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Tech's Answer To Big Brotherism
StCredZero writes "Along the same lines as the earlier article about Poindexter's info being posted, C|Net has an interesting editorial by Declan McCullagh on how to protect our personal information from unauthorized snooping by the authorities, yet let them have a database for tracking down terrorists. McCullagh's solution is based on algorithms developed for Digital Cash."
i dont think its as easy as delete from people where hat like '%towel%' and ethnicity = 'Muslim' and profession = 'pilot'
Your talking about an agency which tried to get a backdoor placed into Phil Zimmermann's PGP. Even if they did try to protect the information, there is not way they would do anything which would impede their ability to extract every bit on just a whim. 'Encrypting the data' would just be a PR stunt.
...yet let them have a database for tracking down terrorists...
let them have it? since when have we have any say on what the authorities can or can't do?
The article could have been summed up in one sentence: the best way to protect yourself is to buy everything with untraceable methods like cash or money orders, and limit your recorded transactions to things like land. Oh, and don't take out any loans either, or buy anything online, or fill out a census form. In other words, all the progress of the 20th century will be reduced to us paying cash at the local general store like in the 1950s because we can't trust our government. If ordinary people can avoid the new system, how hard will it be for terrorists? Thanks a lot, Uncle Sam.
McCullagh's solution is based on algorithms developed for Digital Cash.
if (!terrorist)
ignore ();
else
collect_data ();
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
I only value privacy when it amounts to avoiding people pushing products, unfairly judging me, taking what's mine, and/or impersonating me.
Other than that, knowing any amount of data about us could only be used to make generalizations about us. . . who would really have the time to come up with a fair assessment? Who's job would that be?
It seems like it'd be less preventative and useful in the "clean up our mess" department of the guv.
-- The truth is the only thing that nobody will believe.
Yeah, that's what it's for; tracking terrorists. The FBI just needs to read their own memos from their own agents to track down these terrorists. Why doesn't anyone ask that question? Do we really need to give up our privacy and freedom simply because the FBI isn't processing the information that is readily available to them?
Aside from the memo sent out by their own agent, I can promise you there was way more information available to the FBI prior to 9/11 that should have made them take notice. Taking into account that they had the information prior to 9/11 before everyone was shitting in their pants about terrorism it's no wonder they didn't do anything.
We are such reactionists. We got hit by terrorists, now lets shred the constitution and live under Marshall law and military rule until we stop shitting ourselves.
I don't believe we need a Dept. of Homeland Defence or any of that shit. The FBI and CIA need to read their fucking email and act on the information they have. Or did they have the information and we told not to act on it? I wonder.
LoRider
The thought that many people consider, like this article, that Big Brother was just the government watching everything you do really goes to show the author probably never read the book. Big Brother is much more than monitoring...actually the monitoring plays a very minor role.
Big Brother's scariest tactic was the use of DoubleThink - and it's rampant today. DoubleThink meant you could see something one way, but you would willingly force yourself and thereby *believe* the opposite to be true, if the government requested it of you. In the book by George Orwell this was common regarding rations of chocolate, war with Eurasia or Eastasia, etc.
In today's society it's Nike saying they free people to achieve their dreams while running sweatshops in Asia. It's McDonalds saying "My McDonalds" when really they're the ones dictating what I can and cannot eat. Its the Gap saying "People of the world, join hands" in their newest commercial while they're, once again, utilizing sweatshops in Asia. Its Microsoft saying "Where do you want to go today" while basically saying "This is where we're going to take you today".
Big Brother is not just monitoring - it's an entire way a society thinks. Sure, prevent people from possibly taking over your data, but I believe that should be the least of your concerns. The first priority should be to stop people from taking over your mind.
To make a pun demonstrates the highest understanding of a language
Detectives will tell you the reason a lot of criminals get caught is because they have this attitude. Or they think they're too smart - that no one would ever bother to Luminol the inside of their car...
So what happens when something you've done, something you thought - becomes illegal? And what happens when they do have the time and the means? Will you just hand it to them?
