One of the things I love about the geek community is that they’re absolutely fanatical about civil liberties. Take my new story at Ars about Mike McConnell’s ham-fisted demagoguery:
McConnell charged that as a result of press reports and Congressional debates regarding surveillance activities, “some Americans are going to die.” That’s because disclosures about surveillance activities will tip off terrorists to the existence of American surveillance programs and prompt them to use alternate communication methods, making it more difficult for the authorities to stop terrorist attacks before they occur.
This annoyed me enough that I took the liberty of editorializing in the very next paragraph:
McConnell didn’t elaborate on which specific revelations undermined anti-terrorism efforts. It can hardly have been a surprise to Al Qaeda that the U.S. government was spying on them or that they were using American voice and data networks to do it. Still, fear of terrorism is a potent force in American politics, and so McConnell’s charges, however dubious, may persuade some members of Congress to support the administration’s position.
But Ars readers, who were almost unanimous in their reactions, had a had some much better retorts. This one is my favorite:
Thousands of Americans already did die to secure us in our persons, houses, papers and effects. McConnell is pissing on their graves.
If only the general public had that kind of moral clarity! I think I’ve linked to this before, but Paul Graham’s essay on hackers offers a theory about why geeks get so excited about civil liberties issues.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.