Misjudged

Y'know. I was going to talk about the thing that fucking everybody is talking about, namely the whole shooting bullshit in Arizona, but that's just not me. I like to present the thing that everyone is over looking. Besides, I've already done my 'crazy people will do crazy shit' rant elsewhere on this blog. Just look around, you'll find it. No, there's something much more important to me that's being swept under the rug by tears of grief and angry rhetoric over angry rhetoric and how it's destroying the nation. What am I talking about? I'm going to be an ass and try something new here, hit the jump to find out.

Twitter got served. I wish I was making a quaint colloquialism but, I'm not. They got told by the US Gov't that they are to hand over information of various users (specifically Julian Assange, Birgitta Jonsdottir, Rop Gonggripjp, Jacob Appelbaum, and Bradley Manning), only two of whom are US Citizens (guess which two).

Just because I love that I can do this, here's the subpoena as delivered to Twitter. How fucking cool is that, eh?

Anyways, back on point. Check out page 3, paragraph 2 (emphasis mine): "It is further ordered that the application and this Order are sealed until otherwise ordered by the Court, and that Twitter shall not disclose the existence of the application or this Order of the Court, or the existence of the investigation, to the listed subscriber or to any other person, unless and until authorized to do so by the Court."

So yeah, they weren't allowed to say a damn thing to anyone about anything regarding this. This is called 'keeping secrets' boys and girls. This is what got them into trouble in the first place! Keeping secrets, hiding things from the public under the guise of "national security". Jesus assfucking Buddha, they don't learn from one mistake and so they keep making it. People thought Bush was going to be the one creating the Orwellian police state. He just laid the foundation for future fucking generations.

Let's pull back for just a moment. What this is, is called a 2703(d) order and it comes fully loaded, allowing the Gov't to request nearly any information from Internet services such as Twitter, Facebook, Google, Blizzard, Paragon Studios and so on. Stop for a minute and think about that. What information have you given these entities? You don't have to answer that, it's all listed on page 4. Talk about Orwellian. And the order doesn't just stop at them, apparently it has expanded to the people "liking" or "following" Wikileaks on Twitter and possibly Facebook according to this letter. Yeah, that's a Panamanian journalist who received notice about the subpoena and isn't listed on the initial order.

Here's something that ought to tickle you. "My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government.  We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government." Yes my friends, that is our dear ol' "Dad" Barak Obama, in his own words and just to make sure you don't think I'm pulling a fast one, here's where he said it.

So if this government is supposed to be so fucking 'open' and 'transparent' why the fuck are they using an archaic law from 1986 regarding electronic communications? Further, why continue to try and silence the people whom you're requesting the information from? These are the very same tactics that got you strung up by your petard in the first place, and you're still doing it. Someone once said "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." The Gov't tries it's best to silence the mob of the internet and is constantly shocked when they shout back, and louder. They may be a fairly strong government, I'll grant you that, but there is no way in hell they can literally take on the world, even less so their own people.

I must admit that this whole ordeal is utterly fascinating in the unbalanced response to, what was essentially, a nothing case. One has to wonder just what motivates dropping a mountain on nearly 2 million people. What sort of information would warrant that sort of response? Let me put this in more relative terms. This is akin to someone calling you a liar. You then lock them in a closet and hunt down their immediate family, their neighbors, their friends, the respective pets of each individual and then everyone that they've ever met. The response is disproportional to the initial cause.

Through the internet we are all interlinked, every last one of us, even if we don't know each other directly. Six degrees of separation, remember that? It's not some navel gazing hippie bullshit when one considers how intertwined we are with social networking, as well as various other online activities, then combined with our real lives. One could easily extrapolate from this that the US gov't wants the personal information of everyone, though that'd be carrying it a bit far into the tinfoil hattery area. But further more, they don't want anyone to know that they want this information. Oops, guess they screwed that pooch.

Look, I'll make this simple. All the US Gov't had to do initially was to say "mea culpa" and let the thing go and it would have been long forgotten by now. Instead they've put on their fightin' gloves and want to dance a tango with the internet, but quietly so that no one else knows about it. Unfortunately, the internet is a place of raucous noise who's brightest quality is the ability to attract attention to itself, which is keeping them from being able to keep the whole affair out of the limelight. While most of the users of the internet are all ADD-riddled kids with short attention spans, the internet itself has a long memory, and even remembers shit from it's early inception. The only way for the gov't to win at this point is to shut down a decentralized network that spans the whole of the globe. Should be simple, yeah?

Since the quote last time seems to have had a positive affect, here's two more to think on:

"Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny." -Robert A. Heinlein

"Every man should know that his conversations, his correspondence and his personal life are private." -Lydon B. Johnson