Call me paranoid, fearful, whatever - but I'd rather put up a fight.
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
Seriously, does the government not think that terrorists are smart enough to pay with cash whenever they are doing anything that might get them caught? Or does it expect us to believe that the real reason for building the database is to catch terrorists? Either our government is retarded or it thinks we are. And I'm pretty sure I know the correct answer.
*The Bill of Rights - void where prohibited by law
From the article:
Limited disclosure certificates solve that centralization problem. They use a clever bit of mathematics to protect the identity of honest people, but reveal the identity of people who attempt to commit fraud. As soon as you try to cheat someone, the privacy protection evaporates.
And it's the *politicians* who are deciding when someone cheats?
Error:
If you think this is our biggest problem, you should check out: http://www.orwelltoday.com
You'd be surprised what goes under even our meticulous radar of freedom infringement...
Although corporate databases CAN be made to hinder or thwart gathering personal information, WHY would said corporations bother to implement this?
Here are just three reasons it won't happen:
1) Purposely hiding customer transactions and data may draw unwanted attention of the feds. Not officially, of course (or maybe...). But lots of "unofficial" attention by federal agents and agnecies can be a real headache. Maybe the company finds itself the target of yearly IRS audits, for instance.
2) As explained 14,000 times a day on Slashdot, corporations don't care about us except as a source of revenue. Their declared objective is to make as much money as possible. So why go to any extra effort unless it results in higher profits?
3) Even if a company did bother how can you, as a consumer, ever be certain it even works? Maybe it's just a PR campaign (i.e. lying) in an attempt to increase revenue (see #2 above). Without detailed insider knowledge about the methods used, there is no way to ensure that any database privacy measuses exist or work even if they do exist.
You want some privacy, make small transactions and pay for everything in cash.
Here's something interesting ---
I wonder what will happen in schools in a few years? When we were all kids growing up, we were taught that we were the greatest nation because we had certain freedoms, that the government had limited power over watching us etc, instead of places like soviet Russia (where the CD players listen to YOU--- woops, wrong post) that watch and control their citizens.
What is probably going to happen is that kids in schools today will be taught (slowly as not to draw attention to it) that it is good and proper for the government to watch its citizens, that there is no such thing as a "right to privacy" etc... and kids being kids will dismiss our ideas of personal liberty, privacy, etc as old fasioned - or worse, that they see mommy or daddy using PGP or linux, or planting a tree in front of the security camera in their house, and thinking that mommy or daddy must be terrorists...
Just my 2 cents' worth...
...governments terrorizing citizens in the name of the war on terrorism.
It strikes me that another agency wouldn't be able to access your data in a usable form either: the company holding it. They'd need your permission every time they wanted to compile a management report, or research sales trends, or whatever, so the cost of this sort of activity would be so high there'd be no point in them developing IT solutions for these tasks at all. This would adversely impact on corporate efficiency and profitability (also, other projects with interdependencies on these tasks would probably find it harder to justify claims for funding with the board - i.e. no jobs for us).
Any company that implemented a solution like this for its sales data would probably be cutting it's own throat.
Or, if they had a key to unlock the database, then the spooks could just take that too. And you're right back to where you started.
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors - Plato
that does nothing but erode Freedom.
Ok...and Clinton is the root of all evil because of a blowjob?
-- Insert wisdom here:
The whole concept ITSELF is out of line. The TIA database isn't just for your financial transactions -- it will also be storing biometric information about you, along with facial recognition images that will be put together when you get your drivers license.
/dev/null. Noone reads their email, not even their interns most of the time. Either snail mail the letter or, if you're in a hurry, fax it to them.
Articles like this are giving people false hope that they will be able to circumvent the system without mentioning the whole camera/surveillance/REAL big brother part of the equation. They won't need your credit card number if they have a positive visual ID of you purchasing something that may be considered threatening.
The fact of the matter here is that the whole TIA database idea must be scrapped, and no more federal funding should be granted. It has already sucked up well over $100million of our tax dollars.
Please write to your representatives and let them know how abhorrent this whole program is. It is an unprecedented invasion of our privacy, and it should be stopped dead right now.
