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Bruce Sterling On Total Information Awareness
securitas writes "Declan McCullagh interviews Bruce Sterling about Total Information Awareness (renamed Terrorist Information Awareness and raising concerns) or 'Poindexter's nutty scheme' as Sterling thinks of it. He predicts TIA will destabilize the government and lead to internal KGB-style coups. Whether you agree with him or not it makes for thought-provoking reading."
That's all well and good but I think what we all want to know is what William Gibson thinks about T.I.A.
(Feel Free to Insert another Author's Name, or the people I turn to for public policy, Hollywood Actors.)
Also in the interview, he mentions that Bruce Sterling is not his real name. With talk of "coups inside the Republican Party" and the KGB, I think that Bruce Sterling is Tom Clancy's pseudonym.
BTW, when he says "Poindexter" he is not refering to us computer nerds, he means John Poindexter, programmer, Navy Admiral, National Security Advisor, etc.
internal KGB-style coups
In Soviet Russia... oh, forget it.
Do you like German cars?
Nuclear weapons don't kill people, people kill people.
Support citizens rights to use nuclear weapons for hunting and home defense!
Total Information Technology.
(with apologies to Robin Williams)
Karma: Can only be portioned out by the Cosmos.
We have emarked full tilt into the arena of socialism.
Its been slow in coming, but since 9/11 we have raced towards it as fast as we can, with the publics support. There is still a ways to go, but the momentum is there.. its a matter of ( short ) time.
Its sickening. Looks like the terrorists won, their goal was to elimate the way of life we had here here, and they sure as hell did.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I'm all for public involvement in the political process, but I guess the best we can hope for now is that this somehow leads to Slim Pickens riding a descending hydrogen bomb...
That was a very interesting article, however I do not like some of Bruce's answers. Whether or not I am allowed to approve, well...thats for someone else to decide. However, I want to give attention to one comment:
Just because it's the atom age, it doesn't mean we'll all have a private atom-powered helicopter. Just because it's the information age, it doesn't mean we're all going to profit or be made happier. It has secondary and tertiary effects that cannot be predicted. You don't envision a phone answering machine and predict the Lewinsky scandal--even though one is impossible without the other.
I personally believe that the efforts individuals make to better understand things, like computer technology, then living in the "information age" will leave that individual with a greater sense of security--And wouldnt that individual be in a greater position to lead the rest of society toward whatever might be better? Like a security expert speaking out against TIA with a solid argument?
He predicts TIA will destabilize the government and lead to internal KGB-style coups. Boy, it's a good thing that Bruce Sterling is not paranoid or anything. Otherwise, he'd come up with some really whacky theories.
Gathering information on people before they have done anything wrong is always a problem, especially if these people know that it is being collected. It makes poisioning the data pool attractive, even if it's only something as stupid as magazine subscriptions, email account names, aliases (which are legal as long as they're not used to deceive for nefarious purposes), and credit transactions.
The government is most likely to be able to track transactions that occur digitally, or require storage of information on computers that are not under the control of the individual whose data is being collected. Do you think that it's likely that terrorists will use these means, now that it's been announced that the government is collecting it? I'd think that they're more likely to buy guns from someone who has switched from running drugs into the country to running guns, to contact their fellow agents through 'chance' encounters, and to transact whatever seemingly legitimate business they use either with cash or through legitimate electronic transactions, which will make them blend into the electronic noise just like everyone else. How is this going to help matters?
The government already knows when one buys a new handgun through legitimate channels, through the Brady Law. They already should know about most of those who have explosives experience, since that is usually military training based to begin with, and demolitions companies, mining companies, and anyone else legitimately using explosives has to get their employees licensed. "Cyberterrorism" is an absolute joke of a term as long as easily broken-into OSes like anything Microsoft has ever put out is still in the mainstream and is still being used as a server, and there are probably dozens, if not hundreds of other examples like these.
I don't see how collecting all of this data is going to help.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I don't think that Sterling is right when he argues that Total Information Awareness will bring on some new rash of "KGB style coups." Some of you might remember that the NSA has been evesdropping on Congressmen for years (even on the staunchly pro-Defense-Military congressmen) and the CIA regularly keeps full files on all Congressmen with all of their dirty little secrets. The reason that there hasn't been a series of coups yet (well, ignore the 9-11 coup for now...) is that its far easier to blackmail people into having them do _your_ dirty work than to rat them out entirely. The only thing TIA will do is increase the leverage of the executive branch over the rest of society.
Lewinsky, Trent Lott, Newt Gingrich's book deal, David Dinkins lack of tax returns.
Data Mining is here. While the Republicans are more astute in the practical applications of tech and the Democrats tend toward the hip useless gadgets, Both sides are gearing up and will be using data mining against each other.
I have always said that KGB agents must have wept when they realised the information your typical marketing or credit card company have on the american citizen.
Poindexter may be a criminal and a boob American Express isnt.
