The next step in privatization of all aspects of life is privatizing play for children. The promotion campaign says that parents who don't pay the high fees for this are short-changing their children.

I am sure the idea that children should never be left unsupervised contributes to this tendency.

The secret back door in Juniper Networks firewalls took advantage of a weakness introduced intentionally by the NSA in an encryption standard.

Thus, the argument that "If we let the NSA break it, others will take it" is not mere theory. (People usually state this as, "The bad guys will use it too", but I reject the presumption that the NSA is always a good guy.)

Since the weakness has been publicly known for years, this fact does not prove that the NSA introduced this particular back door. That might have done by various attackers. It's also possible that the back door was inserted by Juniper Networks, or by some of its staff, perhaps in collaboration with the NSA.

Juniper Networks has fixed only part of the known problem. Because the software is proprietary, users are compelled to wait and see if Juniper Networks inserts the presumed one-line fix for the rest of the problem.

If it were free software, these users would be free to insert this change on their own.

How plutocracy took over America, starting with the fiscal power of private banks.

Super-rich Americans avoid millions of dollars in taxes through dodges such as moving money through tax heavens.

When India's government launched an inquiry about Facebook's drastically unneutral internet access scheme (gratis access to the poor, limited to a specific set of sites), Facebook started a DDOS campaign asking its useds to send nonresponsive answers.

Worse, Facebook's proprietary apps made useds' computers send expressions of support for this campaign, even when the useds did not want to.

Never trust these cr…apps. They are as dangerous as any other proprietary software.