Sending email to your elected officials is pretty much copying it to
At any rate, LET THEM KNOW. People made enough noise to force Kissinger to resign, people made enough noise to get Trent Lott in some serious hot water, people made enough noise to stop the exploratory oil drilling off the coast of California...
The point is clear -- make A LOT of noise to support your cause, and chances are you will be heard.
Yes one way databases could work. They can be fast, accurate, reliable and secure.
But there are a few reasons why I don't see it happening.
1. Linking transactions together is seen as valuable to those tracking data. The grocery store would love to know that I buy Doritos every day, and that I just moved so they should order fewer Doritos.
2. People don't understand this technology. Since we can't read who did what, how can we really track what is going on, how can we be sure that only paying customers get service. They don't understand so they don't trust. Complicated solutions like this are new, and implementations are seen as generally troublesome. I wouldn't bet my company on it, and the current crop of mangers won't either.
3. Not enough pressure from customers. Why go for this complicated, expensive risky new technology that is less useful to us when our customers don't even care about it.
I think it is mostly a perception and Cost/Benefit problem.
*throwing hands into the air*
I have to admit, it's probably me. As I understand it, the article points out that there exist designs for data-collection and data-mining that would allow non-disclosure of personal information. True, the public/business could use these designs when constructing data-collection systems.
However, posters have rightly pointed out that mandates to "all your data belong to us" by the Gvt will probably either explicitly cover the case "you must be able to turn over all your data, don't design it otherwise", or they will implicitly cover the case "failure turn over all the data will result in a fine". Almost certainly, the second statement is easier for the voting public to accept than the first. In either case, the same result obtains: The designs utilized will be the easiest ones, the ones in use today, and those are the ones that provide simple, bi-directional links between John Doe and his pr0n/weapons/libertarian-prose purchasing behavior.
Surely, it is in some sense more seemly to collect the minimal data required, and to store it in such a way that the system itself maintains user privacy quite aside from the database's access permissions; however, in light of the technology barriers (it's _harder_ to implement such a system, and harder during the classically shorted design phase), and the possible future legislative barriers, it seems unlikely in the extreme that these protections will make it into most systems of this kind.
At the root, our loss of privacy protections is a societal/legal matter. Slashdot maintains firmly that piracy issues (societal/behavioral matter) can't be solved by technology (DRM), don't be so quick to embrace the thought that privacy protection could possibly be so solved.
1) You can't have the widget
2) You WILL PAY FOR THE WIDGET
3) Profit!!!
Mom will understand how to use this, I guess I have nothing to worry about.
Really, one way hashes are a good idea -- obviously the best of us probably use them every day when we log into our *nix boxes, but I can't see this becoming the standard for all identification applications -- consumers just won't get it and therefore won't choose it over less secure methods.
Let's say Citibank begins to offer this for credit cards. Would your average consumer be able to glean from a 30 second commercial what a significant difference this would make for their privacy? I don't think so. Citibank may get a few extra customers, but not enough to cover the cost of implementing such a system. I certainly don't think they'd do it on general principle.
Maybe it will happen. But I would be surprised.
My Karma was at 49, then they switched to words. All that work for nothing!
In the past years, technocrats, maketroids and burocrats of all kinds have had their wet dreams about the global database and total information about their victims.
In the beginning, those databases will probably work and be a menace to our privacy, but as they're fed on a constant stream of uncaring data input, random garbage, errors, the quality of the data will deteriorate quickly. Just have a look at the Times registration database (are there really that many Mr. Goatse?) or the mailing list from the wonderful Real-Media Player download page.
Once this stage is reached, the conclusions of those databases will get discounted more and more, and transparent anonymity will be reached. People will simple learn how to feed the system on the crap it likes best. We have that already today in accounting (just keep below the radar of the IRS) and other offical reporting duties. The trend will just continue.
In the end, any query will produce a lot of chaff while missing much important data that they won't be worth the the processing time.