Technology has a way of making the world feel smaller: Trains, Steamships, automobiles, airplanes and now googling (ridiculously easy and efficient datat-mining).
If you live in a small enough town, everyone knows everyone elses business...
When you remove the distance that geography or caste once maintained you are left with a very small planet where everyone may not know everyone else...but if they need to they can dig up any amount of dirt on you they want.
TIA is an initial step towards a decentralized type of always on information about anyone you could ever want...
And the only people who will be safe will be those without govt assigned ID (which means no CC's no ID's no Bank statements etc..) and the insanely wealthy...those who can afford to keep their sins a secret.
Much like it would be in a small town.
I hate small towns.
"Helping to keep you two steps ahead of the Thought Police!"
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonalbe searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
but that seems to have been forgotten, along with.."Congress shall make no law....abridging the freedom of speech or of the press."
Campaing finance reform restrictions on commericals 60 days before elections.
and "A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
Every law restricting non-criminals from owning certain types of weapons.
Some times I wonder if legislatures even fscking read the constitution any more.
"Much work is lost, for the lack of a little more." -Edward H. Harriman
...to Big Brother and the Holding Company.
No, the second amendment is set up to guarantee the security and freedom of the state. Period. Full stop.
It makes no distinction between external threats and internal oppression (for a good reason).
Freedom Is Universal
Linux-Universe
Total Information Awareness underware is still available
I put the 'fun' in fundamentalism
Might I ask what a economic model has to do with TIA?
...
These things can be done in any type of government. In fascism, which you seem to be implying, the people wouldn't have a choice. In a democracy, with the right support from the media, it is also possible.
None of the indicators of socialism are present, by the way. On the contrary, we are moving further away from socialism. College costs are rising, health care costs are rising, companies (ie SCO) are very busy suing each other over IP violations, tax cuts are being made
Please don't use 'socialism' as term for any bad government. Socialism is something very specific, and not what you are talking about.
And why in the world are you saying that 'the terrorists' won? What the US is becoming is the opposite of what terrorists would want. How could a group of terrorists want us to invade their home countries?
It shows that they THINK we're gullable morons.
Just by renaming it to sound anti-terrorist, are we supposed to shut up and stop questioning it?
Instead of making our government BIGGER & MORE INTRUSIVE & STRIPPING AWAY OUR RIGHTS, why don't we investigate how 9/11 was allowed to happen when we had ALL THE INFO REQUIRED to prevent it?!?!?
Oh, I forgot--the investigation into that was quietly squashed without much media attention but we got color-coded alerts to make us feel that something "real" appropriate is being done.
"Hey, lets rename this unpopular law/project/war/etc. so people think it has to do with anti-terrorism, they'll shut up for sure especially if the media makes anyone speaking against it appear stupid, weak, liberal, unpatriotic, etc. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get a bunch of unpopular shit done what would've caused riots/impeachments just a few year ago! Best of all, when people start to ask questions about the Pres or VP dealings with Enron or Halliburton again, we can just change the terror alert color so the media can refocus on that without resorting another murder case in California."
"And just in case we don't have any more terrorism in the USA, lets go piss off the Palestinians and make the Middle-eastern countries think we're gonna invade them--that'll stir up enough shit to make at least another group of crazies blow something up here--and we can milk that bombing to our advantage just like 9/11! We'll be silencing our critics and getting unpopular initiatives done for the next 50 years using this strategy!"
I'm obviously exaggerating to make a point but really, don't you think there's a grain of truth to associating unpopular initiatives with anti-terrorism just to get people to stop questioning it?
Maybe you should read the writings of the individuals who actually wrote the bill of rights. All 10 apply to the rights of individuals not the rights of government, or perhaps you think it is only the government that has a right to free speech?
At some point, you realize you lost, pick yourself up and dust yourself off, and plan for the next one. It's done, there is no chance of the election being reversed or any other outcome. Get over it, and try to get Dubya out of office this upcoming election if you don't like what happened.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
It seems that they can not even perform basic background checks on their own employees: CIO of Department of Homeland Security Suspended. Seems she got her "doctorate in computer information systems" from a phony college.
Yeah, that is the type of thing that inspires confidence.
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
Go bad and reread 1984, the point was NOT that socialism is bad, the point is that totalitarianism is bad. Strict government control of the populace is not a defining feature of socialism, look at holland ffor gods sake; it does, however manifest in leninist, stalinist and maoist governments.
A blog about stuff.
We have emarked full tilt into the arena of socialism.
I read the article, I don't see anything about a changing economic model.
Its sickening. Looks like the terrorists won, their goal was to elimate the way of life we had here here, and they sure as hell did.
Yeah, because terrorists just want you to have better health care, right?
You're a moron. 90% of the world's democracies are socialist. And you know what? ALL of them have a higher standard of living than the USA.
Perhaps you should learn the real meanings of words before you start bandying them about.
