Big Brother, version 43.0

[geoviki]

I haven't seen much online discussion about the Bush administration subpoena for internet search records from Yahoo, MSN, and Google, which only Google is fighting (the other two caved rather easily). Justice Dept. lawyers will use this info, ostensibly, to concoct internet anti-porn laws that won't be struck down by the courts (unlike all their last efforts). I just read a terrific article on the deeper issue: why are these companies keeping records tying each IP to each search in the first place?

Keeping Secrets - by Tim Wu, professor at Columbia Law School.

It all goes back to this basic point: How free you are corresponds exactly to how free you think you are. And Americans today feel great freedom to tell their deepest secrets; secrets they won't share with their spouses or priests, to their computers. The Luddites were right—our closest confidants today are robots.

Comments

[geoviki.livejournal.com]

They're couching it in terms of preventing the kiddies from seeing anything with naughty bits. Of course they've failed to take into account how international the internet is. The only effect would be on American porn; therefore, with these new laws they want to enact, all our wee ones will mature with a serious kink for Asian and Brazilian naked people. Or animals, I suppose.

[scoradh.livejournal.com]

If the kiddies don't see the naughty bits, how will they learn? The seven-year-old me wouldn't have figured out from first principles where babies come from without such stalwart works as the Kama Sutra.

Still, at least they can't get rid of all the porn. Yayes!