Privacy vs. Paranoia

[Tom Anderson <slideglide@hotmail.com>]

[: hacktivism :]

OK, just want to test the waters on this whole identity on the net issue.  A 
certain individual wrote in last week with certain complaints about a 
certain e-mail & in the midst of the dogmatic gibberish was a veiled, 
fearful reference to a mysterious organization called Eshelon, which, from 
what I gather from my limited research is The Big Them, the evil corporate, 
government clone evrybody and set 'em to work in the salt mines & kill 
everybody who isn't white & reprogram our brains a la The Matrix, and it's 
always raining and you can't tell the people from the androids like Blade 
Runner & they're monitoring us and watching us & it probably stars Gene 
Hackman, Max von Sydow, Roy Schneider flying overhead in Blue Thunder & a 
special guest appearance by Rutger Hauer as the Goblin King.

& then I receive a posting from a concerned hacktivist who advises me to 
create an e-mail account with a flase identity to throw them off the scent 
which to me seems absurd because if these guys in Eschelon are that good 
then they're gonna be several steps ahead of me and if they're not that good 
then what's all of the hoopla about.

& does it really matter if there are a group of people out there watching 
every single person's web activity??  It's not like we can stop them.  & if 
we did, we'd have to sit there and watch everybody's web activity to make 
sure no one ever did it again. This is so absurd I'm laughing so hard I can 
barely type.

So, let's lay out some bare essentials.

1)  This is America, what ever that means, OK let's not make that number 
one.

1) (the second one) There's this cyberspace which is a no-man's land which 
the governments, corporations, and churches want to control.
The government is using REPRESSION and are doing a decent job by scaring 
everyone with a FBI/CIA/Illuminati spin off called Eschelon.  & if Baby Bush 
gets elected he will enact many reforms which will cut down on our privacy 
and limit our first ammendment thingamijiggers.

The corporations are using BRIBERY & PAYOFFS.  If you appear to have any 
decent idea or appear to be too smart, an Angel or Venture Capitalist 
appears out of the blue to buy you & your work for a large lump of dough.  
The media supports this method and does it's best to convince every 
20-something in America that the most honorable and beautiful ambition is to 
design a web site and sell it to Wall Street.

The church is changing it THEOLOGY from RELIGION to SCIENCE.  30 years ago, 
if you had sex, GOD would strike you down and send you to hell.  When people 
stopped believing this a threat called AIDS was established.  Now if you 
have sex, you'll catch a disease and die.  Some old-fashioned floks are 
trying to push the envelope that GOD creates the disease and gives it to 
fags, but most people don't have sex not because they believe in GOD but 
they believe in SCIENCE.  This also spreads into the shrink replacing the 
confessional, the pill replacing the eucharist, the edible diet of Health 
Foods replacing the spiritual diet of Prayer (not that this is a bad thing, 
but it's not fundmental change, merely a shift of fears).

Church, Government & Corporations all agree on the Sex & Drug issues.  They 
want control.  If you enter the drug field, you must go through a rigorous, 
expensive state program (funded by Corp's and church's) & then you can only 
sell State Approved Drugs made by a State Approved Corp with a State 
Approved perscription.  Any who deviate from this are jailed.  Sex is just a 
mess.  If you attempt it without a piece of rubber or a piece of paper (with 
legal jargon on it) between you and your partner you could wind up in 
serious shit.

OK, so number 1 has spun out of control.  I won't bother with 2 right now.

I guess the question is merely does worrying about this Eschelon promote 
anything except fear and self-repression??

The corollary questoin being (in response to the "well the government will 
track you down and ruin your life and jail you and maybe even kill you.") is 
the point of life to Live as long as possible even if you're in denial and 
under self-repression??

Whew!


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