Someone is leaking NSA and Gov docs, but it isn't Snowden.

https://thepatriotpapers.wordpress.com/2014/09/08/new-post-snowden-leaks-reveal-secret-details-of-u-s-terrorist-watch-list/

The US Government is trying to find the source of multiple leaks of intelligence data. Dated and drafted after Edward Snowden was removed from clearance multiple data points have been released to journalists around the world. The US government must now consider every intelligence officer and contractor a risk. It is clear that while the US Government tries its best to contain its own transgressions and discretions it would be easier and less costly to the American Citizens wallet if they refrained from performing breaches of privacy around the world. The aftermath of Snowden has left a divide in the opinions of most Americans, some calling him a traitor and others, a hero.

"Truth is treason in the empire of lies" as someone has said in the recent past rings true in this situation.





Image via http://www.newyorker.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/edward-snowden-580.jpg

Remembering Aaron Swartz

Aaron Swartz was an amazing person. Inspiring and influential. His impact on this generation and future ones can and will be seen in the ways information is shared and the type of digital world we leave to posterity. His voice resonated around the world, with his message that all information should be free, the new education of people can take shape. It was through his mind ideas like Reddit, Think Progress, Creative Commons and a host of government accountability websites were brought into existence or improved upon. He was an incredibly intelligent person and will be missed by millions, some without even a knowledge of who he was or the impact he has made.

This is a copy of the Guerilla Open Access Manifesto, though not confirmed to be his lone hand that wrote this, it was signed with his name. It's message is strong, it is needed and it should be heard and carried further.

Guerilla Open Access Manifesto 

Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for 
themselves. The world's entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries 
in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of 
private corporations. Want to read the papers featuring the most famous results of the 
sciences? You'll need to send enormous amounts to publishers like Reed Elsevier. 

There are those struggling to change this. The Open Access Movement has fought 
valiantly to ensure that scientists do not sign their copyrights away but instead ensure 
their work is published on the Internet, under terms that allow anyone to access it. But 
even under the best scenarios, their work will only apply to things published in the future. 
Everything up until now will have been lost. 

That is too high a price to pay. Forcing academics to pay money to read the work of their 
colleagues? Scanning entire libraries but only allowing the folks at Google to read them? 
Providing scientific articles to those at elite universities in the First World, but not to 
children in the Global South? It's outrageous and unacceptable. 

"I agree," many say, "but what can we do? The companies hold the copyrights, they 
make enormous amounts of money by charging for access, and it's perfectly legal — 
there's nothing we can do to stop them." But there is something we can, something that's 
already being done: we can fight back. 

Those with access to these resources — students, librarians, scientists — you have been 
given a privilege. You get to feed at this banquet of knowledge while the rest of the world 
is locked out. But you need not — indeed, morally, you cannot — keep this privilege for 
yourselves. You have a duty to share it with the world. And you have: trading passwords 
with colleagues, filling download requests for friends. 



Meanwhile, those who have been locked out are not standing idly by. You have been 
sneaking through holes and climbing over fences, liberating the information locked up by 
the publishers and sharing them with your friends. 

But all of this action goes on in the dark, hidden underground. It's called stealing or 
piracy, as if sharing a wealth of knowledge were the moral equivalent of plundering a 
ship and murdering its crew. But sharing isn't immoral — it's a moral imperative. Only 
those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy. 

Large corporations, of course, are blinded by greed. The laws under which they operate 
require it — their shareholders would revolt at anything less. And the politicians they 
have bought off back them, passing laws giving them the exclusive power to decide who 
can make copies. 

There is no justice in following unjust laws. It's time to come into the light and, in the 
grand tradition of civil disobedience, declare our opposition to this private theft of public 
culture. 

We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with 
the world. We need to take stuff that's out of copyright and add it to the archive. We need 
to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific 
journals and upload them to file sharing networks. We need to fight for Guerilla Open 
Access. 

With enough of us, around the world, we'll not just send a strong message opposing the 
privatization of knowledge — we'll make it a thing of the past. Will you join us? 

Aaron Swartz 

July 2008, Eremo, Italy

To quote Tim Berners-Lee proclaimed inventor of the world wide web...




