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Big Brother Really Is Watching Us All
siddesu writes "The BBC has a nice high-level overview of some technologies for surveillance developed in the US and the UK. 'The US and UK governments are developing increasingly sophisticated gadgets to keep individuals under their surveillance. When it comes to technology, the US is determined to stay ahead of the game ... But it [a through-the wall sensing device in development] will also show whether someone inside a house is looking to harm you, because if they are, their heart rate will be raised. And 10 years from now, the technology will be much smarter. We'll scan a person with one of these things and tell what they're actually thinking.'"
Boy that surprise birthday present sure landed me in jail quick. I hope I can explain that brand new S&M outfit adequately in court!
Always going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse.
Gotta love the people... they elect SUCH nice people into office to make these decisions.
If the g'vt kept the data on you that google does you'd better believe you'd be calling it "doing evil"
I'll become a millionaire overnight selling my own brand of tin-foil clothing!
CAUTION: May cook organs/skin during warm weather.
Terrorists will simply train themselves to remain calm and lower their heartrate.
* chirp * chirp *
.. I'll just think of tub girl and goatse.cx man all day. take that fuckers.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
"And 10 years from now, the technology will be much smarter. We'll scan a person with one of these things and tell what they're actually thinking."
I call crap on this. We will be able to detect biometric data. We will not be able to tell "what you're thinking."
We'll be able to automatically detect what someone is going to do and kill them before they do it... all without human intervention.
I grew up in Poland in the 1960s and 1970s. This is the sort of shit we dealt with each day.
The Communists claimed to have devices that could read minds to determine one's intentions. Now, we didn't know if this was true or not. But seeing as many of us wanted to live another day, or at the very least not get tortured, we assumed they did.
It seems that the citizenry of the UK and the US are now in a very similar position....
Thanks to technology, we have little brother keeping an eye out.
I'd rather the government not base their decision on whether to come in guns blazing on something as ridiculous as whether my heart rate is increased above some theoretical average at the time.
*insert obligatory overlord related joke here* Come on people, I know it will eventually be posted, but it's only funny for so long.
echo YOUR_OPINION >
Big brother has nothing on Ceiling cat
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
So in the end, my question is what can we do about it? It's impossible to get the masses (in the US) to actually get out and do something about this right now, I just don't think they care enough. Mass opinion is that if you don't have anything to worry about the government finding then don't worry about them watching you.
The only credible methods I've seen for avoiding surveilance involve actually destroying the surveilance equipment.
The only way to circumvent them is by RF jamming, wire cutting and creating a bright spot around you at all times to flood the camera view - which involves wearing bright LED's or a laser.
Does this mean that eventually there are going to be rogue groups going around and destroying government surveilance equipment? I think so. When you feel you're cornered you do what you have to.
Does this mean that people who are planning terrorist attacks in the future will develop plans to destroy/jam all of the surveilance equipment if they want to get out alive? Definately.
Why did the chicken cross the road?
Big Brother: I've seen many chickens cross many roads. Please specify.
In the snap of the chilly evening,
My face frozen like a thrull,
The roaring of the howling wind
Is deafening to all.
House minions roam out in force,
Trying to fathom thoughts
Of Citizens within their homes,
Whose actions they know naught.
Fahrenheit Four Fifty One, and
Huxley's Brave New World
Form siren lures to power lords
Elected and unfurled.
The weak attempts must duly fail
Of the Bretheren of Cain;
Cordwainer Smith declared it best -
Scanners Live In Vain
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I'd rather the government not base their decision on whether to come in guns blazing on something as ridiculous as whether my heart rate is increased...
They will base the decision on your political expression and activism, the other things will simply justify your murder. The elevated heart rate will come when they ask you if you and your children would like some pancakes. The report will say that they had reason to believe you were armed and dangerous.
Unless the US returns to rule of law, tools used to track individuals will be used to identify, harass, intimidate, disrupt and eliminate opposition. Domestic spying is against the law. Unreasonable search violates the Constitution. It is completely unreasonable for government or industry to keep tables of "gait DNA" and other metrics for people who have not committed crimes. The purpose for this kind of thing is a crime in itself.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Actually, modern technology can detect the magnetic fields that your firing neurons produce right now. This is where you get all those images of "brain activity" that you see. It is very much a non-invasive and passive technology, and could, theoretically, be carried out remotely. If studies are carried out in real situations, they could correlate the patterns of brain activity with the the apparent intent of the individual (assuming that similar intentions make similar patterns). The result is they could tell what you are thinking (in a rudimentary way). It's not really that far fetched.
