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Comment on Freedom: The Big American Lie

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Reality check: for all the ills of warrantless wiretapping, computers are still an overwhelmingly positive force for enlightenment, empowerment and liberation of people across the world.

We think we have been enlightened, empowered, and liberated, but really all we have done is concentrate our activity in to one nice easily monitor-able state, which means we can now be more controlled than ever before.

Chat in a park? Good chance its private. Chat on line? Good chance its recorded. I could go on...

Your "reality check", I'm very sorry to say, is exactly the lie we are being sold.

Nobody's claiming computers can't be used for evil. I'm just saying let's not lose sight of all the good stuff they enable which is orthogonal to whether or not their users are being monitored.

Computers have also been crucial in facilitating many, many horrible things - with massive investments by all of the standing militaries and secret police of the world.

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