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An Avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he a establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
—Thomas Paine (via hipsterlibertarian)
12 May, 2012
Sourced from hipsterlibertarian
Reblogged from hipsterlibertarian
Tagged as police state police liberty punishment violence
Notes (141) -
17 April, 2012
Sourced from thegim
Originally from thegim
Reblogged from jjarichardson
Tagged as Arab Spring Liberty revolution art
Notes (1078) -
These are all so great.
My heart just exploded. So.
This is wonderful!
11 April, 2012
Sourced from whoneedsfeminism
Originally from whoneedsfeminism
Reblogged from mohandasgandhi
Tagged as feminism oppression liberty
Notes (3420) -
ataxiwardance: “We spend our time searching for security and hate it when we get it.” -John Steinbeck
11 April, 2012
Sourced from scatteredaesthetics
Originally from scatteredaesthetics
Reblogged from socialuprooting
Tagged as Dwight Eisenhower politics liberty
Notes (349) -
If men were angels, no government would be necessary.
—
James Madison, “Federalist #51” (via politicalprof)
ataxiwardance: I feel compelled to complete the rest of this excellent, but oft misconstrued, quote:
If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.
James Madison is my spirit animal.
10 April, 2012
Sourced from politicalprof
Reblogged from politicalprof
Tagged as politics federalist papers James Madison liberty government
Notes (90) -
A 2011 FOIA request from the ACLU revealed that just in the 18-month period beginning October 1, 2008, more than 6,600 people — roughly half of whom were American citizens — were subjected to electronic device searches at the border by DHS, all without a search warrant. Typifying the target of these invasive searches is Pascal Abidor, a 26-year-old dual French-American citizen and an Islamic Studies Ph.D. student who was traveling from Montreal to New York on an Amtrak train in 2011 when he was stopped at the border, questioned by DHS agents, handcuffed, taken off the train and kept in a holding cell for several hours before being released without charges; those DHS agents seized his laptop and returned it 11 days later when, the ACLU explains, “there was evidence that many of his personal files, including research, photos and chats with his girlfriend, had been searched.” That’s just one case of thousands, all without any oversight, transparency, legal checks, or any demonstration of wrongdoing.
9 April, 2012
Sourced from letterstomycountry
Reblogged from letterstomycountry
Tagged as police state information economy liberty ACLU
Notes (13) -
Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people… . No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
—James Madison
4 April, 2012
Sourced from politicalprof
Reblogged from politicalprof
Tagged as James Madison Constitution Liberty violence militarism
Notes (67) -
What If Your Emails Never Went to Gmail and Twitter Couldn’t See Your Tweets?
A new tool under development by Oregon State computer scientists could radically alter the way that communications work on the web. Privly is a sort of manifesto-in-code, a working argument for a more private, less permanent Internet.
The system we have now gives all the power to the service providers. That seemed to be necessary, but Privly shows that it is not: Users could have a lot more power without giving up social networking. Just pointing that out is a valuable contribution to the ongoing struggle to understand and come up with better ways of sharing and protecting ourselves online.
“Companies like Twitter, Google, and Facebook make you choose between modern technology and privacy. But the Privly developers know this to be false choice,” lead dev Sean McGregor says in the video below. “You can communicate through the site of your choosing without giving the host access to your content.”
Through browser extensions, Privly allows you to post to social networks and send email without letting those services see “into” your text. Instead, your actual words get encrypted and then routed to Privlys servers (or an eventual peer-to-peer network). What the social media site “sees” is merely a link that Privly expands in your browser into the full content. Of course, this requires that people who want to see your content also need Privly installed on their machines.YES YES YES YES YES!
4 April, 2012
Sourced from The Atlantic
Reblogged from theatlantic
Tagged as internet liberty privacy free speech information information economy
Notes (462) -
Obama And ISP’s To Launch Largest Digital Spying Scheme In History (Must Read)
If you download potentially copyrighted software, videos or music, your Internet service provider (ISP) has been watching, and they’re coming for you.
Specifically, they’re coming for you on Thursday, July 1.
That’s the date when the nation’s largest ISPs will all voluntarily implement a new anti-piracy plan that will engage network operators in the largest digital spying scheme in history, and see some users’ bandwidth completely cut off until they sign an agreement saying they will not download copyrighted materials.
Word of the start date has been largely kept secret since ISPs announced their plans last June. The deal was brokered by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), and coordinated by the Obama Administration. The same groups have weighed in heavily on controversial Internet policies around the world, with similar facilitation by the Obama’s Administration’s State Department.
The July 12 date was revealed by the RIAA’s CEO and top lobbyist, Cary Sherman, during a publishers’ conference on Wednesday in New York, according to technology publication CNet.
The content industries calls this scheme a “graduated response” plan, which will see
-Time Warner Cable
-Cablevision
-Comcast
-Verizon
-AT&T
and others spying on users’ Internet activities and watching for potential copyright infringement. Users who are “caught” infringing on a creator’s protected work can then be interrupted with a notice that piracy is forbidden by law and carries penalties of up to $150,000 per infringement, requiring the user to click through saying they understand the consequences before bandwidth is restored, and they could still be subject to copyright infringement lawsuits.
Response: This is much worse than SOPA/PIPA and ACTA. It doesn’t necessarily censor the internet but it spys on everything you do. Your ENTIRE web history will be watched and recorded and might even assist the government. This was coordinated by Obama and his administration with the help of the MPAA and RIAA.
What is so dangerous about this is that this is not a law it is a policy adopted by several companies. That means this will not be debated in Congress and you will agree to be spied on by signing a contract with the company.
Internet censorship is becoming a reality and now the corporate elite will legally be able to spy on you. If we spread this and cause an uproar like what we did with SOPA, maybe they will back down. Either way people NEED to know about this.
25 March, 2012
Sourced from occupyallstreets
Originally from occupyallstreets
Reblogged from salubriousextrications
Tagged as security state digital freedom information economy liberty Obama
Notes (16963) -
28 February, 2012
Sourced from maxistentialist
Reblogged from maxistentialist
Tagged as Jean-Paul Sartre art philosophy liberty
Notes (129)
