I
rarely put anything other than my own words on this blog, but today I’m going
to repeat more of the words of Pamela Jones that I put up yesterday. Pamela ran an
award winning legal site in the US called Groklaw, which she chose to close two
days ago, because she realised that she couldn’t function online without her
privacy from the state.
Know
when reading the below extract, the powers enacted to the GCSB are as close as they
need be to NSA for Pamela’s words to apply here, and we are no doubt
contributing to PRISM. But also know yesterday’s vote was a side-show: read
this blog, under our taxing statutes we’ve been a surveillance state for a very
long time. The American Revolution was fought over issues that are insignificant
compared to the viciousness of our tax laws now. When dealing with IRD you have
no rights, not that matter, and certainly not the one that even allows you to
say you’re paying your tax, so bugger off please. When the IRD rings you, they
are calling from the Soviet Union, such are the powers they have, and they’re
watching you all the time, (particularly read update 1). Even from this blog’s short history, I assume I’ll
see them at some stage in the logs for this post. Think about that. And also understand
that the Left whom took over the debate against the GCSB Bill, believe to their
cores in the redistribution of the tax take, and they give that department any
powers they want. Even retrospective legislation is common-place circa 2013,
meaning this department can re-write your history for you, just like Joe Stalin
did. The taxed state is the sanction of the surveillance state, right there. I
don’t know through this debate if I’ve been more disgusted in our politicians,
yet again, this being on the back of voting to torture animals last month so humans can choose to get stoned, or the hypocrisy of the Left whom would tell you they understood what your privacy
meant, or your right to be left alone, so long as you are harming no one. They
don’t. And as I showed yesterday, neither do the conservative right - what do you say, Busted Blonde.
We're utterly lost in the West: I'm just biding my time, sipping too much wine, while I look at the pleasant scenery going past on my road to serfdom.
So,
Pamela’s poignant sign off from the Internet in her attempt to retain her humanness against a Western state that is out of control, just like the Fortress
of Legislation in Wellington is. For Christ’s sake be appalled.
Tuesday, August 20 2013 @ 02:40 AM EDT
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The owner of Lavabit tells us that he's stopped using email and if we knew what he knew, we'd stop too.
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(Snip)I hope that makes it clear why I can't continue. There is now no shield from forced exposure. Nothing in that parenthetical thought list is terrorism-related, but no one can feel protected enough from forced exposure any more to say anything the least bit like that to anyone in an email, particularly from the US out or to the US in, but really anywhere. You don't expect a stranger to read your private communications to a friend. And once you know they can, what is there to say? Constricted and distracted. That's it exactly. That's how I feel.So. There we are. The foundation of Groklaw is over. I can't do Groklaw without your input. I was never exaggerating about that when we won awards. It really was a collaborative effort, and there is now no private way, evidently, to collaborate.I'm really sorry that it's so. I loved doing Groklaw, and I believe we really made a significant contribution. But even that turns out to be less than we thought, or less than I hoped for, anyway. My hope was always to show you that there is beauty and safety in the rule of law, that civilization actually depends on it. How quaint.If you have to stay on the Internet, my research indicates that the short term safety from surveillance, to the degree that is even possible, is to use a service like Kolab for email, which is located in Switzerland, and hence is under different laws than the US, laws which attempt to afford more privacy to citizens. I have now gotten for myself an email there, p.jones at mykolab.com in case anyone wishes to contact me over something really important and feels squeamish about writing to an email address on a server in the US. But both emails still work. It's your choice.
My personal decision is to get off of the Internet to the degree it's possible. I'm just an ordinary person. But I really know, after all my research and some serious thinking things through, that I can't stay online personally without losing my humanness, now that I know that ensuring privacy online is impossible. I find myself unable to write. I've always been a private person. That's why I never wanted to be a celebrity and why I fought hard to maintain both my privacy and yours.
Oddly, if everyone did that, leap off the Internet, the world's economy would collapse, I suppose. I can't really hope for that. But for me, the Internet is over.So this is the last Groklaw article. I won't turn on comments. Thank you for all you've done. I will never forget you and our work together. I hope you'll remember me too. I'm sorry I can't overcome these feelings, but I yam what I yam, and I tried, but I can't.
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