The idea that those databases can be used to combat Terrorism and crime is quite ludicrous. I'm certain Mss. Nasty and Dr. Evil will manage to have completely harmless profiles in all of those databases. At worst, it will just give those criminals with access to power an additional leverage (see current Mafia-trials in Italy).
At the moment we're in atransitional phase, where people still believe in Big Brother, and those poor sods having their data in the wrong place will suffer most. Anybody who got associated with somebody else's credit record can attest that.
But once enough people are made to suffer from the garbage produced by those databases, things will normalise again.
We just need more databases, more agressive datamining, leading to more mistakes. The bigger the mistakes, the merrier. If those reports hit the evening news often enough, the systems will find their rightful destiny:
A big garbage dump for burocraties to wank over.
You've got to be kidding. When the authorities come to debate the issue with you, what, exactly, are you going to do? Shoot some cop, soldier, or CTU agent? Some guy with a job to do, and maybe a family, or a dog, or whatever back home waiting for him?
Then what? The authorities are going to back down and let you keep whatever rights they were planning to take away from you? Please.
If you're lucky, you'll get that grunt's commander in your sights before they gun you down, but it's not like he sets policy either. Or maybe you're betting that once the SWAT team figures out that the job involves getting shot at, they'll call the whole thing off.
Of course, if you get enough citizens armed and ready to fight, you might have some impact--the exact same impact a large number of citizens would have if they engaged in peacful noncompliance.
Would people get shot during a nonviolent protest? Probably. Would people get shot during a violent protest? Most definitely. So where's the benefit to your solution?
If the SWAT team does desert, it won't be because you're shooting at them--it'll be because they've heard a lot of reasonable debate on the subject, and you position makes much more sense to them than the other guy's. So there they are, teetering between their responsibility to their employer and their growing conviction that their employer is wrong. They're having second thoughts about this whole raid. Maybe you're a nice guy, they're thinking. Maybe you have a good point. Maybe taking you down would be the wrong thing to do. Maybe it's time to take a stand and make a change.
And then you start shooting at them. Nice going, Einstein. Now you, and your family, and your dog, and your mp3 collection--gassed, and firebombed, and mercilessly slaughtered. And the media will carry the story of another crazy gun nut getting shut down before he could endanger innocent lives.
Of course, if you don't think your arguments could make a change, or you don't relish joining thousands of other dissenters in prison for your beliefs, or you've seen Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid one too many times, then maybe going out in a violent, bloody, and futile blaze of glory might seem pretty appealing. It's certainly more cinematic than sitting in prison for a couple decades, like Nelson Mandela. Certainly more heroic than traveling the countryside, educating citizens with your example of passive resitance, like Gandhi. Congratulations! Vin Diesel will star in the MTV movie of your extreme rebellion.
What do your "votes" have to offer that peaceful protest does not, except more dead people and less calm discussion?
By all means, excercise your rights! Keep those guns, enjoy them. But if you think they're going to help you make a difference during some armed rebellion, you may want to consider moving to the United States of Some Parallel Universe. I hear that there, the 2nd Amendment guarantees everybody's right to own a main battle tank, a joint strike fighter, mechanized artillery, a recon satellite, and a cruise missile.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
I'll bet my shorts that *Alan M Ralsky* will have FBI's database hacked within a week.
to the bravest of the past. *cheers*
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
10. Lose your keys, Poindexter brings them back the next day.
9. To stop brute-force attacks, first names like "John0xF8A94388xyzzytangoalpha" become common.
8. Get a free battery after ten trips abroad.
7. World's richest man, John Doe, sets world record for simultaneous grocery transactions.
6. To avoid long check-in lines, precision guided smart luggage becomes popular.
5. Free CueCat with every truckload of fertilizer.
4. Oliver North's credit cards cancelled.
3. Radio Shack wins contract for immigration.
2. Missiles 30% cheaper with frequent-shopper card.
1. Terrorist operations disrupted by flood of Penis Enlargement spam.
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
muslim is not an ethnicity.
replace 'berserkeley' with 'berkeley' to respond via email.