"We’ve lost a fighter. We've lost somebody who put huge energy into righting wrongs. There are people around the world who take it on themselves to just try to fix the world but very few of them do it 24/7 like Aaron. Very few of them are as dedicated. So of the people who are fighting for right, and what he was doing up to the end was fighting for right, we have lost one of our own. … We’ve lost a great person. But also, we've lost somebody who needed to be nurtured, who needed to be protected. I didn’t work with Aaron as closely as many people here, but I got the sense that all who have known him realized that he needed to be protected. He needed to be held carefully in our hands. He needed to be nurtured. So nurturers of the world, everyone who tried to make a place safe to work or a home safe to live, anyone who listens to another, looks after another or feeds another, all parents everywhere — we've lost a child. And there’s nothing worse than that."
Aaron was a genius in his own way and a brilliant mind, one that we sorely need. His perseverance in the fight for the uninhibited sharing of information and knowledge was amazing and his passion for doing all he could to release the grips of censorship, especially in academia. His devotion to the idea that ideas and knowledge should not be hidden away in storerooms and servers but instead freely broadcast is a brave goal.  His idea was to change the world and in his own way he did just that. 

There are multiple sites to look at his life, his work, those that knew him and those that benefitted from his work. Wikipedia, being a model of like mind to Aaron's is an excellent starting point.

As I was doing some reading on the life of Aaron and his mission, his message and his influence into todays tech culture I found this, a documentary of his life, as he lived it, with those he shared it with and his brilliance and his untimely death. 

To watch the movie "The Internet's Own Boy" a documentary of Aaron Swartz and his life, his accomplishments and his impact go here... 

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/internet-own-boy-story-aaron-swartz/

Are you really being Represented?

Do you feel that those Senators, Representatives and Presidents holding office and making decisions for 317 million people have your best interests in mind?

Do you think they are representing you in the best possible way?

I asked these questions to a co-worker the other day. His response was a shoulder shrug and a somewhat resentful "No, Not really".

So in response I said, "So why do you continue to support a system that you admit is faulty?"

He gave me the greatest response, the most thought out response I could asked for..... Are you ready for it????

"It's the best system we have."


O RLY NOW?!?!

In the call for representation many people lose the fact that the representation they seek should not diminish the accountability and responsibility of those they place in their steed.

In a series of questions I will ask Are you really being represented, Are these the opinions and actions you would have taken had you no person claiming to represent you? Are these all things you would have imposed onto your neighbors and friends, your family and co-workers?


Would you impose the collection of information and communications of the worlds citizens?

Would you impose to extort those you love and those you do not know of the money they have earned?

Would you use that extorted money to send to others, to disperse to others?

Would you imprison others for growing a plant?

Would you restrict the travels of individuals based on regulations, restrictions and rulings that limit and inhibit individual rights?

Would you station your own rule enforcers on other people properties?

Would you use force to extract resources on others properties in order to run monopolies in your own favor?

Would you vow to imprison individuals that spoke out against your will and actions?


More questions to ponder...

As individuals living in a cooperative state, without the central plans and impositions of a government would the limitless and ever expanding regulations and stipulations that hinder and starve out the peaceful lives of others be so extensive?

Would the type of fear filled world, the extensive violations of the natural rights of those individuals be so wide spread?

Would we, as individuals, impose these same rules that the select few of self important leeches of public funding that are reinforced and reconstituted by ignorant and indoctrinated mass of loyal followers?

Can a better world be viable, is it possible without these so called representations of democratic rule, the will of a majority by the silence of the minority?

What is Justice?

I was thinking about these few questions today. What is justice?  What is individual justice? Who gets to define public or social justice? These are questions that I often think about when I read comments on news stories. Everyone seems to have their own view of what justice is; what punishment would or should fit the crime. Often times these views are more brutal than the crime in which they are meant to punish, in my personal opinion. And that is exactly where this topic goes; the subjectivity of justice.

Recently a local story came across my news feed in which an adult had sexual relations with a younger person, younger being described as lower than the "legally" stipulated age at which persons can make decisions to have these relations. The comments read as if I was looking into the minds of psychopaths and sociopath's dreams. Murder him, castrate him, were the normal responses, one even read to castrate him, put his castrated member into his mouth, tie him behind a vehicle and drag him until he died. Is that justice? Would those actions be justified as a result of what he and another had conspired to do willingly and voluntarily? At what point does the attempt at justice reach revenge, vengeance or immoral means to an immoral end?