I'm beginning to think society is getting rather close to an era of ubiquitous surveillance ... where virtually every action (and eventually even thoughts) of every person is viewable, recordable, replayable, broadcastable, etc.
... corporate executives looking to skim a little cream for themselves ... politicians inking secret deals ... extremist groups looking to do harm to others in society ... that asshole neighbour who puts his garbage in front of your house late at night to avoid the excess bag charge ... everybody.
It's a scary thought at first, but then I got to thinking that as the technologies behind this mature and become more powerful (as all technologies do) we will eventually reach a point where "everybody" really means "everybody"
Maybe, just maybe, ubiquitous surveillance will be the thing that saves humankind from the antisocial forces that currently plague us. When anybody can have their actions exposed on YouTube (or whatever the equivalent is in the future), people will be shamed into behaving in decent, harmonious way. It will be like some kind of techno-buddhist utopia.
FTFA: "will also show whether someone inside a house is looking to harm you, because if they are, their heart rate will be raised"
ummmm.... or how about scared shitless from the armed men outside that 'may' want to cause you harm for raising a heart rate!!!
Where's the tags "tinfoilhatbait" or "overlordbait"?
The game.
Jason Bourne... dun dun dun
It seems that all the interesting engineering jobs involve using technology to invade someone's privacy, creating a patent monopoly on a life saving device, or the meaninglessness of creating a better device for people to say "I'm on the bus" to each other. So what exciting engineering jobs are out there, that will make the world a better place to live in (and can preferably be done from Australia)?
We'll scan a person with one of these things and tell what they're actually thinking.'"
Jim, Jim, what's Jack thinking?
Umm...
Well, come-on, Jim. What is it?
Umm... he's thinking that we're a bunch of lamers because we're scanning him with the BB-1600, and everybody who's anybody has a MBB-8, which is what he's got.
Ah, come on. They both work. The MBB-8 just comes in more colors.
Yeah. Mac fan boys. Piss me off.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I'm inclined to agree that we will no more be able to tell what a person is thinking than a computer can understand what they've written. That may not matter: if we think we can know what a person is thinking, then we may act on it anyway. We already are: Ohio Court Admits Lie Detector Tests As Evidence.
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
There is already court precedent for this in the U.S.
Through-the-wall IR scanners have been available to some police departments in the US for a while now. There has already been at least one court case about them.
In the United States (yes, still), it is illegal for officers of law enforcement to use electronic means to determine what is going on in your home without first obtaining a judicial warrant. The case I mentioned dealt with police using an through-the-wall scanner to determine where an alleged drug dealer was inside someone else's house, before they raided it. Because they had not obtained a warrant, the evidence was thrown out of court. The judge ruled that it was clearly an electronic device, and thus fell under the Federal Statute preventing its use.
I wish I had a citation at hand for this case, but I do not. I will try to find it.
"Actually, modern technology can detect the magnetic fields that your firing neurons produce right now. This is where you get all those images of "brain activity" that you see. It is very much a non-invasive and passive technology, and could, theoretically, be carried out remotely."
*sigh*
Now I can see why you all think broadband is "unlimited".
In plain English the energy is too small. The attenuation is too great. And no useful device is sensitive enough. Let along the resolution is too poor. And I haven't even touched upon the issue of matching "brain activity" with "what you think" in other than the most superficial way.
What you can do about the goverment controllin' your life is...
(1) Ignore bogus Nightmare On Elm Street Hollywood-fantasy threats like that the goverment might install cameras everywhere and watch you like a hawk. They won't, and even if they did, it wouldn't matter.
(2) Pay attention to the real threats to your liberty that might sneak under the radar while you're distracted by the bogus threats. Do you wonder, a bit, why the BBC, which wholeheartedly supports as massive and omnipresent a government as possible, is running this story? It's a distraction. Get scared about CCTV cameras, and maybe you won't notice that your ability to choose which doctor to see, or which school to send your kid to, has quietly vanished away.
