Groklaw, Pamela Jones’s website reporting on legal issues around the Free and Open Source Software community, closed down and she herself wants to “get off of the Internet to the degree it’s possible.” Loss of privacy, forced exposure, the dehumanising nature of total surveillance: issues I’ve been vaguely aware of recently, but never really thought about seriously. Her post explaining why she’s shut down her blog is the first thing I’ve read that I’ve understood, I think, with all this.
“Anyway, one resource was excerpts from a book by Janna Malamud Smith, ‘Private Matters: In Defense of the Personal Life’, and I encourage you to read it. I encourage the President and the NSA to read it too. I know. They aren’t listening to me. Not that way, anyhow. But it’s important, because the point of the book is that privacy is vital to being human, which is why one of the worst punishments there is is total surveillance.”
Miscellaneous Details 