Lysander Spooner had this to say of justice;

"The science of mine and thine --- the science of justice --- is the science of all human rights; of all a man's rights of person and property; of all his rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
It is the science which alone can tell any man what he can, and cannot, do; what he can, and cannot, have; what he can, and cannot, say, without infringing the rights of any other person.
It is the science of peace; and the only science of peace; since it is the science which alone can tell us on what conditions mankind can live in peace, or ought to live in peace, with each other.
These conditions are simply these: viz., first, that each man shall do, towards every other, all that justice requires him to do; as, for example, that he shall pay his debts, that he shall return borrowed or stolen property to its owner, and that he shall make reparation for any injury he may have done to the person or property of another.
The second condition is, that each man shall abstain from doing to another, anything which justice forbids him to do; as, for example, that he shall abstain from committing theft, robbery, arson, murder, or any other crime against the person or property of another."

The combined idea of justice in the public eye seems to be one of three outcomes; Incarceration, death, or monetary punishment and of course a combination of all three. All of these though come from one enforcement monopoly; The State. What moral right does the state have to do these things? Is it the transferred authority of the voting populace? How does one account for the individual preference of justice over the majority? If a man has a moral philosophy to not do harm to another, is it right that a man who has damaged his property be then harmed by the state, not by the victim’s wishes but by mandated "justice"? Does the individual have no say as to what should be seen as just in his eyes, whether that means to let the perpetrator go or to punish them as he wishes? Under our current system the right to exact justice by individuals is made illegal and a monopoly has risen to take control of such matters. The American legal system, in all its dysfunction, has created a way for government to gain off of the misdeeds of others even when no harm has befallen the state in the matter. This is where the question comes in of what moral right does the state have to punish anyone for crimes in which it was not harmed? Why is there mandated minimum sentencing for crimes in which there are no victims? Why is justice taken from the hands of those involved and given to a system that benefit from the results of its own rules and laws?

An eye for an eye, Is that justice?

In an attempt to explain personal views of justice some will say they believe in the old adage of "an eye for an eye". Can equal punishment be considered equal justice? If a person was to kill a man's spouse, and the victimized man believed in equal punishment to the action, would the killing of an innocent person who is married to the aggressor be justice? Could it not be said of the spouse, who has now been killed in response to the death of another, even though they had no knowledge or part in the act is somehow responsible for the act of their spouse in order to avenge justice to the victim, are they now not a victim themselves? Does this circle ever end? 

Can the attempted correction of a wrong be justified by preforming another wrong?
Is it justice for a man guilty only of selling a plant disapproved of by government to be sentenced to a life in a cage? Is it justice for a mother who provides pain reliving medicine to her child to be sentenced to a life in jail, all because the medicine is not approved by a government agency? Is it justice that a man or woman who have engaged in consenual sexual relations be punished, because of an arbitrary age of consent imposed by someone outside that relationship? Is it Justice that any amount of people are barred from being united in marriage by law, punishable by state enforcement?

Can Justice ever really be achieved? Can full restitution for any act of aggression really be made? Is it a subjective view on what would be justified compensation? Can an act performed in the name of justice be an injustice in itself? How can one ensure just compensation is made without further aggressing against another or against the primary aggressor?

There can be no justice in a world of unscrupulous men.

Again Lysander Spooner, 

"If there be such a natural principle as justice, it is necessarily the highest, and consequently the only and universal, law for all those matters to which it is naturally applicable. And, consequently, all human legislation is simply and always an assumption of authority and dominion, where no right of authority or dominion exists. It is, therefore, simply and always an intrusion, an absurdity, an usurpation, and a crime.
On the other hand, if there be no such natural principle as justice, there can be no such thing as dishonesty; and no possible act of either force or fraud, committed by one man against the person or property of another, can be said to be unjust or dishonest; or be complained of, or prohibited, or punished as such. In short, if there be no such principle as justice, there can be no such acts as crimes; and all the professions of governments, so called, that they exist, either in whole or in part, for the punishment or prevention of crimes, are professions that they exist for the punishment or prevention of what never existed, nor ever can exist. Such professions are therefore confessions that, so far as crimes are concerned, governments have no occasion to exist; that there is nothing for them to do, and that there is nothing that they can do. They are confessions that the governments exist for the punishment and prevention of acts that are, in their nature, simple impossibilities."