Returning to a theme I’ve explored previously, I recently encountered two pieces about Twitter and context: Justine Sacco is good at her job, and how I came to peace with her Forced context collapse or the right to hide in plain sight The two pieces explore different aspects of the theme, but both of them […]
Category Archives: Civil Liberties
OKCupid: as clueless as Facebook, but not as evil.
Much has been made recently of this post on the OKCupid blog. In this post, OKCupid “confesses” to experimenting on users in order to verify that their algorithm works, in such a tone as to suggest that this is an obvious thing that everyone does and what of it? In the process, Rudder (the post’s […]
Privacy, etc. II
I got some offline feedback on my last entry, with the effect that I rethought a few things. Here are some of the new thoughts: Anonymity. The way I defined this previously was “being out in public without being notable”. This isn’t a very good definition, because, as Gavin pointed out, anonymity actually has a […]
Privacy, Accessibility, and Notability
As a result of some long-ago and more recent conversations with smart friends of mine, I came up with some interesting thoughts about privacy. I don’t fully understand the legal umbrella of privacy, but it seems to me that there are a few distinct concepts that it would be useful to introduce into quasi-legal/common-sense discussions […]
Would you rather stupid or arbitrary?
Some time back, I wrote about the TSA’s policies on knitting needles. Not surprisingly, it isn’t just the TSA which seems to have trouble defining what or why the issue is with knitting needles. On my way back from London yesterday, the guy at the Continental counter — not an airport screener — asked me […]
Eliminate.
Useless nominalization — defeated! I have to admit that I’m pleased about this on both pedantic and political grounds (the current phrasing is correct, and the current phrasing is more likely to assist in the measure’s defeat), but mostly what caught my eye is the judge referring to the desired change as “useless nominalization”. Nice […]
Finally, some decent news on wiretapping
House Democrats have some vertebrae left in their spine, at least, having refused to rubber-stamp telecom immunity. Good for them, even if the whole issue of warrantless wiretapping in general is still a mess. If you’re less lazy than me, you could write to your House rep congratulating or reproving them, but I’m going to […]
Evocation of a falling empire
Greenwald writes: That has become Congress’ only role, its only power: to endorse what the President decrees. Like the sad, impotent Roman Senate which existed only to lend its imprimatur to the Emperor’s conduct, the Congress’ only choices are — as it did yesterday — to plead for “re-consideration,” and then, when it’s not forthcoming, […]
Dodd against immunity
The man himself speaks. Keep emailing or calling your Senators. From Glenn Greenwald, after the Judiciary committee version (no immunity) was tabled: The pro-immunity, pro-warrantless eavesdropping Democrats: Rockefeller, Pryor, Inouye, McCaskill, Landrieu, Salazar, Nelson (FL), Nelson (NE), Mikulski, Carper, Bayh, and Johnson. Neither Clinton nor Obama bothered to show up for any of this. And […]
I can get quite eloquent (and not a little rude) when angry
Guys, it’s time for action on FISA again. NOW. TODAY. I was on blog silence last time this came up, but it’s time again. Start with Glenn Greenwald for a decent overview of the politics. There should be a link in there somewhere explaining the principles too, if you’re not already familiar with the fact […]