---
:)
SELECT * FROM big_brother_profiles
WHERE
(
residence_location = 'Washington'
OR
residence_location = 'Virginia'
OR
residence_location = 'Maryland'
)
AND
(vehicle LIKE '%white%' AND vehicle LIKE '%van%')
AND
military_trained = 1
AND
(gun_owned = 'M16' OR gun_owned = 'AR15')
AND
violent_history = 1
AND
previous_matches > 1
---
Unfortunately, that now leads to the question, is this person the correct one because he matched, or is he now the convicted person because he was the only one to match the profile?
It's easy enough to find someone who could do something, and based on their profile and history convict them. That's what makes this whole idea so scary. I don't want to go to jail because someone plays out the scenerio of the Swordfish movie. As cheesy as the movie was, it could be conceivable that someone would rob a bank, and do electronic transfers while they're there.. What's better, robbing a bank for a few thousand in cash, or robbing a bank and transfering cash out of large account's into your own at another bank. Don't think individuals, think Microsoft, HP, or even the local utilities ($100/mo * 1 millon customers).
Boom. For saying this, I'm profiled. BTW, any Federal agents reading this, I recently moved to Mars, so I wasn't on the planet if it happens.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
This database thats been proposed relies on certain common identifers to be able to track people. Ask anyone who has ever worked on a large database - with out a common id tracking system, you can never find anything.
I'm guessing that there will be two different id tracking methods: Social Security Number and Alien Registration ID.
This is why this database is not about tracking terrorists. Terrorists, you see, don't like to be tracked. They can sneak into the country off a container ship thats passing near the coast. They can sneak in via the Mexico or Canada borders.
Terrorists don't like leaving paper trails especially if something they are planning will take an age to achieve, so they pay with everything in cash (either stolen or given to them by fine upstanding, but sympathetic citizens).
ID theft is so easy in the US these days it's not even funny, and nobody has taken any steps to correct it. If the current administration was serious about clamping down on terrorists they would first make the current system so foolproof that ID theft was impossible - then track people.
Take this example:
John Q Nobody is a foreign terrorist whose goal is to attack the US Capitol Building
He sneaks off a ship somewhere off the coast of California and meets up on shore with Peter D Alias, second generation immigrant who feels strongly about US intrests. He'd recieved a call from a mentor to meet someone on the beach, and give him a package because he had to be out of town that weekend. Peter meets him and gives him package containing a stolen SSN and papers that identify John as Jack Y American. Peter also gives him a large sum of cash and a legally registered car to use.
John/Jack uses the money to buy several batches of chemicals in different states. After 2 weeks he meets up with Joe P Somebody, a disaffected American who one vistied the country that John/Jack comes from and hates the fact that the US bombed it into the stoneage several years ago. He's been talking with a friend from that country who sends him a parcel that another friend will pick up. He meets John/Jack and given him the parcel containing the stolen SSN and a birth certificate of a dead infant. John/Jack assumes the identity of the dead infant and is becomes William Stonewall of Minnesota.
As John/William he now buys several more batches of chemicals in a few more states, and drives to DC. There he combines the chemicals sticks it in some plumbing supplies bought at Lowes and mortars the US Capitol building.
He then meets up in DC with a contact from an embassy and recieves a passport made up with a valid identity. He drives to Canada and flies off to his home country.
The OHS starts investigating, and finds that a gang of 3-4 people were involved and worked as a team to do this, little realising it was one guy and he's long since left. After several months they find that the ID's were stolen.
All that will be left is some grainy security tape footage of some guy that was never in the system in the first place.
Whats sad is that because ID's were stolen it was never flagged that this attack was being planned...
If you have to explain the joke to the guy who told it, it really wasn't funny.
If you have to explain to the guy who told it why it wasn't funny, you have problems beyond Slashdot's ability to help you; at least you posted as an AC, so there's still hope...
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
> Would you want some 18-year-old high school dropout voting about whether or not to increase taxes to curb inflation in a rapidly expanding national economy?
Are you willing to give him a gun and send him off to war so he can get shot defending your society? I think that is damn well worth the right to vote.
