Small Bits: Labelling Software, People, Aaron Weisburd's Foreign Policy
Gunnar Peterson offers up a label for software that he stole from Jeff Williams.- I had a good, if short, back and forth with Geoff, of Screen Discussion, in his comments, on using photographs to enhance criminal background checks, by including photos with the records of criminals, so the viewer of a report can compare.
- When not tossing off new business ideas, Ryan Singel muses on a Washington Post article on Internet Haganah:
A. Aaron Weisburd is a freelancer.
But he specializes in targetting Islamic radicals on the web, according to Ariana Eunjung Cha’s article in the Washington Post.
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If your goal is eradicating hate and terrorism, is it better to allow hatred and incitement to happen publicly in order to better fight it or to drive it back to the fringes?
What is the difference, if any, between speech and action?
Would you feel differently if Weisburd were targetting spammers and identity thieves?
I don’t know the answers to any of these questions, but more and more, power that used to be very hard to come by, to affect people around the world, is becoming easier to obtain, use, and abuse. Overall, I think its a good thing, but there’s going to be a series of unfortunate incidents which define the boundaries.
I hope that those events occur in the context of enough positive action that the good doesn’t get obscured.