Friday, August 2, 2013

New York woman visited by police after researching pressure cookers online

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/01/new-york-police-terrorism-pressure-cooker

Long Island resident said her web search history and 'trying to learn how to cook lentils' prompted a visit from authorities but police say search was prompted by tipoff

"This is where we are at. Where you have no expectation of privacy. Where trying to learn how to cook some lentils could possibly land you on a watch list. Where you have to watch every little thing you do because someone else is watching every little thing you do.
All I know is if I'm going to buy a pressure cooker in the near future, I'm not doing it online.
I'm scared. And not of the right things."

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And August 1, 2013 is remembered as the date most intelligent Americans decided to drop off the internet and start living normal, face to face lives again.
Although most antisocials and nerds resisted, and later paid the price, in light of dwindling privacy, online bullying, increased weight gain due to its sedentary aspect, cyberstalking, troll comments coarsening the national dialogue and increasingly invasive government surveillance, the majority of Americans realized that the internet is more nuisance than deodand: a mischievous and malicious media data-harvesting toy causing enormous harm to untold nameless millions, and poised to soon cause greater civil liberties harm to far more if not checked, or, even better, abandoned.
The entire country logged off, got sunshine and exercise, and saw jobs and real romantic relationships return. Loud, bullying small interest groups returned to their pre-1990s obscurity. Children were safe again.
At that moment, for most Americans normal life returned. And it all began with ordinary people, starting with the author, never commenting online again, logging off, and calling their internet service provider to have it canceled. The withdrawals were at first intense and negative, but soon abated, and within half a generation most people wondered what they ever saw in typing into a screen to speak about intensely personal things to individuals they did not know, had never met and could not even see.
Happiness ensued.
- From the movie, "Fat Chance"

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