Slashdot Mirror
Surveillance Is on the Rise, Straining Carriers
Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "The number of telephone wiretaps from 2000 to 2004 authorized by state and federal judges increased by 44%, the Wall Street Journal reports, in part because of a rise in terrorism investigations after 9/11, and because the Patriot Act extended surveillance to Internet providers. All the surveillance activity can put a strain on carriers. 'Smaller telecom companies in particular have sought help from outsiders in order to comply with the court-ordered subpoenas, touching off a scramble among third parties to meet the demand for assistance', the WSJ reports, adding, 'Government surveillance has intensified even more heavily overseas, particularly in Europe. Some countries, such as Italy, as well as government and law-enforcement agencies, are able to remotely monitor communications traffic without having to go through the individual service providers. To make it easier for authorities to monitor traffic, some also require registering with identification before buying telephone calling cards or using cybercafes.'"
The #1 theme of the Bush administration has been fear: terrorists, they say, are an existential threat so dire that any and all means used to oppose them are justified.
No.
Various nations have seen and defeated far worse threats than terrorism. Liberty is not a weakness, it is a strength. A robust and fair justice system is not a weakness, it is a strenghth. Democracy is not a weakness, it is a strength. Combined they serve as the absolute best form of not only protecting ourselves from others but protecting ourselves from ourselves.
I wholly reject the notion that the threat posed by "terrorism" is so substantial as to justify any tactic. I am not afraid, and I will not be goaded into fear by the government. I will fight, but I will fight for liberty, justice, and democracy, and will oppose all efforts to undermine them, whether from abroad or at home. I hope those of like mind throughout the civilized world will do similarly.
Actually, I don't believe they are. I don't think it's anything like as systematic; I think instead that the problem is far more fundamental --- the democratic system of government, with elections every few years, means that:
So you end up with a series of knee-jerk reactions to every minor crisis that comes along. Your intelligence services (with their blinkered view of the real world) are pressuring you to give them greater powers so that they can gather more information; your political advisors (who only care about keeping you elected) are pressuring you to do something to keep your ratings up; you can't think of anything else to do, and doing nothing is not an option.
So I don't think there is any organised conspiracy of the New World Order trying to control the world via mind-control lasers and chips in people's heads. I think what you're seeing is simply the emergent effect as entropy builds up in your political system.
I'd say sooner than 10 years the way the world is heating up around us. China will be dwarving us in their shadow within that amount of time (they could crush us right now by not taking our debt if they wanted to, but that wouldn't help them grow to their full potential), we will still be complaining about a lack of oil as Russia uses their deep-well technology to catch up with Saudi Arabia's 2 trillion barrel reserves (and projects to sustain it for the next century), and more urgently Iran may fight back just hard enough to break our morale completely when we try to force their hand. America is looking pretty hobbled these days, and I can only pray we wake up before the shit hits the fan once and for all. We have been lied to for so long now, the thought of rejecting any of it would mean rejecting a part of our lives, which is an incredibly hard thing for a normal human to do. We Americans are GOOD people. We have terrible leadership, and we have become apathetic and lazy, but letting the so called 'leaders' give us our milk and tell us when to take naps, as they go out and rape, murder, and pillage in our names is intolerable.
The internet is really the only hope we have left of breaking this downward spiral before its TOO LATE and someone else does it for us - and mind you, they're quickly catching on to that idea. I hate sounding like a paranoid freak, but goddamnit that's exactly how this whole shebang works. If you believe in our military-approved medias, you've got a lot of catching up to do. Read as much about everything going on in the world as you can from as many different sources as you can. You still never get a complete picture, but its like getting lasek eye surgery after wearing coke bottle glasses for 10 years.
Oh and I've turned off scores on all comments and set up my preferences to make them all as near to 0 as I can get. I just realized how much valuable insight can be completely missed by skimming all the highly rated comments. Try it sometime.
You're nothing; like me.
One trouble with that, as with all utopian visions, is that implementation never follows design. As Communism inexorably devolves into dictatorial oligarchy, a select few would have privacy while the rest lived as slaves to the Eye.
Even if that weren't to happen, democratic tyranny would be unavoidable. If everyone knows what everyone else is doing, a sheeplike uniformity would be the result, with any oddballs subjected to public disgrace. "You painted your bathroom what color? Weirdo!" "Look, he's got a flashlight under the covers! He's doing something private under there! Pervert!" "You spanked your child? Abuse! Abuse!"
Some of the greatest joys in life are private. A quiet conversation with a spouse. Reading a bedtime story to a wide-eyed child. Singing off-key in the car. Posting anonymous trolls on Slashdot.
The right to privacy is not just an invention of the courts to justify abortion, though some read Roe v Wade that way. Privacy is infused in the Bill of Rights, from the right to practice religion as we see fit, the right not to have troops in our homes, the right to own weapons, and the right to be secure in our "persons, houses, papers, and effects".
Whether abused by the powerful or not, the world Brin proposes is a totalitarian hell.
sigs, as if you care.