventing Americans from standing up
against their party when they introduce invasive legislature AND preventing
members of both the Republican and Democratic parties from standing up against
their party's own extreme views on national security.

=== My Point ===

If either party puts a stop to the extreme surveillance and a terrorist attack
happens, that party will forever be blamed by the other and will lose
elections for quite some time.

------
flexie
I think the apparatus available to today's government for spying on its
citizens would make a 1980s KGB or Stasi agent blush.

~~~
nsns
So called "Totalitarian" regimes only spy on dissidents and free thinkers,
they don't give a f __* about other people. It 's only democratic regimes that
tend to keep a tally of every citizen and his/her movements.

~~~
mtgx
Not entirely accurate. When you say "free thinkers", I think you're mainly
referring to some civil libertarians or some sort. But in communist countries
they used to get people to spy on each other and report their friends and
neighbors to the secret police if they said anything bad at all against the
government or "the party".

So _everyone_ was under constant surveillance, not just by the government,
because they didn't have those kinds of resources, but by everyone around
them, too.

~~~
nsns
Perhaps, but the government did not care how many children were born or old
men died in some remote village.

~~~
hga
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-
child_policy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy)

Upwards of 200 million people are spinning in their mass graves at your abject
ignorance of the 20th century history of totalitarianism.

Hint: the world "total" is a clue.

~~~
dllthomas
I was under the impression (and a brief skimming of the article you linked
seems to support) that the one-child policy didn't apply in rural areas, so
while it was a cute refutation of the government not caring "how many children
were born" it seems to be an inaccurate one of the government not caring "how
many children were born [...] in some remote village".

... I write this assuming the earlier comment wasn't amended to tack on the
phrase; if it was, my apologies...

~~~
hga
Obviously you're not familiar with this disastrous policy and how it's often
heinously executed in the sticks; from the article
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-
child_policy#Current_status](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-
child_policy#Current_status)):

" _Current status

"The limit has been strongly enforced in urban areas, but the actual
implementation varies from location to location. In most rural areas, families
are allowed to apply to have a second child if their first-born is a daughter
or suffers from physical disability, mental illness or mental retardation.
Second children are subject to birth spacing (usually 3 or 4 years).
Additional children will result in large fines. Families violating the policy
are required to pay monetary penalties...._ [ _Lots_ more detail. ]"

So, yes, they do care about "remote villages". Enough to place them under the
control of the government; don't know how true this was for the rural areas,
but back before a free market in food was allowed, getting on the wrong side
of the local functionaries resulted in your not getting ration tickets and
dying of starvation, or so I was told by a couple from the PRC in the late
'80s. Those same functionaries enforce this policy and they're not polite
about it.

Seriously, do some very basic research before you continue to downplay the
utter horror of totalitarian societies.

~~~
dllthomas
My bad.

Your tone is inappropriate, however - a link is shallow; when we get into
discussion, we learn things.

~~~
hga
Ah, yes, sorry about the tone. I didn't notice that you were replying instead
of the original nsns; he was the one my ire and e.g. last sentence was
directed towards.

~~~
dllthomas
Ah, yes, happens.

------
tbrownaw
Is there anyone who _didn 't_ immediately see a knee-jerk crackdown against
civil liberties coming after the WTC attack?

~~~
codeulike
True, props to Stallman for joining in, but there was much discussion along
these lines at the time in late 2001. Or at least, the certainly was in the
UK.

------
seldo
"Given that the human face recognition performed by the check-in agents did
not keep the hijackers out, there is no reason to think that computer face
recognition would help."

This seems fallacious. Computer-based face recognition would be significantly
better than human-based, because computers can remember thousands of faces
while humans can only recognize a few hundred at most.

~~~
jessaustin
_Computer-based face recognition_

...has never been shown to work on the scale needed to secure access to
commercial air travel.

------
mtgx
I bet Stallman feels quite vindicated now.

~~~
karamazov
I'm sure he'd prefer not to.

------
opminion
Where's Stallman when we need him?

Ah, here!

He didn't have to spend much effort in predicting the future in 2001, he just
had to be consistent.

------
gculliss
This might be the most illogical and unsupported assertion, ever: "Given that
the human face recognition performed by the check-in agents did not keep the
hijackers out, there is no reason to think that computer face recognition
would help."

------
loup-vaillant
The title is not very diplomatic: it suggest that privacy is worth sacrificing
human lives. It _is_ , to some extent, but suggesting it out loud is often
liable to a "think of the children" knee jerk reaction.

~~~
dllthomas
Privacy is worth sacrificing human lives, for some amount of privacy and some
number of lives...

However, that's not even the biggest problem with the knee-jerk response: it's
not a trade being offered. If you could guarantee me 3000 lives saved in
exchange for more invasion of my privacy and that of my billion closest
friends (assuming they agreed), I'd have to think about it.

But no! 3000 lives were lost, and that is tragic, and it's more tragic that
the fear it caused was then exploited to consolidate power. It was
consolidated in the hands of people who are probably mostly reasonable people,
and who are probably mostly trying to keep us safe, but there is no guarantee
as to the number of lives saved (although "lives lost to terrorism in the 10
years prior when you didn't have these powers" helps us provide some upper
bounds...), and moreover some of those people we're being asked to trust will
prove _not_ to be good people, power will be abused, and it might well cost
more lives than it saves: governments have killed overwhelmingly more people
than insurgents and terrorists over the past 100 years.

~~~
loup-vaillant
We're indeed talking sunk costs.

By the way, you could even argue that some measures, such as increased airport
"security", indirectly _killed_ people, who took their more risky cars instead
of just flying.

This title reminds me a quote from Ultimate Spiderman: "Your uncle snuffs. And
you stop basket ball!?". Seems rather… blunt.

------
youngerdryas
>I'm not talking about searches at airports here. Searches of people or
baggage for weapons, as long as they check only for weapons and keep no
records about you if you have no weapons, are just an inconvenience; they do
not endanger civil liberties.

------
greenonion
Although I do agree that today's events show that Stallman is right to be that
much worried, I have to point out that his argument against face recognition
is a weak one. Computer vision _is_ superior to human in many aspects, and
this is why the situation we 're facing is very complex.

~~~
bcoates
> Computer vision is superior to human in many aspects

But not in any way relevant to the September 11 hijackings as the hijackers
were travelling under their real identities including real photo ID cards.

------
tvjunky
With the benefit of hindsight and a single source this certainly might seem
like future prediction or visionary thinking. However, with the events of the
time, this idea was pretty obvious and similar opinions were shared by many.
If there was vision, it was that he put his thoughts online for all to see.