..but this time you and I get to be in front of the cameras, unasked, and everything will be archived and indexed on permanent storage, including (especially) a complete record of your online and telecommunication activity. Scott McNealy would say "get over it", but government will use this data to protect society against potential threats - and eventually, any kind of dissent may be considered the seed of a potential serious threat to society, as Orwell predicted.
You heard it here first. Poindexter and TIA is the Ministry of Silly Walks.
(And I'm supposed to feel better because they changed "total" to "terrorist"? That's just insulting to everyone's intelligence... grrr.)
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
a militia is an organized group of private citizens with training and ranks. You are some nut with a gun. Big difference.
YOU SUCK BALLS!
10 seconds my ass. I stick in the search terms "bruce sterling", "real name", & "fiction" (after all we need to separate BS the science fiction writer from BS the plumber), I get 390 hits. After glancing through likely pages, I get the real names to a half dozen different writers, but not Bruce! I even go to vivisimo, get some hits unique to google, but still no real name. Man, the New World Order better not depend on my lame ass skills.
Now I know I could track it down if I spent two hours going through search engines, varying search arguments, but what the hell am I doing wrong??? *sigh*
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
People no longer need to assemble in public places to protest, they can do so with their campaign donation dollars.
Maybe we can start gutting the other ammendments too.
If you're so damn sure that the 2nd is absolutely no longer necessary, your obligations are clear as a citizen. You need to get an ammendment passed that does away with that right. There are several methods available, and provided that you can do so, I will be satisfied that I do not have the right to own firearms. The sad truth is, you're a conniving little bitch, that knows such an ammendment would never pass (whether that's a good thing or not, I'm undecided) and instead you choose to undermine it at every available turn. The US Constitution is truly a wisely written and carefully concieved document... no one in our goverment today has even 1/100th the sense of its authors. And it does indeed constitutionally guarantee my right to bear arms, whether or not you make up bullshit excuses.
Anyone that doesn't believe there might come a time when owning a gun is incredibly advantageous, is a fool. Like most rights, though, it is not without its perils and has its associated duties. (something the mountain-men/gun-nuts often forget) I don't own a gun, I don't want to. I also don't want such a time to come, when I might want or need one. But when I see such a pathetic little worm like yourself, preaching how I shouldn't have that right, when you don't even know if I'm capable of dealing with said perils and meeting my dutiful obligations, it makes me sick.
The world needs for militaries to not own weapons. Individuals with guns have never been that much of a problem.
Under the U.S. form of government, we are getting decade-record levels of unemployment and crime, but at least the rich are a little richer, if you don't coun't externalities like the crime rate and overall property values.
Just don't count on all those nearly three million newly-unemployed people to vote on election day. I wouldn't put it past Bush to do something "exciting" right before election day. After all, you have a guy who claimed that he didn't tell anyone about his drunk driving conviction because he was trying to protect his daughters, but he doesn't ask the Secret Service to lift a finger to keep them from being caught drinking underage. He simply can not be trusted. How many times did he leave the "have you ever been convicted" question blank on Texas election forms? However, there is still hope.
Personally, I'm not particularly against massive databases, provided they're real-time public access, and the maintainers of the database are also represented in them like everyone else...
Given that the databases will exist - large corporations and government agencies will just not tell you they exist and keep using them if they're made "illegal" - and can only get more powerful and far-reaching, I think that the best choice is to make the database read-accessible to everyone rather than limit access to a powerful and unaccountable elite.
Note that I am NOT asserting that it's particularly nice that the databases exist in the first place - just that the genie's out of the bottle, and that the best way to minimise abuses of power would be to minimise secrecy. Otherwise we'll probably end up with 1984.
It's amusing that personal privacy advocates are often the same ones screaming for government or corporate openness - while privacy (== secrecy) exists, anyone handed power will have a screen to hide behind to hide abuses of said power. Yes, humans like privacy. But privacy, whether for the government or the citizen, may prove fundamentally in opposition to the maximisation of the freedoms a civilised society can provide, while still remaining a civilised society.
This is explored further in David Brin's excellent book: "The Transparent Society: Will Technology force us to choose between Privacy and Freemdom?" As he points out, "people generally seem to want privacy for themselves and accountability for everyone else...".
Choice of masters is not freedom.
For the record, no legal scholar or philosopher would accept your claim that the Bill of Rights (or ANY legal document) is "absolute and timeless".
A clear example, which is of prime relevance, is the fact that the Constitution and Bill of Rights never once use the word "privacy". In fact, there is no attempt to explicitly proscribe a right to privacy, nor a right against government explorations of the individual. In fact, the argument over whether or not the makers of the constitution intended there to be such a right is one of the oldest in American legal debate.