Nice sentiment, but I think it's as naive as the guy who thinks it's right to resist law enforcement with force.
Earlier in the thread, was some guy's Tasteless .Sig: "In Nazi Germany, the showers took you."
In the grand scheme of life, I say Mr. Tasteless .Sig gets the (+1, Has Gotten The Point) for his joke, and both of you get (-1, Hopelessly Naive) for your sentiments, with an option to go for (-2, Fuel Source) should you actually try to act on them.
You are absolutley right.
And I think educating people on what to demand from their bank would go a long way towards solving things.
If you walk into a bank knowing the rules of the game, and how things work, you can usually get things done quickly.. even if you have to be a bit forthright to cut through their scripted crap.
I found my bank account empty one day.. I asked at the bank, they told me it was a cheque that had been cashed. Sure enough, account activity shoed a check of some strange amount (not a roun dfigure) being withdrawn.. coincidentally, the time on the transaction was the same as the time on the previos trnasaction, which was me depositing a cheque for the exact same amount.
Now, I made that deposit. but I certainly didn't cash a cheque for the same amount at the same time.
So.. I asked the lady "Okay... two points. Firstly, you must agree it looks a bit strange. Secondly, I didn't write a cheque; every single cheque I have is in my briefcase, right here (I showed her). She continued to insist.
I asked "Okay, can I see the cheque then, please? Where was it cashed, who's signature is on it? A faxed copy will be sufficient.. just show me this cheque that I know doesn't exist."
"No sir, we don't have those, those are in another city, where things are processed."
Eventually she got the branch manager. I explained simply "I *know* I didn't write this cheque, I have all my cheques. I am now broke because your bank made an error. You can't show me the cheque, and you aren't helping me. I want you to either show me a copy of the cheque that supposedly was written, or put the money back in my account & reverse all the overdraft charges by the end of the day"
"Of course sir, that's completely reasonable. I'll call you at your office before we close"
Just when I thought the bank had forgotten, it was a half hour since they closed, my phone rang, it was the branch manager. He apologized, said everything had been reversed and credited, and that their clerk had made an entry error when depositing my cheque a few days ago.
Now.. it struck me as odd. This isn't a lot of money.. they weren't overly evil.. but the clerk definately wanted me to go away because it was *obviously* my fault, and the bank couldn't have made an error. There's no reason for this hostility.. or wanting me to leave.. just give me straight, polite answers.
I think if the average person understood a bit more about what a bank is, how it operates, and what services it should be providing, banks would quickly get better.
The thing about cashing cheques really amazes me.. I had the same thing happen at HKBC... payroll cheques, issued from that branch. They would actually ask me rudely if I hda an account, glare at me, etcetera... they really acted like they did not want to honor the cheque.
You have to understand how bank employees work... they ask you if you want ot open an account because they have to. If they don't do enough sales, they get reprimanded.. they have quotas. Those tellers have all kinds of things they have to do other than service the customer.. and all of them are subversive.
Ollie deals strictly in cash from here on out.
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
- http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/scott
s /mosaic/JOKE/report1.jpg
- http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/scott
s /mosaic/JOKE/report2.jpg
- http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/scott
s /mosaic/JOKE/report3.jpg
- http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/scott
s /mosaic/JOKE/judgement.jpg
(Despite the URL, these are no joke.)Here are just a few passages from chapter 1. It's worth going back and reading.
"How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized."
"The Ministry of Love was the really frightening one. There were no windows in it at all. Winston had never been inside the Ministry of Love, nor within half a kilometre of it. It was a place impossible to enter except on official business, and then only by penetrating through a maze of barbed-wire entanglements, steel doors, and hidden machine-gun nests. Even the streets leading up to its outer barriers were roamed by gorilla-faced guards in black uniforms, armed with jointed truncheons."
"The thing that he was about to do was to open a diary. This was not illegal (nothing was illegal, since there were no longer any laws), but if detected it was reasonably certain that it would be punished by death, or at least by twenty-five years in a forced-labour camp."
