Monday, June 28, 2010
Criminal Monopolist Monster Territorial State AKA "Our" Government Is Preparing Its Next Crime
The European Parliament wants to take away the right to search the Internet in privacy.
"As you know," says Dr. Katherine Albrecht, Founder and Director of CASPIAN Consumer Privacy and VP Marketing and Media Relations of Startpage (by Ixquick)/The private, anonymous search engine alternative to Google, Yahoo, and Bing, "the Startpage and Ixquick search engines have helped millions of people protect their privacy through anonymous, certified proxy searching. Human rights activists, whistleblowers, and regular people all appreciate the security of knowing we never record users' IP addresses and we don't use tracking cookies.
But unless we act now, Europeans may lose that right.
A directive known as 'Written Declaration 29,' adopted last week by the European Parliament, calls for legislation that would require search engines to make a record of all search queries.
Spying on people's searches without evidence of a crime would throw us back to the East German Stasi era where everyone was under surveillance. We believe privacy is a fundamental right, and we have vowed to resist this move.
Please read and distribute our press release below. We need your help to spread the word."
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Search Engines Should Become Government Spies, Says EU Parliament
Ixquick and Startpage will fight "Big Brother" data retention clause in Declaration 29
(Brussels / New York / Zeist June 28, 2010) A draconian proposal to retain all Internet search traffic, known as "Written Declaration 29," was adopted by the European Parliament last week. Framed as a measure to crack down on paedophiles, the controversial Declaration calls on the EU to require that search engines store all search traffic for up to two years for possible analysis by authorities.
Search engine Ixquick (www.ixquick.com), widely regarded as the world's most private search engine, has built a strong privacy reputation by storing no search data on its users. The company believes it has been singled out by the data retention proposal, and it has vowed to strongly oppose the measure becoming law.
"Since Google, Yahoo, and Bing already retain users' search data, this proposal is clearly aimed at Ixquick and our English-language subsidiary Startpage (www.startpage.com)," said Robert Beens, CEO of Ixquick. "We have worked hard to create a privacy-friendly search engine that embodies the spirit of EU Privacy Protections, in line with the strict recommendations of the EU Article 29 Data Protection Working Party. This Declaration is evidence that the left hand of the EU does not know what the right hand is doing."
Mr. Beens fears that if the measure becomes law, it will vastly undermine the privacy of over 500 million law-abiding EU citizens. Storing everyone's search data, rather than restricting surveillance to known or suspected offenders, would give the government access to a rich trove of political, medical, professional, and personal data on
virtually every person in Europe. And critics say it will do little to stop child pornography.
"Sex offenders exchange files through underground networks. They don't find this stuff through search engines," said Alex Hanff of Privacy International, an advocacy group that is launching a campaign against the measure. "I spent eight years helping law enforcement track down online sex offenders and never once did we see a case where search engine data was useful."
Ixquick will join the public campaign started by Privacy International to stop the provisions of Written Declaration 29 from becoming law.
"Privacy is a fundamental right and the basis of a free society. The phenomenal success of Ixquick and Startpage proves that people don't want to be watched by their governments," said Mr. Beens. "Spying on law-abiding citizens is not the way forward, and we will stand by our principles to protect the public's ability to search in privacy."
About Startpage and Ixquick
Startpage is the English-language version of Ixquick, an international, award-winning search engine with an industry-leading privacy policy. Launched in 1998, Ixquick is owned by Surfboard Holding BV, a Dutch company. Ixquick has been awarded the EU Privacy Seal by the independent certification authority Europrise.Further information can be found at www.startpage.com and www.ixquick.com.
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 11:43 PM GMT+1 [Link]
Sunday, June 13, 2010
The Receiving End
Prof. Michael S. Rozeff, in a private e-mail exchange, writes, again touching one of the most basic principles of the situation we humans struggle with, this time the so topical monetary one that is menacing our future more than ever:
"I think that a workable procedure for currency reform is NO PROBLEM. The steps that can be taken are relatively simple. The problem is not knowledge, nor is it MAINLY ignorance of other people. It is entrenched governments supported by coalitions of willing people who are stubborn in their will to dominate the lives of others and take what they can get. The governments pander to people, they organize them, encourage the worst behavior, and spread it through the society. The evil results are due to the evil impulses in people and their capacity to form an effective organization to further that evil. People also have good impulses, but here is the essence of the problem as I see it. The people who have the most prominent domination responses are the ones most likely to form, enter, and run governments, and the people who want to live and let live are more prone not to, so that they end up on the receiving end of this nasty game. Then the dominators proceed to CORRUPT as many of the more retiring and passive types as they possibly can and to draw as many of the dominators as they can into their side."
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 11:06 PM GMT+1 [Link]
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Anarchy versus Panarchy
Dwight Johnson writes:
"I am always amazed when people cannot distinguish between anarchy and panarchy, between "no government" and "all governments". It is clear to me that anarchy merely replaces one territorial monopoly of coercion with another, which, as Adam Knott pointed out, John Zube's "On Tolerance"1 so brilliantly refutes. Panarchy, on the other hand, is a human rights movement, based on the acknowledgement that each and every person has the human right to choose for themselves which form of government, at every level, is right for them, including no government. Clearly "no government" is but one possible choice.
As for other examples of panarchy, other than al Qaeda2, I believe it was Richard Johnsson who pointed out the independent school districts that, at least at one time, existed in Quebec, one for anglophones, one for francophones. Also, the Amish people, who are exempt from many of the burdens of the US federal government, most noticeably the Social Security system, is important.
Panarchy is not about politics. It is about human rights. It is agnostic where the form of government, including the absence of government, is concerned."
1 "The Worker's Party has, in common with other parties, a basic intolerance: its platform is to be realised for all, even dissenters. The possibility for them to opt out or not to be subjected to the Worker's Party's laws in the first place is not spelled out, or is at most only weakly hinted at or implied in some passages. But such an important truth must be got across as clearly and unmistakably as possible if we want to avoid the usual party struggle."
2 At the 2010 Prague Conference on Political Economy Aviezer Tucker, according to Adam Knott, had used the example of Al-Qaeda to illustrate how difficult and expensive it would be for a territorial state to militarily defeat a panarchist society or community. Adam: In this example, I believe Avi was able to effectively make an important point about panarchism, and also show how panarchism is in fact working today. Granted that Al-Qaeda is not a great advertisement for panarchism. However, it is a society that exists nonterritorially, it exists without much operating expense, and it has proven difficult and expensive to eradicate. These were important points Avi made which showed how the panarchist idea is not merely an abstraction, but something that "works." Avi later added that the point of the Al Qaeda example was to demonstrate the incommensurability between a non-territorial group (evil though it is) and a territorial state. When the latter attempts to fight a non-territorial enemy by territorial means it ends up being very expensive because it wastes resources on controlling territories and inhabitants that are not directly involved, whereas the non-territorials can simply move on to another territory. It would have been far more effective and cheaper to fight Al Qaeda in their own non-territorial universe. But that would have required new non-territorial thinking on part of the powers that be, and they simply can't think in such terms.
Posted by Christian Butterbach @ 12:05 PM GMT+1 [Link]
