Slashdot Mirror
Don't Worry, We're Not From The Government
PolarBear3 writes "It seems that MSNBC.com is reporting that the government (U.S.) is looking to the private sector to data mine against it's [citizens|terrorists] since they are prevented by law from doing so themselves. Two quotes: 'People in the government, very much so in the Justice Department, have been playing out a lust for information that is not consistent with who we have been as a nation' & 'A range of laws limits how government can collect and use information on its citizens. The private sector, by contrast, operates under fewer restrictions.' Seems to show a nation fighting itself."
The US government has been doing this for decades. It may be illegal, but they've been bypassing the law. There is the UKUSA agreement: the US and the UK spy on each others' citizens then swap the information with each other. So yes, the NSA and M16 really does filter through your email and some phone calls to boot.
Its scary how accurate data mining can be. Taking a small scale example I have a loyalty card for my local supermarket. Every 3 months they send me some vouchers for money off on certain products. First time none of the vouchers really intrested me. However each time they have been getting more and more accurate until last time I actually used all of them on things I wanted.
Now if we scale this up I can almost see the US goverment getting more accurate but not without have a lot of false positivies. Scary prospect..
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
After all, this is exactly what they've done with Guatemalan Bay and the "Unlawful Combatants".
Guantanamo Bay. Or Gitmo for short.
Guatamala is a totally different country in which the US sent in "advisors" during the 70s and 80s in the contemporary "war against communism".
The problem is that the US govt. has too much money with an 11 tril. GDP ! they really dont have to worry about the day to day 'real problems' of life. So instead of making the entire world a better, progressive, healthy, educated place to live in, they keep spending good money on wars and such fancy idiocracies.
How about creating new schools & hospitals in afghanistan and the other really poor african countries. Nopes! Make no mistake, I'l bomb every place on earth i possibily can! Bush and gang are enimies of humanity!
A security camera can help prevent crime...
I doubt it. They are security cameras at nearly every intersection, every corner of every building, yet crimes of person and property still go unsolved. What has increased are revenue generating infractions of "safety" laws, such as people who miscalculate the timing of yellow lights, not slowing down at stop signs, etc...
Looks like they want the general public to dance to marching orders more closely, since catching terrorists and criminals is a losing battle.
Isn't this what the CIA shell companies are for? But I guess it's cheaper to outsource it to private companies wh oare already setup to do this.
members are seeing something, your seeing an ad
There are five people with the same first and last name in a 12 mile radius of me 3 have the same middle initial. One of these people has a wife whose first name, last anme and middle initial is the same as my wifes, and her SSN, and Drivers liceinse is only one digit different! My town is perfectly ordinary town of 35,000, makes you wonder how bad the problem is nation-wide. Right now we have trouble writing checks because of bads checks written by the above couple and also have had to jump through considerable hoops to get hospital bills miss asigned to us removed. When we remortgaged our house we were suprised to find a tax lien against our property also due to the above couple.
I think it's in everyones best interest to periodicaly check their credit reports and take other anti-identity theft measures to protect themselves not as much for identity theft as for indentiy mistakes.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
like this guy
R Tape loading error, 0:1
Maybe thought should be given to the question why a terrorist wants to strike...
I had this conversation with some Afghans just after the conflit there. It went like this:
Me: Why do you hate Americans?
Them: They invaded our country.
Me: But they kicked out the Taliban?
Them: Yes. It's much better now.
Me: So if they made it better, then why do you hate them?
Them: Because they invaded our country.
Of course it was more complicated than that, but the feeling I got (and my friend from the Ukraine tends to agree) was that they are just so used to hating us that they want to believe the worst, and it will take a long time to change that kind of impression.
I saw a similar report from deserting Iraqi soldiers.
Iraqis: I am glad that our country will be liberated, but it's too bad it has to be by those American devils.
Reporter: Would you rather they didn't come?
Iraqis: No, No, we want them, but they are still devils.
Hypocrits.
I think Bush is concentrating on this question as well. I think he really belives that a democratice Iraq will give America a good face in the Mid-East that will slowly change the impression after many years. He has been right so far that the area didn't erupt into Anti-American riots as many people predicted and no major terrorism has yet occured. Hopefully it will continue as such.
I was arrested a few days later by two Middle Eastern FBI agents. They questioned me for over an hour. I was asked about my affiliations with extremist groups. I was clearly discriminated against because I'm a bald white guy. If you speak out against this president, the government thinks you are a traitor.
If we raised the standards of everyone in the world and not just ourselves then the cause and reasons for terrorism would end. Terrorism exists because they have no other recourse. Asking the US to stop doing what its doing doesn't work. They don't have the military might to fight us. Their is no international court that we respect (U.N.) They have no recourse? They can look at our military intervention in the same way we look at terrorism. Until we level the playing field and help everyone have a tolerable standard of living. Not just us at the expense of everyone else this will happen. Its simple ego. Ours. Our arrogance and our desire to be self serving.
If they have neither rights nor voices, then who cares what they think? Future generations will look back, and think of us as living in a dark age filled with wars and diseases - that finally ended once the enemies among us were identified and dealt with. *evil grin*
But to go Orwellian on you for a moment - precisely because they had no rights and no voice, the proles were more free than the Party members.
So even if Orwell's dystopian nightmare comes true (which I highly doubt - but I'm taking it as a given to prove a point here), everyone still gets to make their a faster/better/cheaper choice.
"Freedom, security, luxury. Choose any two."
Winston: Live a double life among the elite, and worry about Room 101.
O'Brien: Live according to Party principles among the elite, but worry about having to maintain ideological purity.
Proles: Do whatever you like, secure in the knowledge that you're not important enough to be targeted, but live in the slums.
Why should they treat their citizens any differently than they treat their other enemies. Our government already outsources wars.
Is anybody else reminded of how back during the Inquisition the actual torture was done on the Church's behalf by princes and other subcontractors?
This is not my sandwich.
> 2) A well-trained, well-armed, professional army is a major threat to the powers that be. Remember why Stalin was so ill-prepared for WWII; he purged the military of everyone he could find that was competent.
> 3) Soldiers in a democracy's army are voters, and are related to voters. Equipping them badly would have bad results at election time. This is also why an all-volunteer army makes a war more acceptable to the people than a drafted army.
Agreed on all points. Like I said earlier, I don't believe 1984 will happen. Even if I take for granted the assumption that the "ruling elite" are evil (as opposed to merely walking down a road to hell that happens to be paved with good intentions), I still come to the conclusion that a 1984-style security state is not in the best interests of the ruling elite.
If your goal is absolute power, permanently entrenched, a dysfunctional economy is still a fundamentally bad thing. It therefore stands to reason that the "ruling elite" will not build such a state, and that if they find themselves building it "by accident", they'll quickly dismantle it, because it's in their best interests to do so.