Without getting too detailed, consider the following: all of the arguments for a constitutional right to privacy are based on liberal interpretations of the Bill of Rights, for example the belief that in order for their to BE a right to free speech, there must be sufficient privacy to organize that free speech without social pressure (either from private citizenry or from the government) preventing that speech. Another example is the belief that the right against illegal housing of soldiers in your home implies that your house is somehow "private" despite that it is clearly located within the domain of the government.
Court decisions are, of course, divided about this. Griswold v. Connecticut includes Justice Stewart's dissenting claim that there simply is no right to privacy, but merely the specific rights in the Bill of Rights. He employed this, incidentally, in an argument against protection of abortion. Roe v. Wade, infamously, determines that there is a right to privacy, insofar as a woman's private control of her womb.
In a more contemporary context, laws discussing the legality of sexual behaviors clearly are concerned with the privacy of your home. A certain possible presidential candidate (whom I wont name) made claims that homosexual behavior, if legal, must demand that all sexual behavior done in "privacy" must be legal by paralleling it to bestiality and the ilk. His point, clearly, is that there simply is no right to privacy, insofar as your consentual sexual behavior at home.
To sum up, the right to privacy you're so concerned about isn't explicitly stated in the Constitution or Bill of Rights, despite your request that we only read them literally and without interpretation. Basically, to take a little pun, you've shot yourself in the foot.
"Stumble before you crawl"
My definition of "dumb conservative" is a conservative who earns less than $500,000/year or has a net worth of less than several million dollars.
These poor souls would rather focus on why they (the middle class) have to pay a bit more taxes than the poor instead of focusing on why they have to pay a LOT more taxes than the ultra-wealthy or profitable corporations like Microsoft. You knew Microsoft paid $0 taxes in 1999, right?
These morons also like complaining about things like a minimum wage bill because it raises the minimum wage rather than complaining about the luxury yacht fuel subsidies buried inside that same bill. "To hell with the undernourished child of a single working parent, my taxes shouldn't pay for that! Instead, my hard-earned taxes are gonna help filthy rich bastards play on their yacht because my misguided middle-class ass is too lazy to get informed."
smartest: rich conservatives
average: everyone else
dumbest: middle-class conservatives
I hope to become a rich conservative sometime this decade but until then, it isn't in my best self-interest to be a conservative or liberal right now.
What's your definition of "dumb conservative"?
Americans have no reason to fear their government?
You do realize this is the TIA article, right? The very point of the parent article is that we have a good reason to be worried about our government!
If the counterexamples are poor, then your original example - Germany under Hitler - was poor as well. It was just as ready to be controlled by fear as Iraq and Afghanistan were. (btw, Iraq was a very prosperous and stable country before Hussein - so they actually weren't ready to be controlled by fear) Your point remains weak.
As for the ad hominem attack, I'll just ignore it. After all, resorting to logical fallacies is a good sign one's losing an argument.
A researcher would do well to think carefully about the potential usage before taking any money to work on TIA.
The day this sucker goes live, you know its going to get the most viscous slashdotting imaginable, not to mention all the spammers, script kiddies, pro microsoft, pro linux, jehovah witnesses, jews for jesus, etc who all are going ddos, port scan, submit fraudalant information, etc etc etc.......
By the time its all over, we'll have Furher Ashcroft annoucing they are searching for a heinous terrorist known as "Heywood jablowme" aka "Al Coholic".
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
And if the Bush administration overcame congressional objections and got a deep data-mining system working?
An insane information-hungry KGB or a relatively open and decent government? Vote with your feet. Get the hell away from those lunatics. Who the hell wants to live in a USA with a TIA in it? Why would you want to invest it that country? The currency would crash. The political elite would annihilate one another.
Mr. Sterling is making a big assumption here: you will always have somewhere that is different to move to. One _conspiracy theory_ I've been harbouring is that the USA's plan is to politically assimilate the rest of the world so that there will not BE another place to go to, in effect. Everyone will have basically the same privacy, human rights, freedom of speech (or lack of it) laws.
a militia is an organized group of private citizens with training and ranks. You are some nut with a gun. Big difference.
When a government takes away it's citizens' right to keep and bear arms, then the citizens are no longer able to protect themselves from a potentially tyrannical government. This is the reason that James Madison included the second amendment in the bill of rights. The first ten amendments are not in some arbitrary order. Madison felt that the right to own firearms was second only to freedom of religion/speech/assembly/expression.
An "impeachment" is not a conviction or finding of wrongdoing. An impeachment is an accusation.
To "be impeached" is to be accused of a crime by the assembled Congress. Clinton was not convicted: he was not removed.
Impeachment is not a conviction. This confusion of terms was intentional by Clinton's enemies, and has infected the body politic. It is a murder of language, and a calculated one.
Clinton was accused of shading the truth (he didn't lie: he asked for a definition of sex from the judge, who told him intercourse. He'd had oral sex, which gave him an out.
Clinton was simply smarter than the criminals --leaking special prosecutor info is a crime -- who had set him up on a hearing concerning another setup - Paula Jones.
