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The Beast of Brussels
'No nickname' Ian writes "If you live in Europe you should definitely read this story about a government supercomputer. It's written by Andy McCue from silicon.com and entitled: IT Myths: Does the 'Beast of Brussels' know everything about us?
Basically, in Europe there are rumours of an EU-owned super-computer which stores and process information on every European citizen.
The piece debunks the rumour and finds out its roots are actually in a work of fiction - but there is some interesting comment from privacy activists who suggest it may not be too wide of the mark. Simon Davis of Privacy International goes so far as to suggest such computer may have existed - if perhaps not on the same 'three storey-high' magnitude."
In what respect would static data regarding the citizens of Europe be processed continuously? Why would a supercomputer be needed? Is there that much data? How much data would be kept on citizens if the rumour were true? How come it hasn't been exposed? And so on and so forth. The rumour is so vague I'm surprised that anybody would have genuinely believed it on its own 'merit'. It's quite obviously wrong from even a cursory thought about some of its implications; the EU would never get away with such rampant privacy violations.
Bash script for FP whores
They should get Echelon and the Beast of Brussels networked together.
You know, kinda like this.
I thought it said the *breast* of Brussels... how disappointing...
Dear god...
:)
I can only imagine how many hybrid Soviet Russia/Beowulf cluster jokes this story will generate.
Spam removed for the Internet's pleasure
Imaginary computers. Now there's some "Stuff that Matters."
I downloaded a movie about a "beast" of Brussels---oh, wait... it was Amsterdam. Never mind...
... all the people, living life in peace...
Had you going there, didn't I?
Invisible barcodes tattoed on our foreheads? Beeing read by lasers as we shop groceries? And on every single citizen of the world / europe?
It don't take much to debunk a myth like that, it falls flat on it's face from the sheer impossiblity of a) managing to register and tattoing everyone without someone noticing, b) actually correlating all the data, and c) getting usefull information out. In short, the computer - espesially if it was based on the avilable technology in the early 70's - wouldn't been able to coope with the sheer amount of raw data.
I'm sure it's a bureaucrats wet dream to know everything about everyone, but it is beyond the realm of the possible. In order to believe this myth in the first place, you probaly has to be among those who wear tinfoilhats to stop the goverment from spying on you with rays... and if you are, nothing can change your mind on this, or convince you that man has walked on the moon.
News for nerds? Not really. Stuff that matters? Not to me at any rate. Something that made me smile a sunday morning? Sure did, and I needed that.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
I've done a lot of work with the EC over the last 10 years or so... the existence of the "beast of Brussels" would be a surprise for many reasons, not least of which several people would have had to have reached consensus to build the thing.
Totally impossible.
...this.
Bash script for FP whores
If you read the related article about the series (IT Myths Update), check out the last paragraph.
Now, I find it more than a little disapointing that they say they 'have a feeling it might be true'. What person writing IT articles doesn't even know basic computer history?
Surely at least SOMEONE at a tech-based news site has heard of Grace Hopper?!? Although most people might remember her for Cobol, almost any book or show on computer history mentions her famous conversation with Howard Aiken after finding a moth stuck in a relay of the Mark II.
Sheesh, either that or they are really strapped for ideas. Mentioning what should be known as one of the most fateful incidents, by one of the most famous people working on one of the most famous computers, as a 'possible truth' is a really bad way to hype a series, IMHO.
and most people - including me - think nothing of it. in Belgium it is mandatory for us to carry an official ID card (no library card or drivers license. a real ID card).
we need to show that to open a bank account, a library card, a rent-a-video store,... well basically everywhere.
for health care we have a unique number in a national database, and since a few months everyone who has a mortgage is in another database.
We don't care. i mean why should't the governement know where you live, or which bank accounts i have.
the only reason i can come up with is if you are a fraudster.
for example tracking people with a mortgage on a national level is done so that not-so-bright people do not get a second mortgage if they already are at their financial limit with the first one.
the most important reason i don't mind is that we have a law that applies to any place where personal information is stored about you.
basically the law says that you have to get total access to all information about you, and that if it is incorrect the keeper of that information needs to change it.
i know from several examples that this law is used and that is works ok.
at least we can review and cghange information about ourselves.
kind regards,
Interfacer.
Your right, slashdot has no incarnation of free speech anymore.
... Arlène Mc Carthy!
I found a book on my parents' bookshelf a couple years ago. THe boko was printed in the mid-70'd by end-times "conspiracy nuts"... they went a little bit OTT with this book. I recall something about a massive computer that catalogs everyone in Brussels being mentioned. The cover of the book had a red "666" emblazoned on it, and it talked about oil, big business, and the US gov't taking away constitutional rights.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
You ask why the government shouldn't have access to this info. I ask why they should.
When designing a secure system, you try to minimize priviledges - if someone doesn't need access, then it is denied to them.
Likewise we need to be ever vigilant in protecting our freedom. If someone (e.g. the government) doesn't need knowledge or power, then we shouldn't let them have it.
In your example, you mention that the government now can decide when someone has exceed their financial limits. Why is that a good thing? Let the lenders sort it out and take the hit if a borrower defaults.
The more information others have about you, the more subtly they can manipulate you. Detailed information is usually used to take advantage of someone. That's why stalking is illegal in many countries. You'd find it creepy if your neighbor knew this information; why doesn't it bother you that hundreds of government beaurocrats know this for an entire country?
