Post #31,698
3/11/02 4:34:53 PM
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And just what have YOU been reading?
[link|http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0209/hentoff.php|Big John Wants Your Reading List] - here's the first 3 paragraphs to wet your interest: During the congressional debate on John Ashcroft's USA Patriot Act, an American Civil Liberties Union fact sheet on the bill's assaults on the Bill of Rights revealed that Section 215 of the act "would grant FBI agents across the country breathtaking authority to obtain an order from the FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] court . . . requiring any person or business to produce any books, records, documents, or items."
This is now the law, and as I wrote last week, the FBI, armed with a warrant or subpoena from the FISA court, can demand from bookstores and libraries the names of books bought or borrowed by anyone suspected of involvement in "international terrorism" or "clandestine activities."
Once that information is requested by the FBI, a gag order is automatically imposed, prohibiting the bookstore owners or librarians from disclosing to any other person the fact that they have received an order to produce documents.
You can't call a newspaper or a radio or television station or your representatives in Congress. You can call a lawyer, but since you didn't have any advance warning that the judge was issuing the order, your attorney can't have objected to it in court. He or she will be hearing about it for the first time from you.
... Some pretty serious stuff... Darrell Spice, Jr.
[link|http://home.houston.rr.com/spiceware/|SpiceWare] - We don't do Windows, it's too much of a chore
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Post #31,739
3/11/02 8:12:21 PM
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Uh-oh
I've been working my way through Neal Stephenson's 'Cryptonomicon'.
Definitely subversive technology....
Tom Sinclair
"Subverting Young Minds Since 03/13/2000"
"Yes, bugger all that." said Nanny. "Let's curse somebody."
-- Even Nanny Ogg gets upset occasionally
(Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters)
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Post #31,743
3/11/02 8:19:02 PM
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I'm innocent, officer!
I've been reading Iain M. Banks' Inversions.
But oops, that does sound like a suspcious book name.
Where each demon is slain, more hate is raised, yet hate unchecked also multiplies. - L. E. Modesitt
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Post #31,759
3/11/02 9:16:16 PM
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Big Brother John!
I haven't read any books lately. Except for "Core Java" which I got from my church in a used book sale for like $1, but I only skimmed it. The other books are the "King James Edition Bible", "Webster's New Explorer Dictionary", and various web sites and other junk that are not interesting enough to raise a red flag on my account.
"Will work for fair salary and benefits, seeking company with integrity."
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Post #31,764
3/11/02 9:55:02 PM
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It's an Ashcroft thing? I'm sure to be arrested.
I have 'The Origin Of Species' on my bookshelf, right there alongside 'Did Adam and Eve have Navels?'. Uh-oh, I'd be a goner, for sure, should the FBI hang around Sydney too much.
On and on and on and on,
and on and on and on goes John.
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Post #31,782
3/12/02 12:52:21 AM
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When you outlaw books....
only outlaws will have books.
Wooooooo wheeeeeeeeee. I'm gonna git me a flamethrower and be like on that Celcius 451 movie.
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Post #31,795
3/12/02 8:49:24 AM
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Fahrenheit. At 451F, paper burns.
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Post #31,802
3/12/02 10:10:58 AM
3/12/02 10:11:28 AM
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Fahrenheit 451
[link|http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0345342968/qid=1015946006/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/002-4077293-2871236|It was a book, a very good one] one of those books about the Future where Firemen started fires instead of putting them out. Fahrenheit 451 was the temp at which paper burned. Guy Montag was the hero of the book, right?
"Will work for fair salary and benefits, seeking company with integrity."
Edited by nking
March 12, 2002, 10:11:28 AM EST
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Post #31,817
3/12/02 11:27:15 AM
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Hmm, you seem to know quite a bit about that book, Mr. King.
Have you been read?
Don't you know that such subversive literature (portrays the government as totalitarian) is ILLEGAL!!!!!
Remember children, if you turn in your friends or parents for subversive reading, you'll get a cookie at school.
I <heart> the Thought Police!
Step back a bit, Norm. This gasoline might splatter a bit. (fwoosh!)
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Post #31,862
3/12/02 2:26:55 PM
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In 2002: Just be damn sure not to download any pictures of
Naked Statues..