"It was curious that he seemed not merely to have lost the power of expressing himself, but even to have forgotten what it was that he had originally intended to say."
"Once when they passed in the corridor she gave him a quick sidelong glance which seemed to pierce right into him and for a moment had filled him with black terror. The idea had even crossed his mind that she might be an agent of the Thought Police. That, it was true, was very unlikely. Still, he continued to feel a peculiar uneasiness, which had fear mixed up in it as well as hostility, whenever she was anywhere near him."
"As usual, the face of Emmanuel Goldstein, the Enemy of the People, had flashed on to the screen. There were hisses here and there among the audience. The little sandy-haired woman gave a squeak of mingled fear and disgust. Goldstein was the renegade and backslider who once, long ago (how long ago, nobody quite remembered), had been one of the leading figures of the Party, almost on a level with Big Brother himself, and then had engaged in counter-revolutionary activities, had been condemned to death, and had mysteriously escaped and disappeared. The programmes of the Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was none in which Goldstein was not the principal figure. He was the primal traitor, the earliest defiler of the Party's purity. All subsequent crimes against the Party, all treacheries, acts of sabotage, heresies, deviations, sprang directly out of his teaching. Somewhere or other he was still alive and hatching his conspiracies: perhaps somewhere beyond the sea, under the protection of his foreign paymasters, perhaps even -- so it was occasionally rumoured -- in some hiding-place in Oceania itself."
"He was an object of hatred more constant than either Eurasia or Eastasia, since when Oceania was at war with one of these Powers it was generally at peace with the other. But what was strange was that although Goldstein was hated and despised by everybody, although every day and a thousand times a day, on platforms, on the telescreen, in newspapers, in books, his theories were refuted, smashed, ridiculed, held up to the general gaze for the pitiful rubbish that they were in spite of all this, his influence never seemed to grow less. Always there were fresh dupes waiting to be seduced by him. A day never passed when spies and saboteurs acting under his directions were not unmasked by the Thought Police. He was the commander of a vast shadowy army, an underground network of conspirators dedicated to the overthrow of the State. The Brotherhood, its name was supposed to be."
"At those moments his secret loathing of Big Brother changed into adoration, and Big Brother seemed to tower up, an invincible, fearless protector, standing like a rock against the hordes of Asia, and Goldstein, in spite of his isolation, his helplessness, and the doubt that hung about his very existence, seemed like some sinister enchanter, capable by the mere power of his voice of wrecking the structure of civilization."
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
Reading this story I had two thoughts.
1: why couldn't terrorists etc use these same one-way ciphering techniques to hide their plans and schemes from the FBI?
2: regarding the smart cards etc. with fast transaction times for tollbooths, mass transit etc, here's the tangent idea: when you walk by a scanner and it charges your bank account for some purchase, how about if the card gives the scanner the bank's id in the clear, but gives your customer info in an encrypted form that only the bank can decrypt? Then once the bank validates the transaction, it could transfer the money to the vendor without saying whose account it came from.
You think the "TV watches you" joke is
on behalf on happy joyful people who are
(mostly) alive? You're damn wrong.
Considered harmful.
Like a soldier in pretty much anyone's enemy's
army (in the entire history) was not just
"a guy with a job to do and family waiting for him"? Great argument.
Probably of the Nazi Germany's soldiers weren't
vehement Nazis, or at least racists - they also
were guys with families waiting at home and a job to do (or conscripted to a job to do - is that better? At least in the former case they volunteer for their jobs)
Considered harmful.
I meant "most of the Nazi Germany's soldiers;
of course.
Considered harmful.
You have a valid point. I didn't mean to imply that "enemy soldiers are people, too, so don't shoot them, talk to them".
Being willing to fight for my principles is a laudable thing. Being willing to fight a losting battle against overwhelming odds, for my principles, is both laudable and courageous, I think.
But claiming that my personal firearms will make any sort of difference at all in an armed rebellion against the U.S. government is foolishness. The only difference they'll make is on the personal level. They'll make a personal difference to the SWAT team member I shoot, and a personal difference to his family. They'll make a personal difference to me, too: I'll derive personal satisfaction from sticking it to The Man (by shooting some SWAT guy), and I'll experience personal pain (and probably personal death) once the return fire starts coming in.
