When employers demand your Facebook and Twitter passwords to explore your private life, ANYTHING you've done when you were 12 can be a fatal bar to gainful employment. This is not government overreach. This is private corporations choosing to be arbitrary about their decisions. And there is no appeal.
This will be the first generation that grows to adulthood with nowhere to hide from their stupidity. Do we really want to make people who do stupid when they are 12 or 13 unemployable for life?
Note, by the way, that the well-off and well-connected will NOT have to suffer this fate. They do not get jobs by applying online. They get jobs through daddy's friends, and the Yale buddies they went to school with. This is strictly an issue for the 99%.
I firmly support the Press as a brake on the government. Having said that, I have serious concerns about this case, along with the Fox "News" reporter and his leak concerning the North Koreans.
Both of these cases caused it to become known that we had human intelligence sources inside regimes/organizations that are REALLY REALLY hard to get inside sources to penetrate. North Korea and Al Queda are paranoid, insular, and really nasty. Getting a double agent into either of them is something I would consider important.
So, while it is the nature of governments to cover their asses by over-classifying anything that would embarrass them, sometimes there really is a really good reason NOT to leak something.
How do we draw the line?
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But in today's world, the consequences are total
This will be the first generation that grows to adulthood with nowhere to hide from their stupidity. Do we really want to make people who do stupid when they are 12 or 13 unemployable for life?
Note, by the way, that the well-off and well-connected will NOT have to suffer this fate. They do not get jobs by applying online. They get jobs through daddy's friends, and the Yale buddies they went to school with. This is strictly an issue for the 99%.
Leakers and the government
Both of these cases caused it to become known that we had human intelligence sources inside regimes/organizations that are REALLY REALLY hard to get inside sources to penetrate. North Korea and Al Queda are paranoid, insular, and really nasty. Getting a double agent into either of them is something I would consider important.
So, while it is the nature of governments to cover their asses by over-classifying anything that would embarrass them, sometimes there really is a really good reason NOT to leak something.
How do we draw the line?
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by GrrlGeek1972.
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