Oh, shut up. You're so full of it... Those little Belgian War Heroes managed to keep the German army (from a country 10 times bigger) from capturing all of Belgium in the first World War, and in the second World War, they managed to resist the German Blitzkrieg for all of 18 days, where the Germans had expected to be at the North-Sea coast in only two or three days...
In both cases, you 'mericans only showed up a couple of years later...
By the way, have they found any WMD's yet in Iraq? Didn't think so...
For those interested, the actual bug report is here
Documento Nacional de Identidad (DNI) [National Identity Document] from the web of the Ministerio del Interior.
Not as disappointed as me. I thought this thread was going to be about Jean Claude Van Damme's latest effort!
Yay Belgium!
This sounds like great material for every conspiracy theorist to work with..
/.
It's perfectly possible, and concievable, but the question is, does it really exist?
I saw a few comments on here. So what if someone sees your license plate? Lets go through an easy path for the feds to follow. I'm basing this off of the US. I'm sure similiar stuff applies in Europe.
Your car is spotted in a particular area..
1) Run the plate. Now they have your name, address, SS#, age, height, weight, hair and eye color, and your history of driving.
2) Check the credit bureau's and Chex Systems. Now they know all your bank accounts, credit cards, etc, etc.. Even if your bank doesn't exactly report that you have an account, you'll show up when they checked your credit (or with Chex).
3) Have you ever bought groceries or gas with your ATM/Debit card or credit cards? Do you use the grocery store's "discount" cards? Even if you bought your groceries with cash, if you used your discount card it's easy enough to track your purchases.
So, was the driver of the car you? Sure. You bought gas a few miles away on your credit card.
*IF* (that's a big if) they have a tracking system put together to keep all this information in the same place, it'd be easy to track any single person. Even if the police were interested in tracking an individual, it wouldn't be very hard.
Think about what you did today. Using the simple outline I gave today, they know just about everything you did.
I'm out of town. So, they know when I bought my plane tickets online from what IP, which is tracable back to my home. My home Internet provider would give up my info in a heart beat, including what checking account I pay my bill with. They know when I got on the plane, who I was with, and were I got off. Checking either with the rental car places at the airport or my credit cards, they know what car I'm driving. They know I went to a department store and bought kid toys and party supplies(for a kids birthday), a grocery store and bought a good bit of beer (for myself).
Based on that, they could easily know where I am. I didn't get a hotel, and I haven't purchased gas yet, I'm probably still in the area, so who do I know in the area (phone records, previous contacts). They could go as far as to ask my cell phone provider what tower is my closest contact. That'll narrow me down to 4 miles.
Based on that, they probably know what house or apartment I'm in, and it wouldn't take much creativity to figure out what's here (phones, Internet).
So (oh my goodness), the big brother system knows what house I'm in, that I'm drinking beer and reading/writing on Slashdot. If they're really good, they can see two SSH connections back to one of my servers too.
4:30am, he's drinking beer, working on servers, and on
But you have to ask yourself, why would they track me? They wouldn't. I'm rather boring. No warrants, not a suspect in anything (right now).
If the big brother system was this good, it may actually be a good thing. Got someone with a warrant? Wait til they show up anywhere, and voila, send the cops to pick them up. *AND* if say something happens in my home city (where I'm not at right now), it would be obvious that it wasn't me.
Ybor City, in Tampa Florida, put together a more difficult system. It was facial recognition, where it would check against NCIC and try to guess pedestrians with warrants. From what I've read in the press, it failed miserably. Why hope that someone will walk past a camera and hope to get a cop there before he gets away? You could wait for him to go grocery shopping, and have a patrol car show up while he's still loading the car.
Would a big brother system be good? Probably not. The detectives now are overworked, underpaid, and don't have the time to make a few phone calls (outlines in the first few steps) to track dow
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
. . . but it was built by some hyperintelligent pandimensional beings (whose physical manifestation in their own pandimensional universe is not dissimilar to our own). Downside, is it's busy calculating 'The Answer', whatever that is . .
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
let's keep denying it... that will help...
you know back in the day... 1998 you could actually traceroute your traffic down to missouri, for every traceroute, no matter where the site was, invariably the traffic would go there. Then suddenly it stopped, it appeared as if the traffic didn't need to go there anymore.
Here's the scoop... huge government server farms there... the government bought its secrecry from buying router access from telcos so their sites don't appear on internet radar.
another juicy tidbit... the u.s and britain actually spy on each other then trade the data back and forth to avoid laws in each country. each country can't legally spy on most of it's citizens without massive legal stink. so the easiest way is to let your ally do it then trade data.
No, you're right computers don't exist in today's society. I know we can all continue to be lemmings of the world!
WAKE UP! THINK about how much technology can be bought with billions of dollars. You need to start thinking of server farms of teraflop computers, YES it's possible to store EVERYTHING, RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW!
In Denmark we've had a civil registration system for hundreds of years, and in the 1960's it became centralized. A wide range of information about births, deaths, marriages, divorces, jobs, education, and other information that the government collects is referenced by the CPR number, which is a national ID number for all Danish residents.
These databases are controlled by a fairly strong Data Protection Act which prohibits cross-referencing different databases using the CPR number, except in special circumstances, and any such special permit is always made public.
There is, however, one exception: the Statistical Bureau. They have access to most public databases and are allowed to cross-reference them in order to compile statistics. We don't have a census in Denmark because all the information is already available.
