Relying on the government to protect your privacy is like asking a peeping tom to install your window blinds.
Meaning of the quote
The quote suggests that you cannot trust the government to protect your privacy. Just like a peeping tom, who secretly watches others, the government may also try to spy on you if you rely on them to keep your personal information safe. It's like asking someone who wants to invade your privacy to help you cover your windows, which doesn't make sense. The quote warns that you should not depend on the government to protect your privacy.
More quotes from John Perry Barlow
But groundless hope, like unconditional love, is the only kind worth having.
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Everyone seems to be playing well within the boundaries of his usual rule set. I have yet to hear anyone say something that seemed likely to mitigate the idiocy of this age.
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In Cyberspace, the First Amendment is a local ordinance.
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Most libertarians are worried about government but not worried about business. I think we need to be worrying about business in exactly the same way we are worrying about government.
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I don’t know that I believe in the supernatural, but I do believe in miracles, and our time together was filled with the events of magical unlikelihood.
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I personally think intellectual property is an oxymoron. Physical objects have a completely different natural economy than intellectual goods. It’s a tricky thing to try to own something that remains in your possession even after you give it to many others.
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So I’m just waiting until one party or the other actually gets a moral compass and a backbone.
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The Internet treats censorship as a malfunction and routes around it.
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If all ideas have to be bought, then you have an intellectually regressive system that will assure you have a highly knowledgeable elite and an ignorant mass.
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I mean I look forward to the day when I can be Republican again.
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Relying on the government to protect your privacy is like asking a peeping tom to install your window blinds.
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You do not know our culture, our ethics, or the unwritten codes that already provide our society more order than could be obtained by any of your impositions.
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Royalties are not how most writers or musicians make their living. Musicians by and large make a living with a relationship with an audience that is economically harnessed through performance and ticket sales.
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They seem to have forgotten that, and are back saying the only purpose of P2P networks is for illegal trading of owned goods. We claim part of the reason for P2P is for legal trading of what ought to be in public domain. And what is in public domain in many cases.
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But generally speaking, I felt to engage in the political process was to sully oneself to such a degree that whatever came out wasn’t worth the trouble put in.
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Our identities have no bodies, so, unlike you, we cannot obtain order by physical coercion. We believe that from ethics, enlightened self-interest, and the commonweal, our governance will emerge.
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I’m still strongly opposed to antismoking laws, strongly opposed to any law that regulates personal behavior.
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We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before.
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The one thing that I know government is good for is countervailing against monopoly. It’s not great at that either, but it’s the only force I know that is fairly reliable.
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It didn’t matter what we did or where we did it as long as we were together. We knew we’d found what most people either pursue in years of futile search or dismiss as a fantasy at the outset: the missing half of ourselves. The real thing.
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