Especially ones with such subversive themes as say, Justice.
And if you want to whistle those dirty songs.. best take a cue from the Singing Patriotic Attorney General ... and be sure those songs aren't sending secret messages to that there
Eevul Axis\ufffd
(You'll have to prove that, of course.. in that undisclosed location and to those unnamed Guardians of Your Home Security, who wear those colorful brown shirts. With epaulets.)
Me? I think I'll just keep it to Liebestodt and other great Dickie Wagner hits to play, while societies self-combust via terminal pewling-fearfulness of each other.
..but we'll always have Paris.
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Post #31,920
3/12/02 7:47:24 PM
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I read it back in Jr. High school
It was a reading assignment. Blame the school district if you wish. It was either that or "1984", at the time.
"Will work for fair salary and benefits, seeking company with integrity."
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Post #31,930
3/12/02 8:26:17 PM
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Yabut.. did it you Learn anything from that 'assignment' ??
or was it just another Sci-Fi, video-game, tic-tac-toe escape from thought, for another few hours..?
WTF was Bradbury trying to say ?
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Post #31,952
3/12/02 10:56:32 PM
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trying?? to say?
I think he did more than try.
The man can be extremely subtle at times. When he wrote that wasn't one of those times.
----
United we stand
Divided we dominate the planet without really trying
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Post #31,961
3/13/02 12:39:11 AM
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Question was for
Norman, who referred to some 'reading assignment' - so unclear whether he's actually read it, or just skimmed to pass some test. The "trying to say" is just the normal cop-out.. for cases when someone didn't grok to fulness.. y'know? (Better than, I cannot live with this shame ;-)
Yeah, Ray B. is pretty hard not to get.. but some didn't get Uncle Tom's Cabin.
What's surprising (to me anyway) is for F-451 to have now become relevant so soon.. what with the Ashcroftian Era gathering momentum -
'Millennium' Patriot Act.
DMCA.
Habeas corpus suspended.
Wholesale snooping now codified.
SCSSA-wtf it gets called...
CIA, NSA can work At Home now.
A Veep - hiding in subterranean caverns.
A Pres - inarticulate even w/ teleprompter.
Repeal of many important treaties - by fiat / sans discusssion.
And now: supply your reading list on demand.
What's warming up in the wings?
And thus far - the sheep safe-ly graze.
Cheers,
Ashton
Thanks Ray Bradbury! - for another symbol of triumph over the ever-waiting power-obsessed: the Living Book. It was about love.
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Post #32,353
3/15/02 1:30:36 PM
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I listened to Bill Cosby
he said "If you are not careful you may learn something" from his "Cosby Kids/ Fat Albert" shows. So I was careful and I didn't learn anything from it. I went back to playing Pac-Man and Space Invaders after reading it. Then I played Laser Blast and got a million points and turned the numbers into exclimation points! :)
I am free now, to choose my own destiny.
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Post #31,906
3/12/02 6:17:13 PM
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Just to play devil's advocate
And this differs from established proceedure for your basic wiretap..how?
Secret court gives approval with only FBI present. Check. Target is not informed. Check. Nobody else is allowed to inform target. Check. Target usually finds out (if ever) in the discovery phase of the trial. Check.
The only difference is the kind of personal information stream they are tapping into. And I think that for most of us, our library checkout records carry less information than our phone conversations. So it isn't even like this is more intrusive than what has already been accepted as established proceedure.
Am I missing something?
Cheers,
Ben
"... I couldn't see how anyone could be educated by this self-propagating system in which people pass exams, teach others to pass exams, but nobody knows anything."
--Richard Feynman
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Post #31,910
3/12/02 6:36:31 PM
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I think it's more the symbolism.. and the trend towards more
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Post #31,933
3/12/02 8:51:15 PM
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The sky is falling, the sky is falling!
... but I think it's more the symbolism.. and the trend towards more.
cackle... cackle... cackle...
(Just could not help it. In this particular case, Ash is right, the Govt has no business looking in my book records, precisely because they are so useless for any real investigation, compared to, say, wiretap). But I still think the above illustrates many of Ashton's conversations rather nicely :) .)
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Post #31,939
3/12/02 9:14:15 PM
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Sky's fine - it's just local homo-sap running amok. Again.
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