This is a very powerful tool for researchers. They can ask a question like "How many males who graduated from this particular primary school subsequently went on to be convicted of a serious crime?", and have it answered by the Statistical Bureau within a couple of weeks. They simply have to type in an SQL query. It's also much easier to find relationships between schools, workplaces and illnesses like cancer. They can also ask questions such as "How many people whose parents were divorced will go on to have a divorce?" with a simple SQL query, instead of the extensive surveys that are required in other countries.
The RISKS, on the other hand, are obvious.
Whoa, parent is way off topic and not funny at all. And somehow it got modded up. Americans are really ignorant, the article was about a super-computer for gods sake! not a war story!
Well, with today's technology the government/EU certainly could collect a lot of information about it's citizens.
;-)
I had a funny experience with a Dutch central government agency that is supposed to do all wiretapping for the police. They contacted me because they wanted to tap one of our customer's e-mail domains on tax fraud suspicions.
It took them two weeks to figure out who was handling the mail for the suspicious company's domain (us). Then they wanted us to forward all mail to a mailbox at a free mail provider. This mailbox almost immediately filled up and started sending 'mailbox full' messages to the original senders.
Big brother has a lot to learn...
X.
(BTW: I changed the sender addresses as a precaution
It looks to me like this is another attempt by THEM to distract the public from Bielefeld, the German city that does not exist.
Lemme guess, there's some geeky chick named Satsukiyachi adminning the thing? ...
:p
Oh, come on, this is Slashdot, and it's swamped with anime fanatics. Someone's got to know what I'm talking about.
Some countries, like New Zealand, have very strict rules about what information government departments can share. As far as I know, the EU does not have such rules. Nonetheless, I know many people who work in the EU, including in the IT departments, and the idea of a "supercomputer" of some kind is so laughable...
Firstly, the different sections of the EU are so jealous about gaining and holding power that they barely collaborate, and would never allow such a centralization of information (and thus power).
Secondly, the state of the art of IT in the EU is amazingly poor. Actually, it's quite normal, given the huge amounts of money thrown at it. One of the laws of IT systems is that lots of money means shitty systems.
Thirdly, no-one in the EU administration really cares about such things. Seriously: the idea of acting as a Big Brother is a joke... all the Eurocrats want is their perk, their rules, their little niche in the United States of Europe.
Not so different from any large civilian government...
If there is a risk of a 'supernational database' one should look at law enforcement. Until 11/9, there was a definite 'not my problem' attritude to cross-border crime inside Europe. Since 11/9, police have started sharing information, and since most European countries hold full records of all their citizens (the UK is one of the few exceptions), it is a short step from sharing databases on criminals to sharing databases on everyone possible.
Finally, to answer the poster who mentioned the East German Stasi, one has to really understand the motives of any government. The DDR was obsessed with controlling its people. The EU is obsessed with straight bananas and olive oil quotas. There is a real difference, and it's not accidental.
Vive l'Europe... never have so many useless mid-level managers been happily occupied with useless works.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Apple's G5 is the fastest and most powerfull computer in THE WORLD therfore if there is a computer out there that can do all this stuff its probably an Apple supercomputer running G5.
GO APPLE!
Is there a connection between the Beast in this guy's story, and GWB-666, The Beast, in Robert Anton Wilson's Schrodringer's cat?
(Note: if the beast is explained in Illuminatus!, i haven't read that...)
Some fourteen-year-old kids in America act ignorantly, true enough. I understand that children act childishly in other countries as well. Of course, the person who posted may not be 14, but I understand that there are jackasses of all ages everywhere you go. Seems to have something to do with the human condition. But it's incorrect to say that all Americans are ignorant.
What is ignorant is stereotyping 300 million people with one sentence. You bloody, stupid, ignorant bastard.
Please note that I am not calling everyone from your country ignorant. Just you, you stupid, ignorant, fucking bastard.
Please rot in hell.
Sincerely,
An American
It's so easy for one country to keep a rumor like this alive in order to hide the draconian measures they have in their own homeland in order to track their citizens. "Look at how bad the other country is! With all those rumors, there must be a grain of truth!". Disinformation, all of it, to make Europe look more nefarious than it is and draw attention away from other, more realistic and already existing endeavors to track people.
You can't escape... Muhahahah :D
One weird thing about this article is the mention here and elsewhere of "The Beast" being part of the movie, The Rapture. It's been a long time since I saw that movie but I don't remember anything about a supercomputer, just a sort of boring plot with some nice shots of Mimi Rogers. Odd reference.
In your face Echelon, who's my bitch ?, you are, thats who.
And in related news, Sam Lowry, in an interview with reporters concerning a recent highly publicised arrest of a terrorist suspect, insists, "Mr. Buttle is not the same man known as Mr. Tuttle -- they are two different people."
A spokesman for the Ministry of Information denies the charge and claims those 16 words are a a distortion of real events.
Why start ridicule people who are "conspiracists" and think people in power would do anything to stay in power (or get more)? Have you guys forgotten ww2? Ever heard of romania? Russia? Big centralized power structures tend to develop in the same way over and over again. Now we (europeans) have Schengen. Do some google'ing, and you'll find stuff like this or this. You could proberbly find even better stuff, I dont spend to much time on this issues myself(though maybe I should). I do think I know that these structures of unlimited power, and little to none opennes(remember that someone have to have pushed that agenda you know. Why would anyone do that? Why the secrecy??) are dangerous.
Read some history books.
Porn.
Ok, your a geek
The lunatic is in my head
Not only that, but you provide beer from the abbey of Leffe to the rest of the world!
:)
(mmmmmmmmmmmmmm)
Thanks Belgium
I'm a chainsmokin' alcoholic sociopath, so-ci-o-path
They know I went to a department store and bought kid toys and party supplies (for a kids birthday), a grocery store and bought a good bit of beer (for myself).
