Ben Franklin
He won't mind if it's a couple of days late, because it's been 300 years: Happy birthday, Benjamin Franklin.
Franklin would have loved the internet. (He has his own search engine.)
Today's convulsions would have troubled him: fishing expeditions for data (a) (DOJ from Google/MSN/Yahoo!, with only Google speaking up in response); fishing expeditions for data (b) (the NSA scandal); telcos seeking protection money for transmitting bits not their own (the two-tiered internet); new attempts to squelch legal speech (son of COPA on its way); bad broadband stats (forget that 2007 deadline)…. As a man who was enthusiastic about communicating (in books, in letters, in pamphlets, at parties) he would have been worried that we were getting in our own way.
Franklin started out a monarchist, but the world's foremost amateur became an impassioned revolutionary near the end of his life. He was unafraid to speak up publicly. Faced with these issues, he would have formed volunteer brigades to take them on.
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From “http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin”
“They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
“He who would trade liberty for some temporary security, deserves neither liberty nor security”
“He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither”
“If we restrict liberty to attain security we will lose them both.”
“Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.”
He did a pretty good job sticking to his talking points.