Aaron Swartz - the real reason he was murdered

Shawn K. Quinn skquinn at rushpost.com
Sun Dec 11 20:21:24 PST 2016


On 12/11/2016 09:36 PM, Mirimir wrote:
> On 12/11/2016 08:09 PM, Shawn K. Quinn wrote:
>> On 12/11/2016 08:58 PM, Mirimir wrote:
>>> I get your concern. Naive users, coming across these messages through
>>> search sites, might get a bad impression. But please consider that
>>> freedom and autonomy are key cypherpunk values. Along with technical
>>> competence. So the best outcome is helping people manage unmoderated
>>> lists on their own, without reliance on centralized control.
>>
>> I disagree completely. It's like leaving a few people to do litter
>> patrol when you have old refrigerators, tires, and abandoned cars being
>> dumped daily. It's just not going to work.
> 
> Well, the Internet is loaded with such things. Many of them include
> IEDs. So some spam here hardly seems worth so much angst.

Just because it's all over the net, doesn't mean we should neglect to
keep our own corner of it clean.

>>> Also, please consider that causing grief is the key goal for trolls. And
>>> consider how forcing an ideologically unmoderated list to moderate
>>> itself would be _such_ a fucking win for Z_n. No?
>>
>> It would be the same as police surveillance on a known dumping ground to
>> catch the people dumping garbage there. Honestly, I fail to see how a
>> list that's free of racist, neo-Nazi garbage isn't a win for the Rest Of Us.
> 
> But don't cypherpunks prototypically hate police surveillance?
> 
> Sacrificing core values for convenience is unwise, no?

Widespread, mass, untargeted surveillance I have a real problem with.
The same with Fourth Amendment violations; nothing is Surveillance of a
dumping ground as I described, in response to resident complaints, is at
worst the lesser of two evils.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do
nothing." So are we going to just sit here and do nothing?

-- 
Shawn K. Quinn <skquinn at rushpost.com>
http://www.rantroulette.com
http://www.skqrecordquest.com


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