(...)
But you have to ask yourself, why would they track me? They wouldn't. I'm rather boring. No warrants, not a suspect in anything (right now).
And to draw the conspiracy theory further, where you go from monitoring to guesstimation: Imagine you liked alcopops and not beer. And then some übercomputer corrolates your alcopop purchase with your kid toys purchases (as if the computer knows what's for who). Next thing you know, it'll mark you as a potential pedo loading up for a "party" where you get the kids wasted and do unspeakable things.
Not like a flat out accusation of course. But one of a many small flags that could suddenly end up being one big, and you have to prove yourself innocent against a massive amount of circumstancial "evidence".
The idea of a Big Brother computer is not so they can monitor you if you think they're dangerous, people have been doing that ever since the first cave man worried about being clobbered, it's about monitoring everybody in order to raise flags when triggered by a computer. Which is also why you need a supercomputer to process and corrolate the data.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Isaac Asimov once wrote short stories about an uber-computer called "Multivac" that controlled all world trade, education, science, etc.
I really could't resist to think about some guy who's name's ASCII codes add to the number of of the Beast:
BILLGATESIII
66 + 73 + 76 + 76 + 71 + 65 + 84 + 69 + 83 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 666
If you want more examples go here.
And if you take it too seriously visit this site.
and there it is the 'beast'! Just think about how much information is gathered in dayly life. Any kind of electronic payment, mobile phones, school records, work record, bank, mortgage (remember all the funny questions they requested?), immigration, webbrowsing, e-mail, telefon, ..... ...
All you need to create this 'supercomputer' is an interface that querries all this excisting databases. So far nobody bothered (dared?) to do that - but an other 9/11 and
The myth about the "Beast of Brussels" is not of European origin AFAIK. It builds heavily on religious drivel about Satan. Such religious myths are not very common in Europe. I am a European, and I have never heard it over here. I would not be surprised if it turned out that this story originated in the USA, where conspiracy tales with a religious undertone are far more common. The article says this:
'The Beast' is actually the invention of Christian fiction writer Joe Musser, who included it in his book Behold a Pale Horse in 1970. In the book a gigantic three-storey computer is located in the administrative headquarters of the then Common Market.
Bingo!
Save the money for repainting the EU HQ. The Beast is already there, available for public use...
http://www.google.com/search?q=john+smith+life
Stereotypes are a bad thing, sure. But you should also wonder about how the stereotype of the loud, obnoxious and ignorant American arose, and why it's so persistent.
I know that the US population is not all ignorant. But if one were to watch the news, the behaviours of Americans overseas, and the online fora, it is very easy to get the impression that the vast majority are ignorant, and further, have no desire to change the situation.
Coupled with the bull-in-a-china-shop approach to international affairs, it's little wonder that so many people feel the way they do about Americans in the large.
Fight stereotypes -- they're rarely helpful -- but also consider fighting to make your own population less easily able to be pigeonholed so. Reworking public education and disengaging from Big Stick diplomacy might be a good start.
A beowulf cluster of these...
Wait, has this been said before?
The "giant computer" story has been around for decades, spread by the tin-foil hat brigade of the "Michael Journal", and more recently by silly sites like this one. These people are several swings short of a playground.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Believe in the literal translation of the beast. The one in the bible. Believe in the literal translation of the mark (666 on the forehead). Anyone who believes that a computer can be all knowing is full of himself. First, the computer would have to have enough storage not just to know what you look like, but to know you. To know your EVERY thought. To know your every memory. Consider that. Then realize how stupid it sounds in saying a computer could be made to do this. Even IBM's ESS would not have the storage capacity for ONE humans memory let alone all of the other stuff it would have to know to be all knowing. This is why I say believe in the Beast, but not as a computer, but as what the bible says the beast is. To believe anything other than this is to believe in what would really be a lesser image of the beast.
Should we fear computers and RFID tags that are setup to collect informatiion from us? Well, that depends. Personally I don't care if the computer knows that a person from my zip code bought x item. If this is the way they tracked it, it could be very useful to the marketer, but not as onerous sounding as if the tracked it specifically to you or specifically to your address.
I personally am fine with RFID use as I doubt a RFID small enough to be put on clothing would work very much beyond the distance of the store, and I also doubt that the store would leave it active after you left anyway since that would make it a bit hard of you to go back in to the store without setting off alarms! So I am not scared of RFID's.
What I don't want to see is the gunpowder in ammo be tagged. That is one of the latest things that they want to do for guns. If they did this and you accidently shot something like a endagered owl or something, they could track it at least back to the stor ethat sold the bullet and maybe back to you and charge you with something that may not be your fault! They want to do this in the name of making it easier to find murders which it would not do in the least. If this happens, the murders could switch to myskets....seriously. No, I think what is needed is fo rthe cops to patrol a bit more instead of them parking themselves at the local Tim Horton's or Dunkin Donuts!:) IE REAL POLICE WORK!
Gorkman
INTERNET = The Beast
No 'place' for real speech ... all the speech are take by money, buraucrate and machine ...
.........sif Van dam can remember all of those names and details.. ..he's lucky to remember any of his lines at the best of times.
Once uppon a time someone in England told me that story about the 666 and the beast. Well those people are christians/chruch-goers that believe that kind of stuff.
As an IT person and non-religious I tried to explain that computer is no monster, that ignorance is the thing that leads then to believe that kind of tale.
