Discussion on:

Repurposed software: Apps gone rogue

I'm not sure it's fair that you leave your comment open-ended like that.

Take the discussion at hand, a useful app gets abused by a few black hats.

Politicians get on their high horse and start clamoring for a "solution," it's for the children, if it'll save one life etc etc, it'd be worth shredding the constitution. The "obvious" answer is outlaw the software.

So in order to do that, we need to force all ISPs to do deep packet inspection, and keep records on all their customer's usage, of course solely in order to look for telltale packets indicating the use of the outlaw software.

Of course there's never any abuse of the measures put in place to "solve" a relatively minor problem. Trust us. We're NOT reading everyone's email now just because we can...

Instead of plugging holes being targeted by the black hats, they throw a dragnet over everyone, 99.9999% of them totally innocent, but now devoid any privacy nevertheless.

I would submit in the above scenario the excuse for getting unwarranted hands on literally everything is the real goal, stopping the abuse of one piece of software is not the goal, it's the cover story.

Happens every last stinking time with government. Take drug testing.

I was a corporate pilot in a past life, we were a relatively small group that would run into one another all over the country. One day at lunch in Ohio with 2 helicopter crews for 2 huge insurance companies (the ones with the tallest buildings named after them) the discussion of recent news ensued. Tom Brokaw had just released the narrative meme regarding "random drug testing" on the nightly news the night before: "What are you worried about if you have nothing to hide?"

Being slightly more intelligent on average, our bunch was rather insulted by this. It's the exact opposite in a truly free society: you tolerate the few bad apples that slip through the cracks in order the 99.999% innocent population doesn't lose any liberty.

The 2 helicopter crews had been shuffling execs in and out of the white house (Reagan) in discussions over this very issue. In the midst of discussion one chimed in (a woman btw) and said in almost a "you silly rabbit!" tone that we were all missing the real reason for the push for random testing: to have an excuse to collect everyone's DNA.

They knew the public would go for shredding the constitution if it would "save just one life!!" Compare that to the same senators etc saying that voting for the Viet Nam War, the Gulf war etc etc, not to mention letting GMO foods pollute the chain... all manner of death and mayhem.

But everyone is now guilty until proved innocent by peeing in a bottle because it might "save just one life!!!" Insulting, don't you think?

This pilot said that within a few years they'd be able to identify all manner of potential diseases from urine, something an insurance company would kill to know... so, "pre-employment drug screening." What do you have to hide?

At the time there were several diseases they could identify. One was a disease that a person wouldn't themselves have but they had a 50% chance of any children having this disease, one that doesn't kill, rather the patient needs massive care, day in day out, over what will be a long life. The cost for one patient is in the hundreds of millions.

So... candidate A and candidate B applying for a job have perfectly equal qualifications. A has this marker for the potential disease, B does not. Who gets the job?

This was told to me to my face by pilots flying execs who had been in on the meetings in the white house on this matter. There have since been laws passed preventing such blatant "genetic discrimination" but if you believe those laws are anything more than cover I have some ocean front property in Nebraska for sale.

Every stinking last time, the bastards have a totally evil agenda behind what goes out for public consumption.

Bill Gates' foundation just released a new way to sterilize men. Vaccines often do the same, to men and women. GMO foods sterilize mammals. Gates gave one of those "Ted" lectures where he put up an equation on the board to explain how to solve all the world's problems. He started off saying that "obviously" the easiest fix would be to drive this one factor down to zero... that factor was a number representing the human population of the earth.

Eugenics is the name of the game. Those people aren't playing for marbles and jacks.

Everything on it's surface is a lie. Outlawing software requires draconian means to "monitor" for it's illicit use. The draconian measures were the real goal all along. This same filter applies universally to everything governments and large corporations do, it'll serve you well to simply assume the exact opposite of what they say publicly is true.

Believe me, once you know what I do it's hard to keep your mouth shut. I used to regularly bump into congress critters, cabinet members, "staff" of all kinds, and the real power in this country: banking and insurance executives. If you are among the pilot corp they assume your in on the game with them, they tell pilots things they'd never tell their spouses of children.

They are running this country into the ground intentionally, have been for over 90 years now from the inside. (political reigns) The end game is near, witness the NDAA and this "enemy expatriation" crap.

"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." So said Eric Blair aka George Orwell. The NDAA, John Warner Defense Reauthorization Act, the USA PATRIOT act... all targeted at those among us who will dare to tell the truth. But the "cover" has been little brown men in caves with box cutters... until very recently.

The banksters did it. The totally unconstitutional "federal reserve act" in 1913 was the death blow to human liberty. Scroogle up "union bank." I was a friend of one of it's directors back when.

Hope I haven't left any more open ends...

it has become apparent, through subsequent comments, that most people are aware that it's people, not tools, that are at fault. That was the very point of the hammer comment. No matter what; it's nice to think that one day in the future, people will have become altruistic to the point of never even considering the nefarious opportunity for self enrichment, satisfaction, or oneupmanship that a tool might give. There is only one way to do this, and that is to totally abolish the idea of 'us' and 'them', and whilst you have diversity (of any kind), there will always be 'us' and 'them'. And I seriously doubt there'll ever be a humanity without diversity. There are always two sides to an argument and there'll always be an argument, if there are two sides.

So no, I don't think we as a species are enlightened enough to be able to get around the potential for misuse of anything in order to gain a benefit. Find an alternative to money and we may be on the way. Find an alternative to 'power' and we may be getting there. Only have one culture and we may have world peace. The sad fact is, money, power and culture are what drives us.

The only thing that I can see that would cause humanity to pull on the same rope in the same direction and for the same objectives would be the introduction of a common enemy - whether that be a catastrophically devastating disease, invasion from off-world, or something else that threatens all of us equally. Without that motivation to work together, we have little hope of ever doing so.

This may seem fatalistic and somewhat negative, perhaps even cynical, and I'm sorry about that. Truly.

Freedom of thought control leads to appreciation of diversity.
Diversity is the source of inspiration, of innovation, of empathy.
Those that would make us controllable try to makes us fear "the Other".
Once we get over that fear, the "I vs the Other" fades into the benevolent "We".

Diversity is not anathema to harmony, in fact, it is a prerequisite.
B flat and B flat is not a harmony, you see.

I always admire your comments. This one has to be close to the best:

"Diversity is not anathema to harmony, in fact, it is a prerequisite.
B flat and B flat is not a harmony, you see.'

Kudos

In the story you make a comparison with Dropbox. However, Dropbox is an online synchronization tool, much more than a file sharing, backup tool.

As such, a local copy of any and all files should always be available on your pc/Mac.