Wednesday, July 24, 2013

‘Facebook is a monstrous surveillance engine’

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Stallman says that corporations and the state “work hand in hand” in the US, as the Patriot Act obliges companies to “secretly” pass data to security services.

According to the activist, the best way to protect your information is to refrain from using “nasty” services like Facebook, which he described as “a monstrous surveillance engine.”

He added that the “malicious technology” Apple and Microsoft provide “can’t be excused if it had some good effects.”

“We’ve got to realize that, first of all, Microsoft and Apple software is proprietary. That means the users don’t control the program, rather than the program controls the users – and that’s an injustice,” he stressed. “And the existence of proprietary, although it wasn’t for Microsoft or Apple back then, is why I started with the Free Software movement. In addition to setting things up so that they control the program and the program controls the users, they started putting in malicious functionality that spies on users and intentionally restricts users. There are even ‘back doors’ in that software, so, literally speaking, Apple and Microsoft software is malware.”

“We call Windows 8.1 ‘Windows Prison Edition’ because it’s designed to require people to send data to Microsoft servers, and of course, Microsoft will hand over any of that data to the US government on request. It puts the users in prison,” the activist added.

 Stallman says that although many modern people have voluntarily traded their privacy for gadgets, he’s sure that “freedom is more important than innovation.” Full story...

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