Slashdot Mirror
Big Brother Gets a Brain
Gregus writes "The Village Voice delves into the DARPA's latest plan to track people and vehicle movement in cities, ostensibly for urban warfare, though this would be really handy watching 'suspicious' people in any city. "The goal, according to a recent Pentagon presentation to defense contractors, is to 'track everything that moves.' " The actual DARPA RFP and briefings. I just feel more safe all the time."
It's like Newtonian Physics to them.
They just want to know where we are, and what we're doing at all times, so that they can extrapolate what we will do next, and thus know the future.
I mean, it's not like this raises privacy concerns or anything
Mod Note: Funny, Insightful, Interesting... g'luck, I think it's all just measuring our cycnicism right now : )
I assert that my comment is only my opinion, not that of any employer, past, present or future.
The USGovt can't even manage the information they receive now. There are reams of information they had about the 9/11 plans that just didn't get invetigated, interrogations that are untranslated years after they happened, untold bytes that are simply stored and unexamined, we should abandon the notion that the government wants these capabilities to protect anyone.
The government wants this information because of a desire for power. Will this be used to scan for threats to the general public or to curtail and monitor the activites of those who threaten governmental power, like dissenting political activists? Look at the history of the abuse of the FBI by almost every executive administration for those answers.
This won't stop until the people pull the plug.
The best way to do is to be.
Of course! It's not like they could be more reflective to make them easier to track via eye or anything. It MUST be big brother, right? Right?
If it bothers you that much, you can cover it up with some left over tin foil from your hat.
It's an astonishing book, but the basic premise is that constant war is a means of keeping resources scarce, purely in order to maintain class distinction. If the plebians get too rich and well educated, they'll start to question why they need a ruling class at all, and the ruling class would rather be comfortable in a land of poverty than revoltingly rich in a land of plenty. The whole Big Brother culture is just a consequence of that (from the need to cover up the futility of the war), not the cause.
While it's true that USKA burns up hundreds of billions of USD a year (possibly a trillion if you count the stuff that isn't counted) in moving guns, tanks and bombs around the world, the goal does seem to be global imperialism rather than domestic scarcity. Sure, plenty of people are starving, but our middle classes are fatter and happier in terms of consumer toys than even the Inner Party in 1984.
Then again, that's pretty much what Winston Smith believes until he reads the book, so what do I know? The goal might be different, but the methods seem largely the same; an eternal war that can't be won against a foe with a constantly changing face, surveillance of citizens in the name of this war, arrest and detainment without due process, parading and show trials of prisoners for propaganda value, WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH, the whole works.
But I still can't figure out what the goal is. If it's merely self preservation for the incumbent autocrats, then that's understandable but both disappointingly unimaginative and largely unncessary - 98% of US Congressional incumbents already get reelected, and hereditary ruling dynasties are now as accepted in the USA as in Airstrip One. What more do they want? What is the point of moving further towards a police state? Any ideas?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Jesus Tapdancing Christ. Don't you feel that there are people way too close to the levers of power who would be happy if every citizen reported to their local Patriotic Office every day to prove that they were not a terrorist (powder residue tests, full cavity search, lie-detectopr test)?
I'm praying for a rip in the fabric of spacetime that lets the Founding Fathers through. They would be bitch slapping these bastards so hard....
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
While you may not be in college or high school, its views like yours that let democracy fall. So Bin Laden trained a few hundred terrorists (because of our egotistical superiority over the middle east, but thats a whole 'nother topic)... does that give the United States any right to "suspect everybody"??? ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!
The reason that people live in this great country is because people have the freedom to do what they feel is necessary to protect their rights. If someone wants to "steal gas trucks and ram them into office buildings," certainly the government should take steps to stop them from doing so, but not at the expense of giving up our personal freedoms such as the right to privacy.
Sure, its a scary world, and the possibilities are definitely endless for terrorists who want to blow shit up. But being so gripped by fear to give up your freedom to live your life is the most idiotic way to live I've ever heard. There are millions of people around the world living under that kinda of facist/militaristic rule, and I'd be willing to bet that any one of them would LOVE to trade places with you, with the ability to use the internet to look up information they never knew existed before, to drive around in a car wherever they want, and if they desire, to rise up against an evil government and overthrow them!
Commander: Sweet mother! IFF signal!?
Operator: Unknown, sir!
Commander: Damn it! Any units ready!?
Operator: Negative, fifth armour is stuck in a traffic jam at Main street!
Commander: Damn it all to hell! Get me NORAD on the line, someone inform the president!
Operator: Visual confirmation coming in by TrackSat2 Delta... NORAD will be notified, unable to notify the president sir!
Commander: Explain yourself!
Operator: The president is driving that segway, sir!
Commander: By all that's unholy...
Hate me!
Too bad for them, though, that keeping tabs on my position will cause them to lose track of my velocity...
In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
Even if they get the infrastructure set up, how do they implement this in our legal system? I figure that the images they have will be grainy, black and white, and of blurry, moving cars at night. I don't see how you can hand that to a jury and say, "Well, even though you can't see anything here, our program is nearly 87% certain that this car is in fact the car of the defendant." Is 13% reasonable doubt? Is 12%? We know that .5% isn't, or cases involving DNA evidence would be thrown out. At what point does jury duty become the analysis of quantatative figures as opposed to qualitative arguments?
To some extent I feel like a logical justice system is a step forward for society. At the same time, I'd prefer a trial by my peers, were I ever faced with the choice. Some day a jury deliberation may be number crunching:
"Well, the computer on 4th and Broad Street has determined with 75 percent probability that the defendant was moving towards the scene of the crime, and the computer on 5th and Broad Street gives us a 80 percent probability that he stopped at the scene. That gives us a 95% degree of probability that he was at the scene at the time of the murder. According to the Numerical Methods Act of 2015, we have to convict him."
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