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Scripten

Anyone see another source for this?

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pretty sure that story is a little embellished

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There certainly are British people who are that stupid.

But yes, if the only source for something is the Daily Mail, it can be safely ignored.

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At this point, it wouldn't surprise me one bit. I find the fact that he was help captive for only twelve hours farfetched. I'm sure if he were a citizen and homeland got involved, we wouldn't be hearing from him in a while.

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Well, the Sun has it, but they're as bad. Some American thing called IT World has it. Never heard of them before. I figured the guys on Slashdot might figure out if it was mostly embellished crap, but they're just arguing over how much of a xenophobic hellhole America is.

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This is why I don't use Twitter... and I don't give a fuck enough to type one sentence horseshit about my day, or what ever retarded thought pops into my head..

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I've heard anecdotal stories of tourists being arrested and detained at airports in a full Guantanamo attire (or the very least, with wrist and ankle shackles) for no apparent reason ever since 9/11, so from that POV it's plausible. I wonder if the victims of such treatment can then demand a refund for moral damages, delays, missed income or something like that.

I'd like to know what would happen if someone made a mock book cover titled "9/11: The worst airplane accident in history" by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iranian Revolutionary Guard Press, Iran and simply put it in his hand luggage....shot on sight?

Edit: by taking into account fraggle's link, this just confirms what I always thought of "social media": it's just a flourishing breeding ground for snitches, spies, and for people to rat themselves out voluntarily with minimal effort by traditional intelligence services, but also by employers. I can only see negative risks associated with having a "social media" account with your real name, and thus I would never get one.

If we are to live in such a world, at least secret services should go the extra mile like in the older days, and explicitly pay/give something in exchange/conscript people to spy on each other, like e.g. in the old days where newspaper sellers were required to take note of those who bought e.g. communist newspapers.

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Maes said:

Edit: by taking into account fraggle's link, this just confirms what I always thought of "social media": it's just a flourishing breeding ground for snitches, spies, and for people to rat themselves out voluntarily with minimal effort by traditional intelligence services, but also by employers. I can only see negative risks associated with having a "social media" account with your real name, and thus I would never get one.

You may find this article interesting. I think he's a bit over the top and don't completely agree with him, but he does have kind of a point.

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fraggle said:

You may find this article interesting. I think he's a bit over the top and don't completely agree with him, but he does have kind of a point.


That was a good read, even though that Even Moglen guy clearly started going into Wesley Willis Warhellride Mode (TM) after a while.

He's 100% right about people voluntarily ratting themselves out because "everybody else does it" though: in the past, an official secret service or police would have to rely on an extensive network of voluntary, coerced or professional snitches to gather intelligence, and a private individual wanting to find out such things about someone else (a competitor, a spouse etc.) would have to hire the services of a P.I.

Today, a PI or intelligence officer doesn't even need to go on the street and talking to shifty types or "throw some questions" around: people find it so normal to flaunt their opinions openly in their profiles and status updates that they don't realize that:

  • Just because it's easier to express yourself, tHe world hasn't suddenly become more "open" or "tolerant".
  • A misplaced comment, word or gesture still carries the same weight it would in Real Life. Making it public (and possibly permanently recorded) makes it all easier for snitches who are just waiting for a mistake on your behalf to pin you to the ground, figuratively and literally.
  • What makes "social media" so bad in this respect is that EVERYTHING is permanently recorded and remains highly visible and easy to find. At least with real-life secret police of olds, unless you were locked down, you could, eventually, find maybe a minute where you're out of sight, or you could count on the bureaucracy involved in keeping files on you to miss something now and then.
  • Silence is a virtue.
...using social media is akin to Superman actively seeking a voluntary Kryptonite enema.

There's also another serious reason for not using social media: one day you might just be cut off from the Internet or lose control of what you posted.

So either you're very, very careful that ANYTHING you post in public is "posterity proof" (carries no negative connotations or can't be traced back to a real person, in case you lose control of it), or you just treat everything on the Internet as an anonymous joke/shit & giggles cesspool (as I mostly do) and act in an appropriate manner. This of course involves never taking "on-line" public services/banking/shopping etc. seriously, and only relying on what you can physically access.

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Maes said:

or you just treat everything on the Internet as an anonymous joke/shit & giggles cesspool (as I mostly do) and act in an appropriate manner.

Heh, reminds me of a quote I heard recently:

"I never ever talk about clients on Twitter. Twitter is for dick jokes."

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I honestly don't give a shit what people know about me. Privacy has never had much meaning for me.

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Technician said:

This is why I don't use Twitter... and I don't give a fuck enough to type one sentence horseshit about my day, or what ever retarded thought pops into my head..


Are you sure about that?

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And of course, in the comments you'll find the quintessential All-American wannabe jarhead that claims that he "joined the army to fight in Iraq for America's Freedoms (TM)" and of course his father, grandfather and grand-grandfather etc. fought in Panama, Vietnam, Korea, WW II, WW I, Mexico, etc. etc. all the way back to the American Civil War (on the Union's side, of course), so "he will have none of that".

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