Starr and his elves had found out about Lewinsky the night before the PJ deposition. Clinton knew they knew, so it was a battle of wits with Clinton packing a rocket launcher, and his tormenters armed with a Rush Limbaugh slingshot.
The pieces of work from Starr's office told the judge that Lewinsky's affair with Clinton was pertinent to the Jones deposition. It wasn't. They merely wanted to get Clinton under oath, where he would be forced to make a choice: lie about his sex life, or tell the truth and wreck his personal and public life.
Clinton was smarter than that, and chose the third option: narrow the definition of sex, and then truthfully deny having that kind of sexx described by the judge. He simply was a better lawyer and a better man than the men who lied to the judge about the relevance of Lewinsky to the Jones case.
Of course, Clinton was fined for outsmarting his tormenters. And his witchhunters got away clean with lying to the judge, and got the only real "scandal" they could get after seven long years of trying to find anything other than unsupportable BS from his enemies to charge him with.
The Repubs, and some really stupid f-ing Demos, decided to give this pack of rabid misusers of a tax-paid prosecution the impeachment (accusation) they so achingly wanted.
The combined Congress realized they were being asked to remove a President for getting a blowjob. Sanity broke out.
Flashforward to today: a sitting President fantasized a dire enemy in a ruined country around the world. He lied and lied about the imminent threat to the US. He got his war, killing tens of thousands of men in pickup trucks and T-shirts. He maimed possibly hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children.He wrecked the power grid, cut off food for millions of helpless people.
Evidence for his fantasy was nonexistent both before and after the "war" (attack of Starship Troopers vs. the Flintstones). His people profit handsomely from the occupation.
And no one says "impeachment".
A blow job from an intern is more impeachable than the ideologically based murder of tens of thousands, and the theft of a country.
If the purpose of the "Terrorist" Information Awareness database is to collect information on terrorists, then why would all US citizens be included?
It doesn't take a conspiracy theorist to realize that the government is making suspects of us ALL.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
Just reading this thread I've noticed that this is the most offtopic story I've seen yet.
The threads spawned by it range from everything from Marxism to gun control.
It's great, there aren't enough OT modpoints in the world to take care of it
Not exactly. From US v. Miller:
In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a âoeshotgun having a barrel of less that eighteen inches in lengthâ at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. Certainly it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment or that is use could contribute to the common defense. Aymette v. State, 2 Humphreys (Tenn.) 154, 158.
Aymette v. State actually concerned a concealed knife, not a firearm. Interestingly enough, there was another decision about the same time from either Tennessee or Kentucky that found that a miniature shotgun was a useful weapon for a militia.
And, on top of that, Aymette v. State turned on the presence of the phrase "for the common defense" in the Tennessee Constitution at that time. That particular phrase had been proposed and explicitly rejected by the US Senate during debates on the Bill of Rights. So, even that qualifier is questionable.
We are unable to accept the conclusion of the court below and the challenged judgement must be reversed. The cause will be remanded for further proceedings.
There are two key phrases here: "not within judicial notice" and "remanded for further proceedings". The former phrase means that the Court would not conclude that a sawed-off shotgun was or was not part of the ordinary military equiopment, because no one presented evidence to support it. The reason? It's at the beginning of the decision:
No appearance for appellees.
No one showed up on behalf of the defendants, leaving the US government to present their case unopposed. Had there been even a semi-competent defense, it would have been a non-issue, because the US Army was using sawed-off shotguns as late as the Vietnam conflict. They were common in the trench warfare of WWI, which preceded this decision in 1939.
That brings us to the latter phrase: "remanded for further proceedings". The case was supposed to go back to the lower court to determine if the firearm in question did indeed meet the criteria established by the court. But by this time, Miller was dead (under suspicious circumstances) and apparently the US Attorney quickly cut a deal with his co-defendant, Frank Layton, to avoid the embarrassment of having the conviction thrown out after an evidentiary hearing.
So, while US v. Miller did indeed set the criteria for restricting ownership of certain weapons, the criteria very clearly permits the firearms that the government now prohibits.
An honest reading of US v. Miller doesn't yield the interpretation that most attribute to it.
The modern equivalent would be for you and for me to be required by law to own an M-14 or M-16 capable of fully-automatic fire, although other weapons of equivalent capability, and even decent bolt-action rifles, would probably be OK.
"A Well-regulated militia?" Yes, indeed: you aren't allowed to show up with "non-regulation," outdated weapons or "non-regulation" rifles that fire odd-caliber amminition. That would cause a supply problem and maybe get you killed if you ran out of ammunition. A Well-Regulated militia means "The right of the people to keep and bear...arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country..." --James Madison, I Annals of Congress 434 (June 8, 1789).
Want another quote? "Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest." - Mahatma Gandhi
Think, write, think, edit, think...then post.
