Rebecca MacKinnon Quotes
Digital power is every bit as likely to be abused as physical power, but is often more insidious because it is often wielded in the background until its results manifest themselves in the offline world.
MacKinnon, Rebecca. Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle For Internet Freedom. Basic Books, 2012.
Spinoza’s ideas were considered so radical and dangerous that he was the only man in history who was excommunicated by the Catholics, the Jews and the Muslims.
The Congressman was the chairman of the committee and at the beginning of a hearing he wanted to limit the remarks of other members of the committee to 1 minute each. The ranking Democrat on the committee observed that the Chairman had already spoken of many times that and now that he had his full say was suggesting that all the other committee members should not have equal time.
This is a variant on Lord Acton’s famous quotation {292904}
This is the major factor in many nations trying to shift to a democracy from a totalitarian form of government. The winners assume that they can now do anything without regard for the minority rights of opinions.
While this may have been true in some European nations, many disagree completely with this assertion for America. They point to the thousands of laws passed by Congress to cut back or diminish the power that they had earlier given the agency. These counter-examples to Hayek’s view are particularly evident after most wars. What often does happen is that Congress votes a temporary power to a government agency, and when the temporary power time is coming to an end, many citizens and officials are so happy with the result of granting the power, that the power is then granted permanently, sometimes to the distress of some legislators who voted for the power with the understanding that it would be temporary. However, Congress may, and often does, change its collective mind. Coercion to Hayek includes for example, taxation if there are criminal penalties for failure to pay the tax or regulation where a government agency may require or prohibit certain behavior of a business or individual and most people would agree that even in a democracy there are coercive aspects of much government activity.
Rebecca MacKinnon is an author, researcher, Internet freedom advocate, and co-founder of the citizen media network Global Voices. She is notable as a former CNN journalist who headed the CNN bureaus in Beijing and later in Tokyo. She is on the Board of Directors of the Committee to Protect Journalists, a founding board member of the Global Network Initiative and is currently director of the Ranking Digital Rights project at the New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute.
