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gull
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Annual "Big Brother Awards"
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Apr 19 14:10 UTC 2002 |
Ashcroft won in the Government Official category. I can't think of a
more deserving candidate.
http://online.securityfocus.com/news/373
Ashcroft, Ellison, Win 'Big Brother' Awards
Computer privacy advocates honor foes at San Francisco conference.
By Kevin Poulsen
Apr 18 2002 10:29PM PT
Last December attorney general John Ashcroft, testifying at a Senate
hearing, accused privacy advocates and civil libertarians of aiding
terrorists by scaring "peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty."
On Thursday, a large U.S. gathering of those critics responded in their
own way: by giving Ashcroft the "Worst Government Official" nod at the
annual Big Brother Awards.
"I take this nomination seriously, because it's been 20 or 30 years
since I've been called treasonous," said ACLU associate director Barry
Steinhardt, announcing Ashcroft's win before a friendly audience of
cypherpunks, civil libertarians and electronic privacy fans at the 12th
annual Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference in San Francisco.
Privacy International, a London-based non-profit advocacy group, hands
out the awards each year to honor people and organizations that have
done the most to harm personal privacy in the U.S., in the judgment of a
ten-person panel drawn from a various privacy groups. David Banisar,
Privacy International's U.S. director [and a SecurityFocus Online
columnist], acted as master of ceremonies at the tongue-in-cheek award show.
In addition to charging administration critics with helping terror,
Ashcroft was picked out for the controversial USA PATRIOT Act, and for
the increased domestic surveillance and immigration sweeps that followed
the terrorist attacks of September 11.
Like many of the heated panel discussions and debates at the four-day
conference, government and private industry's response to terrorism
drove the event.
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison won "Worst Corporate Invader" for his vocal
advocacy of a national identification card backed by Oracle database
software. A proposal to pre-screen airline passengers by tying together
credit reporting systems and purchase histories won "Most Heinous
Project." Iran-Contra conspirator John Poindexter was given the
"Lifetime Menace Award." Poindexter heads DARPA's new Information
Awareness Office, created in January to develop data mining technology.
Not-surprisingly, none of the award recipients were present to accept
their trophies -- gold-colored statuettes depicting a human head being
crushed under a jackboot.
Privacy International also gave out two serious, pro-privacy Brandeis
Awards, named for the Supreme Court Justice who wrote that privacy is
"the right to be left alone." One Brandeis went to California senator
Jackie Speier for spearheading financial privacy legislation. The second
went to Warren Leech, a private citizen who played a driving role in
consumers winning the right to examine, and correct errors in, their
credit reports.
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| 68 responses total. |
happyboy
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response 1 of 68:
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Apr 19 14:14 UTC 2002 |
wonderful! i need to donate...
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brighn
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response 2 of 68:
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Apr 19 15:24 UTC 2002 |
Is "cypherpunk" an independent word, or is it a misspell/mishear of
"cyberpunk"?
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flem
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response 3 of 68:
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Apr 19 16:12 UTC 2002 |
It's an independent word. It refers more specifically to the hardcore
cryptography and digital privacy crowd.
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jazz
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response 4 of 68:
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Apr 19 17:43 UTC 2002 |
Cyberpunks with an axe to grind about privacy and generally higher
degrees in math.
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brighn
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response 5 of 68:
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Apr 19 17:45 UTC 2002 |
ah, ok. A portmanteau of a portmanteau. How veddy Deconstructionist.
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jp2
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response 6 of 68:
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Apr 19 18:14 UTC 2002 |
This response has been erased.
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janc
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response 7 of 68:
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Apr 21 01:25 UTC 2002 |
I heard a recent story about Ashcroft on NPR. I think it was an
interview with an author who had written a book about Ashcroft. They
talked about the numerous times Ashcroft had lost an election, and come
up a winner anyway. (E.G., he recently lost a senate seat to a dead
man, but got appointed attorney general, ending up with a more powerful
position than he'd have gotten if he was elected.) When asked in an
interview how he had felt in these instances, he said losing felt like
being crucified and winning was like being resurrected. The
interviewer thought Ashcroft was the only politician who'd publicly
liken himself to Jesus Christ.
Ashcroft scares me.
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jazz
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response 8 of 68:
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Apr 21 01:29 UTC 2002 |
Ashcroft should scare everyone.
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aruba
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response 9 of 68:
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Apr 21 04:05 UTC 2002 |
He sure scares me, too.
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jared
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response 10 of 68:
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Apr 21 14:25 UTC 2002 |
This is what happens when someone who is hated so much
that he loses to a dead man in an election is appointed
into a position of power.
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other
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response 11 of 68:
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Apr 21 14:35 UTC 2002 |
Well, the dead man was extremely popular and he died during the campaign,
and his wife ran as his second, and the constituency felt it would be
really harsh to vote against her so soon after he died.
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jared
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response 12 of 68:
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Apr 21 14:55 UTC 2002 |
Yeah, i know that but the fact is he didn't lose by one
vote, etc.. He wasn't that well liked.
The same thing happened with our "friend" here from Michigan
who is now working for the administration in DC after he suffered
(a potentially humiliating loss)
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klg
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response 13 of 68:
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Apr 21 19:19 UTC 2002 |
re: "#12 (jared) Yeah, i know that but the fact is he didn't lose by one
vote, etc.. He wasn't that well liked."
The fact is, the election was 51% to 49%, so I guess you could say that
Carnahan "wasn't that well-liked," either.
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jmsaul
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response 14 of 68:
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Apr 22 02:13 UTC 2002 |
Give him a break. He was *dead*. Imagine how he would have done if he was
alive.
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klg
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response 15 of 68:
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Apr 23 00:26 UTC 2002 |
Well, didn't he have a corner on the sympathy vote? Especially from the
dead people who voted in St. Louis?
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jmsaul
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response 16 of 68:
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Apr 23 01:22 UTC 2002 |
Could be...
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dbunker
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response 17 of 68:
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Apr 23 02:25 UTC 2002 |
Re #15: Don't be such a sore loserman!
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jmsaul
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response 18 of 68:
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Apr 23 15:39 UTC 2002 |
This response has been erased.
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jmsaul
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response 19 of 68:
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Apr 23 15:40 UTC 2002 |
At least it was an election, rather than an appointment by a court.
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tsty
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response 20 of 68:
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Apr 24 16:08 UTC 2002 |
oh, you too forgot the electoral college numbers. strange.
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jmsaul
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response 21 of 68:
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Apr 24 22:13 UTC 2002 |
I know them. Unlike you, I haven't forgotten that the deciding set of votes
that made up those numbers was essentially handed to your boy by the Supreme
Court (voting along party lines, after O'Connor told her friends "Bush had
better win, I don't think I can hold out four more years and I want to go
home."
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dbunker
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response 22 of 68:
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Apr 24 22:59 UTC 2002 |
If *all* FLA votes were counted (not just the counties Gore asked to be
recounted), Gore would *probably* have won in the Electoral College. Since
TS was rather upset at the thought of military ballots not being counted, I
assume he believes every Florida voters votes should have been counted fairly.
Unfortunately, that was not the case.
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jaklumen
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response 23 of 68:
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Apr 25 08:34 UTC 2002 |
This is so old.
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jazz
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response 24 of 68:
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Apr 25 20:12 UTC 2002 |
It hasn't been addressed by removing Bush from office, therefore people
are still annoyed.
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