There will always be tales like these, while ignorant people remain at large throughout this planet.
In Russia the Beowulf Cluster imagines you?
So these are your points. 1) Stereotypes are bad. 2) The people who are stereotyped should police their own so that they won't continue to be stereotyped. This is the logical conclusion of your remarks: There are three groups: 1) The people who do ignorant things. 2) Those who stereotype larg groups. 3) The folks who are doing neither. Your advice: Group three is the group who has the work to do. BTW, Big Stick diplomacy looks pretty good when you're on the right end. And wise up -- everyone would use the big stick if they could. It ammounts to jealousy.
In the US it is now common to use bank account cards to purchase everything. If you assume that the government could capture the feeds from all the banks and credit card information, then, storage requirements for such an animal would break out conservatively as:
300 million citizens x 5 purchases per day x 4 bytes fk into SSN table x 4 bytes for long id of item purchased x 365 days x 60 years = 262.8 Tbytes which is A LOT, but doable.
To track everything for just a rolling 5 years, rather than 60, then your storage requirements drop down to 21TB, and then further if you actually assumed only 2 purchases per day (on average), you could knock it down to 8TB, and finally, if you assumed that 150 million citizens were actually buying stuff as the other were children, then, you could knock it down to 4TB. Given today's hard drive prices, this would almost be within the range of affordability for a small business or even a determined hobbyist.
So, the real issue is not, will the government be tracking everything, because, since it so cheap to do it it probably already does, but, the real issue will be, when will we use Kazaa to collect all the purchases everyone made simply for our own entertainment!
This is my sig.
It is a fact that the U.S. government has agencies such as the FBI, CIA, and NSA. It is a fact that these operate everywhere in the world they want to operate. It is a fact that these agencies are almost completely secret, and are even authorized to lie in the media to hide their activities. It is a fact that these agencies have money that is kept secret from the American people. No U.S. citizen can know how much taxpayer money is spent, or the specific ways the money is spent.
For decades there have been credible stories about U.S. government secret agencies developing relationships with the agencies of other governments. These stories say that the relationships are used to infiltrate and control the agencies of the other governments. They also say that the secret agencies of other governments are used to do things that would be illegal and risky for the U.S. government's agencies to do. One of these things is collecting information about U.S. citizens.
Have you ever noticed that the U.S. government almost invariably supports dictators? The U.S. government supported Diem in Vietnam and Saddam Hussein in Iraq, to name two of a long list. U.S. weapons makers were delivering weapons to Iraq until a month before the first war of the U.S. government against Iraq.
Many of the methods of the U.S. government support the profits of U.S. weapons makers. It is illegal for the U.S. government to give taxpayer money directly to private businesses. It is not illegal for the U.S. government to give money to foreign countries to buy high-profit weapons from U.S. weapons companies.
The U.S. government support for dictators appears to exist because dictatorships can give money to the people in the U.S. government's hidden agencies.
When there are secret agencies in a government, there is a huge conflict of interest. If things go well in the world, the employees of secret agencies lose their jobs. If one of the employees finds a way to create trouble, all the employees get job security.
I am completely against violence. I think violence is a symptom of mental illness. I think killing people and destroying their property is the least socially sophisticated way of solving problems.
However, I think that Usama bin Laden's complaints about the U.S. government were justified. Bin Laden said that the U.S. government was supporting the dictatorship of the al Saud in Saudi Arabia. This is true.
Bin Laden said that the U.S. government was giving money and other kinds of support for killing Arabs and Muslims. This is true. The U.S. government contributes perhaps $5 billion per year, every year, so that the government of Israel can buy weapons made by U.S. weapons manufacturers that are used to kill Arabs and Muslims. The U.S. government supported the creation of a new country, Israel, on land already occupied by Arabs and Muslims. That support continues.
Note that there are fewer Jews in Israel than in the United States, and only 14 million Jews in the entire world. Note also that it is incorrect to say that someone is anti-Semitic when they are anti-Jewish, because both Jews and Arabs are Semitic. Note that saying that Jews should find a non-violent way of living in the world is pro-Jewish.
The U.S. television program "60 Minutes" has twice run a segment about the desire of fundamentalist Christian extremists in the U.S. to see all Jews killed or converted to Christianity. Nothing could insure that a lot of Jews will be killed more than encouraging the violent elements in Israel by donating weapons. Without the support of these "Christian" extremists, George W. Bush could not have been elected.
Arabs and Muslims don't like being killed. They are people like us, who have families. They see the U.S. government fighting violence with more violence. They see the U.S. government acting in secrecy. They saw the Bush administration appoint a general to be the head of the U.S. State Department. A general is a person who has devoted
The computer monitors the System Administrator!
Very strong on paper, perhaps, but in practice they are not widely followed, and I have never heard of a case of an institution or business being in trouble for breaking the laws on data privacy. Add to this the fact that any implementation of these laws is done at the national level... and you do not get much of a feeling in Europe that private data is safe.
"Strong laws that are widely ignored" is somewhat of an oxymoron. I chose the example of New Zealand specifically because this is a place where the laws are both strongly worded, and taken seriously.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
In both cases, you 'mericans only showed up a couple of years later...
AND WON THE FUCKING WAR THANK YOU VERY MUCH FAGGOT
I'm sure the Belgians fought valiantly in the World Wars- certainly better than the French- but let's get something clear here:
By the way, have they found any WMD's yet in Iraq? Didn't think so...
Tell me, how many other countries in the UN thought that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction?