I'm not so sure it's correct to say 'Germans loved Hitler.' It's probably more safe to say that Hitler's organization was probably the first large scale state apparatus to take advantage of and exploit the power of modern communications technology and mass media. Study some of the propaganda of the period. They were embarking on a new age of progress, etc. etc. Hitler's propaganda people were pioneers in the field and very successful.
It never once uses the word "internet" either. Is it your contention that the Constitution is therefore irrelevant to any matter concerning the internet?
Furthermore, your argument is hung precariously on a semantic hook which does not support it, at all. When the founding fathers talked about "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized" what do you think they were talking about, if not privacy?
Your understanding of the Constitution is fundamentally flawed. The Bill of Rights is an addendum, spliced onto the body of the Constitution by those who feared that unless certain rights were explicitly enumerated, the government would run roughshod over individual liberties. But the basic concept of the Constitution is that the federal government has certain powers-- and no others. In other words, if the Constitution does not explicitly allow the federal government to curtail the privacy of its citizens, it is prohibited from doing so. 10th Amendment says: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Unfortunately, the feds have grabbed all manner of powers to which they are not entitled, and ideologues on the Supreme Court have permitted it to happen.
If you accept the premise of the article, I don't think there's any doubt that we're close to fascism today. It's still early and we could reverse course in less than 18 months. But I think there's little doubt that history will observe that the US came close to losing WW-II 60 years after the fact.
I'm also sure that many of these people have no idea that they're fascist. Hitler was not Satan incarnate, Nazi Germany did not come into existence overnight, and we must always be on guard against history repeating.
As for the OP's uninformed comments, the proper description for the countries he described as "socialist" is "authoritarian" -- and there's no doubt that this country is shifting towards authoritarism in addition to fascism.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Wanted to post something completely fictional. Because this is ./ of course- nobody believes this stuff you know. /possessed mode 1
/possessed mode 0
Isn't Poindexter one of the documented Majestic members(2nd Gen.)? He shifted to info control about 10 years ago didn't he?
And, no, I'm not making this shit up(see- I'm creating suspension of disbelief!). Read through the news. This guys been globetrotting like he's searching for the cure to explosive hemmoroids. Unfortunately(depending on your POV), I think it's a little too late for what he's attempting to do.
We've all got some major trouble comin down the pipe, and Gen. Poindexter and friends will try and add a little conditioned media K-Y so it doesn't hurt so much when we get to bend over. It's a nice thought, but you can only hold enertia at bay for so long. Btw, on a semi off:off topic- has anyone seen that hollow martian rock called Phobos floatin around lately? I know where it's not, but where did it go? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
OK, I'm better. In short- leave old Mr. Poindexter alone. He's pissin in the wind. Times almost up.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
It doesn't take a terribly "liberal interpretation" of the 4th amendment to see a "right to privacy" here. I mean, it would be pretty extreme to claim this prevents surveillence in a public place, but I think TIA, Carnivore, etc. constitute unreasonable searches against people's papers and effects and are certainly done without probable cause.
This isn't as broad a "right to privacy" as some might like, but it's not a stretch at all to claim that it rules out trying to spy on as much of the country as you can manage.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
It's really a stupid idea. If you consider that the guys are white hats (yea yea), then it's just noise that has to be filtered. Law enforcement by database, ubiquitous and just as stupid rather than targetted and accurate.
They are just to damned lazy to get off their dead asses and do the Human Intellegence they are paid to do.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
If you actually read the second amendment, there's a subject and a predicate. There's "A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state", then a , and then "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
Argue all you want about whether a militia is necessary or not, or who's in it, or whatever. Using the rules of plain english, you could change the amendment to
"Because Santa Claus is an avid grapefruit golfer, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." and it would still imply the same thing. The right of the people to own guns. What the heck does it mean to have the "state's rights" interpretation anyway? The state allows itself to own weapons? Wow, good thing that bit of foresight was included by the FF's.
You can argue "the people", but that's completely disingenuous considering that "the people" is the exact same definite article used in the 1st amendment. Unless you're willing to accept a "collective right" to free speech, that is....
The 2nd amendment is about hunting. It's about hunting politicians. No one is going to argue that an armed citizenry is going to take the US Army. But it -will- put the fear of God in politicians. And besides, you gotta like the odds of 500,000 guys with guns tanks and planes vs 80 million guys with "sniper" rifles.
As has been mentioned elsewhere in this thread - if you don't like the 2nd amendment, by all means try and repeal it. Until then, don't try and sell us what are clearly lies.
Dig my controversial new nick!
Interesting. So then you are not at all against the famed (at least because of all the press coverage they got in the '90's) Michigan millitias having all the same weapons that the gov't has? They train weekly/monthly, give ranks... so they ought to have full-autos, tanks, mortars, rockets... basically everything the gov't forces have.
/., but I'll keep right on doing it till my karma runs dry.
