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Richard Stallman's Political Notes

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Security hole disclosure

mardi 5 décembre 2017 à 01:00

The US has formalized some criteria for deciding whether to conceal a security hole (to attack computers with it) or help get it fixed. However, the practical procedure will tend to bias it towards the former.

The article doesn't say whether these criteria will be applied to the bugs in Windows that Microsoft shows to the US government.

Privatizing UK schools

mardi 5 décembre 2017 à 01:00

The UK arranged to privatize many state schools, and led some of them to become part of larger businesses. These businesses are now dropping the schools that are unprofitable, in some cases after stripping them of their funds on hand.

Immigration prison deaths

mardi 5 décembre 2017 à 01:00

The UK covers up deaths (often suicides) in its immigration prisons.

Dockless bicycle rentals

mardi 5 décembre 2017 à 01:00

Another threat to freedom: dockless bicycle rentals can seem very appealing, but they track the user everywhere.

It looks like they require a smartphone, which also (like all portable phones) tracks the user everywhere.

Governments, rather than promoting systems predicated on surveillance, should discourage and even prohibit them.

Religion in citizenship oath

mardi 5 décembre 2017 à 01:00

A lawsuit attempts to remove religion from the US citizenship oath.

I think the plaintiff's argument is valid. Even if Atheists are offered a different version of the oath, the assertion of the existence of a god (and that there is only one of them) in the standard oath is promotion of monotheistic religions, and opposition to other religions as well as to Atheism.

This violates the First Amendment.

Some states prohibit atheists from holding elected offices, and even some kinds of lower non-elected public offices. Free Inquiry has published articles about this. Courts use various twisted reasoning to refuse to consider lawsuits to overturn these unconstitutional restrictions — for instance, the excuse that "unless you have won the election, you don't have standing to sue."