FREEDUMB! on the march, reports Paul Constant, at the Stranger:
Last night, I noticed that a whole bunch of my Facebook friends posted a “Privacy Notice” to their walls, or stuccoed it to their timelines, or whatever it is you do on Facebook now. The notice reads in part that “any governmental structure” does “NOT have…permission to utilize…profile information nor any of the content contained herein” and that they are “strictly prohibited from disclosing, copying, distributing, disseminating, or taking any other action against me with regard to this profile and the contents herein.” According to the privacy notice, for some reason now that Facebook is a publicly owned company, posting the privacy notice means that the government can’t hold anything you post on your Facebook wall against you in court. This is of course bullshit….
I use the word “smarts” as opposed to “intelligence” for a reason. Some of these defiant boilerplate-flaunters are under the age of 13 25, or otherwise developmentally impaired; others no doubt are genuinely unsophisticated in the ways of governmental survelliance. But I’m sure that many of the proudest are paid-in-full MENSA members and RonPaul-for-President supporters who have no excuse but willful ignorance. I’m infinitely grateful that the Internet-as-we-know-it didn’t exist when I was young and foolish enough to be seen in public doing ridiculous things, but I was never foolish enough to believe something this ridiculous.