I just ask because most people I have talked with that interpret "millitia" in the 2nd amendment as meaning training, ranks, National Gaurd only, etc... write off non-government funded millitias as wackos. Yet nowhere does the amendment say "government funded and sanctioned millitias".
Again, I'm not attacking you per se, just asking what you take is on groups of citizens getting together and exercising their rights.
Also, I do have to pick a nit with your labeling the parent post as a "nut with a gun." I own guns, and I also go to the range and "train" with those guns every week, firing hundreds of rounds. I am trained, competent, and a fully contributing member of society paying taxes, my rent, and even helping people out from time to time. So on that count, I do have to personally attack you and say that the last part of your comment obviously shows that you are a quick-to-judge nutcase who is totally unprepared to listen to any point of view other than your own.
Anyhow, flame on all ye people. I know that suggesting guns are a right is taboo on
- I love animals. I try to eat at least one a day.
There's only one problem with the second amendment: it was written in a period of history when the firepower a government could muster was not significantly greater than that of a group of well-armed individuals. I believe George Orwell wrote in an essay that historical periods can be divided by weaponry: when the ability to kill people was difficult to obtain, such as the middle ages, when rich people owned the battlefield, then personal freedoms were greatly restricted. The advent of the gun eventially allowed the average person to wield firepower the same as any soldier. Nowadays, though, there's no realistic way a civilian could stand up to today's modern, combined-arms military. In the event of violent government oppression, the second amendment pretty much just gives us the right to die with our boots on (so to speak).
One of the most famous "predictions" is that of Orwell's 1984, which (of course) has not exactly come to pass.
Maybe not by 1984, but aren't things becoming more Orwellian every day? The TIA seems to be a perfect example.
One _conspiracy theory_ I've been harbouring is that the USA's plan is to politically assimilate the rest of the world so that there will not BE another place to go to, in effect.
In case you missed it, the US basically said (at least everybody outside the US read it so) that either you're with us, or you're against us in the war against terror. And of course everybody that is against us is terrorists or supporting terrorism, and must be neutralized. Hence, it's not over until all are with the US, either through military force or just falling into line either by carrot or stick.
It's funny how that when one man seeks to control all other men, you call it a dictatorship. When one country seeks to control all other countries, it's "politics". What's the next country that doesn't fall into line, where GWB will find imaginary WMDs?
They went from finding WMDs, to liberating the people, to ensuring that the Iraqi oil would be used for the people. After the oil has paid for all the damages the war caused, and the profit margins of all the US corportations set to administer it, I'm sure the people will get a cut too, assuming they become good little economic pawns of the US.
That has been what the US has been so good at, to attract more bees with honey than with vinegar. Nothing has sold the "American Way" as well as economic prosperity. Compared to communism, it wasn't exactly a bad sell on freedom either. Now, however, people have started to realize that the economic bonds to the US also can act as a leash, not the military kind that the Soviet Union kept but a leash none the less.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
...or 'Poindexter's nutty scheme' as Sterling thinks of it.
Huh? What did I do now?
Party Time: Excellent
Government Surveillance
Why do government have no respect for your right to privacy?
Liberty has to be one of the most important things in life. Well up there, behind health and safety of your family, must be the right to go about your daily life without being forced to live it under oppressive surveillance. For it surely is oppression - being spied upon by the authorities in all that you do. Knowing this information could be used against you, for any purpose they see fit. The so-called all-seeing eye of God over you - meant to instil respect of them and fear of authority.
It can be proven they use propaganda to deceive you into believing them. How?
Ask Security Services in the US, UK, Indonesia (Bali) or anywhere for that matter, to deny this:
Internet surveillance, using Echelon, Carnivore or back doors in encryption, will not stop terrorists communicating by other means - most especially face to face or personal courier.
Terrorists will have to do that, or they will be caught!
Perhaps using mobile when absolutely essential, saying - Meet you in the pub Monday (meaning, human bomb to target A), or Tuesday (target B) or Sunday (abort).
The Internet has become a tool for government to snoop on their people - 24/7.
The terrorism argument is a dummy - total bull*.
INTERNET SURVEILLANCE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO STOP TERRORISTS - THAT IS SPIN AND PROPAGANDA
This propaganda is for several reasons, including: a) making you feel safer b) to say the government are doing something and c) the more malicious motive of privacy invasion.
Government say about surveillance - you've nothing to fear - if you are not breaking the law
This argument is made to pressure people into acquiescence - else appear guilty of hiding something illegal.
It does not address the real reason why they want this information (which they will deny) - they want a surveillance society.
They wish to invade your basic human right to privacy. This is like having somebody watching everything you do - all your personal thoughts, hopes and fears will be open to them.
This is everything - including phone calls and interactive TV. Quote from ZDNET: Whether you're just accessing a Web site, placing a phone call, watching TV or developing a Web service, sometime in the not to distant future, virtually all such transactions will converge around Internet protocols.