Here's a hint: Pretty much all of them. Time after Time, the UN signed many resolutions condemming Iraq and calling for their disarmement- over 12 years! The UN inspectors were periodically kicked out, blocked, slowed, and fucked with, for twelve years. And the UN was screaming bloody murder the entire time!
And now, because we've only found traces in the couple months we've been there (as opposed to nothing in the 12 years the UN fucked around) You're getting all uppity?
Go fuck yourself. The UN would talk until the end of time about how bad Iraq was, but the moment it looked like the United States might actually enforce all the UN carping about Iraq, we see France, Germany, and Russia change their tune. A few other meaningless countries did so as well. I can't remember if Belgium was on that meaningless country list, I'm sure you know. Incidentally, I'd like to remind you that 'unilateral' does not mean 'without france.' We had a couple dozen nations (testicles and morals still intact) backing us on Iraq.
The UN pretends to be for the good, and everything, but as soon as it threatens the profits and sweetheart oil deals of some of its members, that 12 years of tough talk fade into dust. And you're bitching because we can't find in a couple months what was hidden from the UN for 12 years. Do yo ever think what you say through all the way?
And moreover, even if we never find a couple thousand cannisters of VX laying around to wave in the face of morons like you, the war was justified on so many other levels, it doesn't matter.
I think you're just pissed off because the US was the leading nation in a very large group of nations that decided to back words with action- something the UN never does.
As soon as belgium grows a pair of twenty-first century balls, give us a phone call. No one gives a shit how great you were 60 years ago.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
> Said machine was supposed to track all world trade through
:-\
:r g/irp/program/process/echelon.htm
...biometric technology
m ay03_re port.pdf
i asyste mdescription.pdf
x ter.html
> monitoring the buying and selling of every citizen on the planet...
> These could be seen by infrared scanners at 'special verification
> counters' (cash tills, to you and us).
so, now we can finally all rest assured,
since it was all just a fiction... OR CAN WE...!?
>> ECHELON
http://www.echelonwatch.org/
http://www.fas.o
ECHELON attempts to capture staggering volumes of satellite,
microwave, cellular and fiber-optic traffic... This massive
surveillance system apparently operates with little oversight.
>> TOTAL INFORMATION AWARENESS:
http://www.epic.org/privacy/profiling/tia/
The goal is to track individuals through collecting as much
information about them as possible...
The project calls for the development of ultra-large all-source
information repositories, which would contain information from
multiple sources to create a 'virtual, centralized, grand
database.' This database would be populated by transaction
data contained in current databases such as financial records,
medical records, communication records, and travel records as
well as new sources of information.
to enable the identification and tracking of individuals.
DARPA has already funded its 'Human ID at a Distance' program,
which aims to positively identify people from a distance
through technologies such as face recognition or gait recognition.
A nationwide identificationsystem would be of great assistance
to such a project by providing aneasy means to track individuals
across multiple information sources.
TIA Report to Congress May 2003.
http://www.epic.org/privacy/profiling/tia/
Congress Report Executive Summary and FAQ May 2003:
http://www.darpa.mil/body/tia/TIA%20ES.pdf
TIA System Description (PDF, 4.5 MB):
http://www.epic.org/privacy/profiling/tia/t
Poindexter's August 2002 Speech:
http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/poinde
???
You will all be happier when you get your alien implant. Servant of the Beast.
And moreover, even if we never find a couple thousand cannisters of VX laying around to wave in the face of morons like you, the war was justified on so many other levels, it doesn't matter.
Would you care to share with us what just a few of those "so many other levels" of justification were?
Good luck. There weren't any other levels of justification. Saddam was a threat precisely because it was believed that he had threatening weapons. Without the threatening weapons there is no threat. Without the threat the entire war is un-justified.
Like you said, the 12 years of UN inspections were so unsuccessful, maybe that was because there was nothing for them to be successful at.
Explain again exactly how that would not be your fault
You take gun, you shoot something. I'm pretty sure your actions were the direct cause of the effect. It might not have been intentional, but it was your fault. Plea for a reduced sentance :)
Chris -- http://www.bitter.net/
Just make sure you pull your tinfoil hat down to your eyes. :)
Complete blind trust is too much of a risk.
Paranoia is a condition of insanity, or at least unreasonability. Paranoids, for example, might be unimportant, unremarkable people who believe they are specifically being targetted for government surveillance and subtle interference in their lives.
People who simply worry that elements of the gov't are struggling to increase their power in, and worry that the power may be misused, are not paranoid. That's a reasonable concern.
It's like if someone on the street comes up an asks to see your credit card. Now, any given person is probably not trying to rob you, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea to show such a person your credit card. Thieves exist.
Similarly, corruption exists. Gov'ts go bad. It happens all the time. Look around the world, and you'll see more intolerably messed up ones than good ones. Everyone living in a good country needs to keep an eye on their gov't to keep it good.
The Soviet Union won the war. Read some history to supplement your Hollywood movies. 80% of the fighting in ww2 happened on the Eastern front.
I have never heard this particular urban myth before. That might be my own ignorance, but I like to think I'm kinda plugged in...which leads me to believe this rumour isn't circulating as widely in Europe as the article would lead us to believe.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
This article, while written before most of us were born, is still relevant.
"Leetspeak" be damned!
It was done TO the US, by France. The DGSE stole American trade secrets for the benefit of French countries. I really don't see why we consider them "allies", they screw us every chance they get.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. --Edmund Burke
They ought to have a preview button or something. ^_^
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. --Edmund Burke
There is no need to tag people. Each one of us has a biometric signature of visible, audible, "smell"able patterns from the large (body shape) to the small (DNA) whch can collaborate to uniquely identify us.