My personal firearms won't make an institutional difference of any kind. Maybe, if there were thousands like me... but like I said, if there were thousands like me, we could probably get better results by nonviolent means.
I think that it's somewhat different for soldiers: they're agents of the State, which is an institution. Individually, they only have personal effects, but in aggregate they're a tool of the State to further the State's policies. If I agree that the State must sometimes use force to protect its interests, and if I trust the State to use its force wisely, then I might join the army and support my State as a soldier. And I'd go to battle not as an individual, but as one of thousands, all agreed upon the necessity of this course of action.
If we were to raise a rebel army in this country though, by the time it got big enough to make an institutional difference, it would be big enough to make that difference without resorting to violence.
Thus, personal firearms do not appear to be at all useful as tools for fighting oppression in modern, civilized nations. Because of this, I have little patience for 2nd-amendment apologies that assume that personal firearms are useful in this way.
I say that if you're serious about fighting the regime, you should be looking at the constitutional clause about abolishing the current government and replacing it with something new. Think of what change--real change--might come about if the NRA put all its lobbying power behind that idea!
All this ranting about "right to bear arms" is a distraction, a folly. Defending an expensive and dangerous leisure activity with patriotic rhetoric and lofty speeches about principles and rights is naive at best, and willfully misleading at worst. Owning and operating firearms is a privilege and a luxury. If you really care about personal freedoms and undermining an authoritarian State, there's more honest, less violent, better ways to go about it.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Fair enough.
But--
I'm not one of those squeamish 1984 wankers you mentioned. So it's not like I'm being hypocritical here. Also, I don't think there's any inherent contradiction in abhorring tyranny and being squeamish about armed resistance. Certainly men like Ghandi and Mandela have demonstrated that it's possible to do both at the same time, effectively.
Also, it's not "when" my peaceful resistance fails, it's "if". And it's a pretty big "if", too. Perhaps we should both do some research on the subject: how many peaceful resistances have failed, in the past 100 years? In the failure cases, how many of them would have succeeded if the resisters had been armed? We know Ghandi succeeded. We know Mandela succeeded. We know the Chinese students in Tiananmen Square failed. We also know that they were up against the Chinese Army, so it's pretty obvious that personal firearms wouldn't have helped much. I guess it's debateable whether or not a sufficiently large percentage of the Chinese population would have had better luck armed, as opposed to not armed. We can debate that, if you like.
My idea of "authorities" does not stop at the local PD. I agree completely with the idea that it's much bigger than that. Which is exactly why your personal firearms seem so pointless in this context.
This isn't the Wild West, where "authority" is the local Sherriff, and once you take him out you're free to make your own rules. You've got a much bigger battle to fight nowadays, one you won't be able to win by shooting people.
Sure, the decisions are being made by a faceless conspiracy, but who do you think is going to come and get you? Spooky mind-control men in black trench coats? Policy-makers? No, it's going to be local PD, or a SWAT team, or National Guard troops, or U.S. Army troops, or whatever. Real people, with real lives, just like yours. If killing any of them would make an institutional difference, then maybe killing them would be justified--it would certainly be effective, anyway. But killing grunts won't make a difference. Not in this kind of war, anyway. So why do it?
And what if nobody comes for you? What if they just keep eroding your freedoms little by little, until it's far too late to fight back? What if things just keep going on the way they are today, only always getting just a little bit worse? Then who are you going to shoot? Who would you shoot, today, this minute, to safeguard your freedoms?
Your guns are tools for killing people, not tools for effecting social change. If you can give some reasonable scenario in our nation's future where the two not only overlap, but where bringing social change by killing people is the most effective and humane solution, please let me know. My arguments are based on the assumption that such a scenario does not exist (though it has in the past). If you could show that it does, then I'd probably reconsider my position on personal firearms.
Enthusiastic, maybe. Hysterical, not so much. But I'm glad you're having fun.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.