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Aaron Swartz Explains Why The NSA Needs To Be Stopped

from the from-beyond-the-grave dept

Tue, Jan 14th 2014 8:14pm — Mike Masnick

Last week, when we wrote about the big "day of action" against the NSA in memory of Aaron Swartz, to be held February 11th, a few folks questioned whether this was an appropriate issue, since they were unaware of Aaron being all that concerned about the NSA. Obviously, Aaron died months before the Snowden leaks, but as many folks who knew Aaron knew, the NSA was absolutely an issue he was quite concerned about even prior to the Snowden leaks. Brian Knappenberger, who has been working to put the finishing touches on his new documentary about Aaron, The Internet's Own Boy, in order to debut it at Sundance, has released an astounding trailer of the film (which looks amazing). Included in it, are multiple clips of Aaron actually speaking out about the NSA and surveillance, mainly focused on the NSA saying it can't possibly calculate how many Americans it's spying on, because to do so, would be either (a) impossible or (b) would violate their privacy (yes, at one point, they actually said figuring out how many people are being spied on would violate their privacy). So, yes, Aaron was quite concerned about the NSA, and it makes you wonder just how much we all lost in his death, because you have to expect that, as with SOPA, Aaron would have been an instrumental force in fighting back against the NSA as its overreach and abuses have been exposed. If you haven't yet, please go check out TheDayWeFightBack.org to learn more about the day of action.

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Filed Under: aaron swartz, brian knappenberger, nsa, privacy, surveillance

11 Comments

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Bengie, 14 Jan 2014 @ 9:26pm

Rage Face
Determining if you're an American would violate your privacy if you were American, so long as we spy on you and don't know if you are, then we can't be violating your privacy.

http://cdn.alltheragefaces.com/img/faces/png/misc-genius.png
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Just Sayin', 14 Jan 2014 @ 9:37pm

Sad
It's sad to see people trying to play off this guy's death. He committed suicide to avoid facing the crimes he committed, that's not exactly a role model.

Leave the guy in peace, it's apparently all he wanted.
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Nigel Lew (profile), 14 Jan 2014 @ 9:55pm

sigh
We as Americans, are a bunch of apathetic pussies. We are not doing enough to fix shit.

Nigel
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That One Guy (profile), 14 Jan 2014 @ 11:19pm

Re: sigh
I'm not sure if this'll make it seem any better, but I think a large part of that is that most people don't even know about the problems.

For those still getting their news from the newspapers and MSM sources, they've likely only run across a few small bits of information about all this mess, and only the pro-NSA/spying side, with few exceptions.
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Anonymous Coward, 14 Jan 2014 @ 11:22pm

Re: sigh
Nope, you're too busy being divided into cults by a political elite that doesn't need to give a damn about its citizens. You're too busy being dragged around by an elite that wants to feed you anti-intellectual bullshit so that you literally cannot argue against them. You're too busy agreeing with the collective lies that your elite is feeding you.

And it has to stop.
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Tony, 15 Jan 2014 @ 2:12am

The NSA murdered Aaron Swartz
The illuminati are winning... Crap, my computer just crashed - synchronicity! Singularity! Sincerity! Fnord!
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Jan 2014 @ 3:57am

Who cares about the NSA? I'm not affected right now, so it's not an issue.
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DannyB (profile), 15 Jan 2014 @ 6:01am

Re:
First they came for the people who used Emacs.
But I didn't use Emacs, so I said nothing.

Then they came for the people who used Windows.
But I didn't use Windows, so I said nothing.

Then they came for the people who were concerned about the NSA . . .

(do you see where this is going?)
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Pragmatic, 15 Jan 2014 @ 7:59am

Re: Re: sigh
It'll stop when we finally refuse to play along, refuse to continue the same old arguments and refuse to take any side but our own - and that of the public good.

So let's stop voting for the Big Two, already. Other candidates are available.
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Never Forget, 15 Jan 2014 @ 9:04pm

Lighting A Candle
I'm lighting a candle in memory of Aaron Swartz. And making special donations to http://www.demandprogress.org and https://www.eff.org to carry on his inspired work. Rest in peace, Aaron!
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Jan 2014 @ 11:18am

Re: Re: sigh
I was talking to my brother the other day and he had absolutely no idea who Edward Snowden was or what the NSA has been doing.
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