The "lapsus" in using these patterns is two fold: One, the technology is still expensive, potentially flawless but poorly distributed and expensive. Two, it has an entrenched, flawed but in "situ" infrastructure to displace.
Once these two problem are overcome, in time they will be, we're going to be soooo fucked!
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
How do you argue with the statement that only people engaged in criminal activity need to fear total surveilance? Here's how: Rosa Parks broke the law when she refused to give up her seat on a bus in 1955. That started the human rights campaign in the United States and eventually the law was changed. Stonewall Riot in 1969 was the beginning of gay rights in the United States. Again the laws have been changed to legitimize gays and lesbians. Some laws are wrong, others are unjust and many simply poorly written and should be removed. We need privacy in order to fight unjust laws so society can evolve. Without privacy, society will wither and die.
I am not surprised, considering the EU track record of total disregard for citizens' privacy rights.
The Central European Bank, you'll remember, is planning to insert radioID tag chips in every euro banknote. The cover story is that it would make counterfeiting harder. The swiped-under-the-rug consequence is that cash would become as traceable as wiring transfers or credit card transactions, a paramount consideration in EU where the high taxation level (60% of the GNP avg) are driving a lot of people to take jobs "on the side".
In France, a country which has very strict laws against cross-indexing personal data files, the French IRS bought new IBM RS/6000 in the 90s and bought the subscriber list of a very popular encrypted TV channel, Canal Plus. Then it checked the subscriber list for people who were not paying the TV tax (about $130/year for owning a color TV). That kind of Big-Brotherish tax enforcement gave little trust in the privacy reassurances uttered by the bureaucrats.
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
Steven DenBeste goes into great detail here.
Here's some of my thoughts on the matter:
1. No one disputes Saddam was a brutal dictator to his own people. For that reason alone, the war was justified. It's true that we don't go around killing every brutal dictator in the world, even though we could- but Saddam made the mistake of getting our attention.
2. He funded palestinian and al-qaieda terrorists. We don't take kindly to those who fund our enemies, or the enemies of our friends.
3. We had to finish what we started in the first gulf war. Bush Sr. was idiotic for humilating Saddam but leaving him in power. Moreover, we owed a moral debt to the Iraqi's who rose up in Rebellion at our request in the dying days of the war, only to abandon them by stopping at the border. But perhaps you think that Saddam was justified invading Kuwait?
There's a few, go read the USS clueless website linked to above for many, many more. If you can seriously refute any of DenBeste's points, do let me know.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Are you trying to dethrone Moore ?
Hahaha .... No bitch , the attack on Belgium was a fucking diversion.
... That's almost like "French heroes" not quite, but close.
Ever heard about Ardennes ?
Fucking Belgian heroes haha
Belgians are known for their waffles and being German bitches every time a war breaks out.
Ah , well recently being also laughing stock of the world with the pathetic "crime-laws".
Belgian army - LOL
All of the databases that actually do contain our information (credit bureaus, utility companies, etc.) virtually guarantee to screw something up eventually.
Any master database will, within a few years of collecting data, contain at least one error in every field.
Leaving you unrecognizable, unlocatable, and uncontrollable.
I remember hearing stories about this Beast of Brussels in the mid 70s. Another urban legend.
Information that supports my earlier comment:
Judging from their comments, most people who post to Slashdot have very little understanding of the activities of the U.S. government. There have been many, many abuses concerning the collection of information. To prevent some of these abuses, the U.S. Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in 1978, and has since modified the law seven times. "The purpose of FISA was to create a wall between criminal investigations and intelligence gathering that would decrease the numerous abuses by the government's intelligence and law enforcement agencies during the 1950s, 60s and 70s."
The U.S. government has killed about 3,000,000 people since the beginning of the Vietnam war. The U.S. government has bombed 24 countries in the 58 years since the Second World War. The list below includes only countries bombed, not countries in which the U.S. government was responsible for other violence. The list includes only violence since the Second World War, not the extensive violence before the war. Most U.S. citizens are surprised and skeptical when they see the list, so a few links have been provided to supporting information. For more information, try the Google search engine or see the links below.
There are many sources for this information. For example, see this PBS web page: PBS: A Chronology of U.S. Military Interventions (PBS is the Public Broadcasting System in the U.S.) Also see From Wounded Knee to Afghanistan: A Century of U.S. Military Interventions [zmag.org] and The government of the United States is a consistent opponent of international law. [prairie-fire.org]
I put some links and explanation together about wh
>In both cases, you 'mericans only showed up a couple of years later...
I hear you mate. Although I'm amazed at how many people died for little Belgium, I'm more amazed at how the Yanks went from "no wars just or not" to "any war any time"
My list of multiplayer
No wonder you like killing people
The Belgian governement is unable to setup a simple administrative database application without a project delay for months.
And you are talking about a supercomputer in Brussels?
ridiculous.
Belgium and warfare?
...
Somehow these two don't seem to fit together.
"By the way, have they found any WMD's yet in Iraq? Didn't think so... "
And what are you going to do about it ?
More importantly, what can you do about it ?
--- silence ---
That's what I thought
I got Homeworld: Cataclysm yesterday and finished it today, so the term "Beast" made me do a double take...
[o]_O
"any war any time"
You been reading Chomsky , haven't you ?
Either that or you are just stupid.
No, the Russian countryside won the damn war, commie idiot! The Germans lost because they were stupid enough to take on General Winter.
