Aaron Swartz Explains Why The NSA Needs To Be Stopped
from the from-beyond-the-grave dept
Last week, when we wrote about the big “day of action” against the NSA in memory of Aaron Swartz, to be held February 11th, a few folks questioned whether this was an appropriate issue, since they were unaware of Aaron being all that concerned about the NSA. Obviously, Aaron died months before the Snowden leaks, but as many folks who knew Aaron knew, the NSA was absolutely an issue he was quite concerned about even prior to the Snowden leaks. Brian Knappenberger, who has been working to put the finishing touches on his new documentary about Aaron, The Internet’s Own Boy, in order to debut it at Sundance, has released an astounding trailer of the film (which looks amazing). Included in it, are multiple clips of Aaron actually speaking out about the NSA and surveillance, mainly focused on the NSA saying it can’t possibly calculate how many Americans it’s spying on, because to do so, would be either (a) impossible or (b) would violate their privacy (yes, at one point, they actually said figuring out how many people are being spied on would violate their privacy).
Filed Under: aaron swartz, brian knappenberger, nsa, privacy, surveillance
Comments on “Aaron Swartz Explains Why The NSA Needs To Be Stopped”
Rage Face
Determining if you’re an American would violate your privacy if you were American, so long as we spy on you and don’t know if you are, then we can’t be violating your privacy.
http://cdn.alltheragefaces.com/img/faces/png/misc-genius.png
Sad
It’s sad to see people trying to play off this guy’s death. He committed suicide to avoid facing the crimes he committed, that’s not exactly a role model.
Leave the guy in peace, it’s apparently all he wanted.
sigh
We as Americans, are a bunch of apathetic pussies. We are not doing enough to fix shit.
Nigel
Re: sigh
I’m not sure if this’ll make it seem any better, but I think a large part of that is that most people don’t even know about the problems.
For those still getting their news from the newspapers and MSM sources, they’ve likely only run across a few small bits of information about all this mess, and only the pro-NSA/spying side, with few exceptions.
Re: Re: sigh
I was talking to my brother the other day and he had absolutely no idea who Edward Snowden was or what the NSA has been doing.
Re: sigh
Nope, you’re too busy being divided into cults by a political elite that doesn’t need to give a damn about its citizens. You’re too busy being dragged around by an elite that wants to feed you anti-intellectual bullshit so that you literally cannot argue against them. You’re too busy agreeing with the collective lies that your elite is feeding you.
And it has to stop.
Re: Re: sigh
It’ll stop when we finally refuse to play along, refuse to continue the same old arguments and refuse to take any side but our own – and that of the public good.
So let’s stop voting for the Big Two, already. Other candidates are available.
The NSA murdered Aaron Swartz
The illuminati are winning… Crap, my computer just crashed – synchronicity! Singularity! Sincerity! Fnord!
Who cares about the NSA? I’m not affected right now, so it’s not an issue.
Re: Re:
First they came for the people who used Emacs.
But I didn’t use Emacs, so I said nothing.
Then they came for the people who used Windows.
But I didn’t use Windows, so I said nothing.
Then they came for the people who were concerned about the NSA . . .
(do you see where this is going?)
Lighting A Candle
I’m lighting a candle in memory of Aaron Swartz. And making special donations to http://www.demandprogress.org and https://www.eff.org to carry on his inspired work. Rest in peace, Aaron!