Why should I worry? I do not care if they know what I do in my own home, you may foolishly say. Or, just as dumbly, They will not be interested in anything I do.
This information will be held about you until the authorities need it for anything at all. Like, for example, here in UK when government looked for dirt on individuals of Paddington crash survivors group. It was led by badly injured Pam Warren. She had over 20 operations after the 1999 rail crash (which killed 31 and injured many).
This group had fought for better and safer railways - all by legal means. By all accounts a group of fine outstanding people - with good intent.
So what was their crime, to deserve this
Every male between the ages of 18 and 45 (55 if the person has served in the military), and every female between 18 and 35 (45 with military service) is a member of the state militia.
As a member of the militia, when you are called to service, Mass state law requires you to bring your own firearm.
This state is schizophrenic, sometimes...
Oh, and to respond to the idiot you replied to: The militia was never abolished, because the National Guard is not a STATE MILITIA. Itâ(TM)s federal, and one of the groups the whole idea of the militia was designed to protect the US citizens from. If you donâ(TM)t like it, fine, but donâ(TM)t lie about it.
I'm not shy, I'm stalking my prey
On the radio show This American Life, a segment described how police used the case summary of an FBI profiler as a template for a forced confession. Under pressure to find the killer(s), police used intimidation and duress to coax a suspect to sign a false confession, the conviction since overturned by DNA evidence. The suspect, unaware of case particulars, was given a confession to sign lifted verbatim from an FBI profiler's report. The police used a best guess of how the crime occurred based on the evidence to frame a patsy.
In the not distant future with Total Information Awareness, it will be trivial to find a patsy for any crime. The person murdered attended the same university and you shared a class or two (enrollment database). You enjoy violence and murder (video store database). The murder occured a mile away and within 30 minutes of when you filled up your car at the gas station (credit card database). We have established relationship, motif, and opportunity.
My point is that extremely causal data will be used to make relationships where none exist and to support conclusions which no hard data supports. It will become trivial to gather a group of suspects for any crime, none of which have anything to do with it.
The databases will be used to get tough on crime, which was a euphemism in the 80's for put pressure on police and courts to find a patsy and put them away to make us politically significant. The wave of released prisoners based on evaluation of DNA evidence in recent years is proof of this.
Are you a terrorist? I bet if we look at the proper data points we can make anyone look like one...
"You have liberated me from thought."
The TIA is scary conceptually, but when coupled with human incompetence it becomes absolutely terrifying. The problem with TIA is not that they collect the data, but that they must at some point make some interpretation and inference on the data.
Those familiar with data mining know that there are very serious problems in turning data into information. This means that some human must make some pronouncement that some types of data mean certain things. If they collect all your emails, what exactly identifies you as a terroist? If they collect your credit card transactions, what do you have to buy to be a terrorist? Etc.
Aside from the technical problems associated with coding and interpreting the data there are other problems associated with detection. Basically, in data mining there are two paths that TIA can take. Supervised algorithms (here's what a terrorist looks like go find others) and unsupervised algorithms (let's clump all people who buy lots of fertilizer together). The problem with supervised algorithms, is that you need examples of what a terrorist looks like. Even, then you need a whole bunch of examples to teach algorithms to identify them. The problem with unsupervised techniques is that once you have grouped everyone together, do you have the right number of groups, and are the groups any good at identifying terroists?
I'm just grazing the technical problems...and there are many many more, but in hte end, the most problematic is that even if it is possible to create some algorithm, no method is 100% accurate. This means that (many) innocent people will get targeted and victimized by the TIA just because they happen to "fit the profile".
The best way I see to beat this is 1) create multiple personae 2) look like everyone else.
My 2 cents.
"Completely innocent? They were fighting to establish a despotic theocratic regime where tribal chieftains meted out medieval justice."
Yes completely innocent. Remember they were let go. Or are you suggesting they let guilty criminals go.
"Get accused of adultery? Get buried up to your head and stoned to death."
Once again you are suggesting that people guilty of such henious crimes were released by the US military. BTW did I miss the trial?
"Twice you call Gitmo and foreign bases "concentration camps." "
Yes I am. They are concentration camps. Hitler at least provided walls and a roof for his prisoners, ours are left out in the elements though.
" Is food restricted there?"
Probably. It's a common "pressure" tactic to starve people and then offer them a big mac if they talk.
"Do the detainees work 20 hr/day?"
No they are in a four by six chain link cage. They are lucky if they get an hour a week out of the cage.
"Are diseases like typhus and cholera promoted to get rid of unwanted people?""
I don't know, maybe.
"You have some twisted sense of right and wrong if you think jailing a al Qaeda soldier captured **on the battlefield** "
People captures in the battlefield are prisoners of war, they should be treated as such.
We have no idea what is being done to the prisoners in afghanistan or quatar. They are most likely being tortured and I am sure some of them die during the torture. I don't know if they are being turned into soap or not.
War is necrophilia.