Crap. Only applies to the initial offensive when they froze outside Moscow.
The real defeats were later in Stalingrad and Kursk, which led the way to the Red Army eventually flattening the Wehrmacht.
US production capacity was a major factor in winning the war in Europe. But the greatest factor was Soviet blood.
IIRC around the end of the war the Germans had one division in Italy, 5 on the Western Front and 20 on the Eastern Front... There's no doubt that compared to the Eastern Front everything else in the European war was a sideshow.
The Beast' is actually the invention of Christian fiction writer Joe Musser,
This kind of fiction is "Christian" only in name. In reality, it's xenophobia and nationalism masquerading as Christianity. Some of the more modern varieties of this kind of drivel, like the "Left Behind" series, make the head of the UN the anti-Christ.
What's particularly ironic about this story is that Europe doesn't even have credit reporting agencies in the way the US has: if you want credit, European banks want to see collateral and income guarantees, not credit ratings. And European businesses aren't permitted to retain or exchange transaction records beyond what is needed for completing business transactions.
But in the US, your complete purchasing histories are being kept track of: between credit reporting agencies, supermarket affinity card records, and your credit/debit card records, there exists an almost complete record of what you buy, and it's not all that difficult for the government or even private entities to get a hold of it. The US government even has tried to get at records of book purchases and library loans.
Sorry, the UN in my view has been entirely vindicated. France, Germany and Russia (and the Security Council as a whole) said that more time was needed to verify whether weapons of mass destruction were present. Now the US is saying the same thing, after the war, which they justified on the basis of *a clear and present threat* from WMDs. The best case you can make for the "very large group of nations" (which in significant combat terms was the US, US bitches UK and Australia, and Iraqi creditor Poland) were misled by incompetent intelligence agencies.
Or, as is looking increasingly clear in the US, UK and here in Australia, deliberately lied to by governments who were determined to invade Iraq on any pretext whatsover...
At the risk of stating the bleeding obvious, it was the UN Security Council that should have had the final word on what enforcement to take on its own resolutions, not the US, which acted not as the world's policeman but the world's vigilante.
Anyway, it's the US that started the war and it's now the US that's losing a soldier a day and spending US$4-6 billion a month in the aftermath. You've made your bed and you can lie in it. Serves you arrogant, trigger-happy pricks right...
It's called war envy.
;-)
They're compensating for sitting on the sidelines of the two world wars for the first two years of each by starting their own wars.
They need to catch up, you see
In fact IIRC the Belgian resistance in the early days of World War 1 was critical in delaying the German offensive so that the French and British could establish defensive lines and halt the invasion of France.
'The Answer', whatever that is . .
42?
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
4-6 billion a month- chump change for the US.
UN- spineless, and innefectual.
1 soldier a day- tragic, but a small price to pay- we'd much rather have the islamic radicals attacking our soldiers, rather than our airliners.
There's a gap between what the UN says, and what it does. That's called credibility. And it's pretty fuckin big gap for the United Nations.
By the way, we brought the UN into this world, and we can take it out. The UN was formed to support US interests abroad. It no longer serves our interests. Tell me, would there be any point to the UN if the US left?
No. Because the UN would have no money, no NY headquaters, and no useful military.
Oh yeah, that's not arrogance, that's pride.
Fuckin AC won't even own his words. I don't know why I waste my time.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
"we'd much rather have the islamic radicals attacking our soldiers, rather than our airliners."
And the connection between Iraq and 911 is??? Yes Iraq supported Palestinian terrorists against Israel, but Al-Quaeda is a Saudi-financed operation. When's the invasion of Saudi Arabia on?
"There's a gap between what the UN says, and what it does. That's called credibility. And it's pretty fuckin big gap for the United Nations."
Nope, in the case of Iraq it's the US that's lacking credibility. The UN's credibility is looking better every day that WMDs aren't found.
"By the way, we brought the UN into this world, and we can take it out. The UN was formed to support US interests abroad. It no longer serves our interests. Tell me, would there be any point to the UN if the US left?
No. Because the UN would have no money, no NY headquaters, and no useful military.
Oh yeah, that's not arrogance, that's pride."
No, it's the sort of bloody-minded, "Fuck you Joe, I'm all right" arrogance that is making the USA the most hated nation on the planet. (By the way, re "no money", how long did the US delay on paying its dues again? It hit the UN hard, but it kept going) The US is now doing to the United Nations what it did to the League of Nations. I don't think it's any coincidence that the US going feral is after the last of the WWII generation has left the US political scene; the UN, like other structures of international law, was set up by the US after WWII because they'd seen where American unilateralism had led the world in the '30's. At present the US is top dog and thinks these structures only limit it; wait a couple of decades until China builds up its military and you've got some competition again and then you'll see why these structures were put into place.
Own my words? I'm only AC because I don't have a login. Here goes: my name is Malcolm Street, I live in Canberra, Australia and my email address is mstreet@ga.gov.au. You're not the first ultra-nationalist American I've crossed swords with on the 'Net and you won't be the last.
Or Christianity masquerading as xenophobia and nationalism. "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition".
As an EU citizen I'm relieved that this rumour has finally been scotched after decades. I only wish I'd actually heard it first, so I might have had even a brief opportunity to disbelieve it. Perhaps soon rumours will circulate that this rumour was once widely circulated. I shouldn't give them much credit though.
Doubt.It, The comic
Your email address didn't work, so you revert back to spineless AC. Have a nice day, and when you decide to take ownership for your own words, please let me know.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.