So pay attention to stuff like the government pre-collecting much or most of your income right out of your pay, before you see it, giving it enormous wealth at its disposal. (Do you think you'll control what they do with that wealth? Could you control General Motors after buying 1 share of their stock?) Avoid letting the Federal government tell your state and local government what to do, with respect to property laws, drugs, et cetera. If you're European, avoid letting the EU tell your national government what to do. Avoid allowing the government to be the sole health-care and old-age pension provider, so you have zero choice about and zero economic leverage over what sort of health-care and old-age pension you'll get. (If you think it's tought influencing your HMO because all they'll lose if they piss you off is 0.001% of their income, imagine how much luck you'll have influencing the government health service when they can force you to pay.)
And so forth. Basically, avoid putting the important decisions about your life into the hands of a government bureucrat. Try to keep those decisions with yourself, or, at worst, with some local government for whom you are one out of (say) 100,000 votes, instead of one out of 100,000,000.
How you do this is simple: next time someone says Wouldn't it be a great idea if government did X or Y, so individuals didn't have to? or The government should DO something about problem Z! just shoot them, and then bury the body wearing gloves so you don't catch the virus.
...he really needs to get a life!
Interestingly, we, the public, don't seem to mind. Opinion polls, both in the US and Britain, say that about 75% of us want more, not less, surveillance.
I think we've just found the next Jason Blair.
I have to call bullshit on this one. In my entire life, I have met atheists and believers, gays and straights, liberals and conservatives, and not once, ever, in my life have I met someone who espoused more surveillance. Now, I live in a large metropolitan area - one with numerous projects involving installing more surveillance cameras, and even the most conservative, cop-loving suburbanites are at best indifferent, and quite often, vehemently opposed. There's a lot of hostility, but absolutely no support. The law of statistics would dictate that if 75% of the population supported more surveillance, I would have - at least once in my life - have heard someone argue in support of it. But I've never heard it from anyone. Not even the most gullible of idiots or stupidest of patriots I've met has ever said they'd like to see more surveillance.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Did anyone else notice they've basically developed the "heartbeat sensor" described in Rainbow Six in 1999 or so?
Is that smart geeks are raking in the dough selling wet dreams to the fascists, that god help us, are still in positions of power. I mean, the trillion dollars for the Iraq war had to go somewhere. I for one am glad a few geeks managed to get a slice of it. Welcome to the brave new world where money grows on trees, and nobody ever has to take accountability, responsibility, or admit they were wrong. They'll get what they deserve in the long run. Be patient. God does have a sense of humor.
Amen.
So your significant other is on the other side of the wall whispering sweet nothings and describing the slinky nightie she currently has on, your elevated heart rate could get you in trouble? Sounds to me like the government just killed seduction.
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
"The case I mentioned dealt with police using an through-the-wall scanner to determine where an alleged drug dealer was inside someone else's house, before they raided it. Because they had not obtained a warrant, the evidence was thrown out of court."
Man! Good thing they didn't put the house under surveillance. Oh wait! Where? Now why would they want to admit that as evidence?
"I wish I had a citation at hand for this case, but I do not. I will try to find it."
I'm sure Lexis-Nexis will be a great help.
"Clearly they are infringing on my client's religious rights and patented technology."
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
You can't take the sky from me...
Given the current (US) administration's views on privacy and liberty, it obvious who their most dangerous enemy is ...
The American People
Yeah... just bring on those devices. Sooner or later they will be available for the public.
I can't wait to see what our elected politicians really think.
Poor politicians, 1984 comes to catch you shortly. No more hidden agendas and lies.
Great, now every time I look at some porn, the SWAT team is gonna swarm me. :(
If they really decide to be dicks about this "through the wall" surveillance shit, I'll definitely open up a market for me. I'll buy rolls of copper cloth, sew it inbetween pieces of fabric, and start marketing my new and exciting line of Faraday Clothes.
Soon after I do this, weavers of copper cloth will be required to report all their sales over fifty square feet to the DEA. Wearing faraday clothes will be considered evidence of guilt, like an encrypted hard drive. If you install fine-weave copper mesh in your walls, it will be used to get a warrant for a midnight raid. Y'know, like if you use too much power today.
I'm only half joking... I actually think making faraday-cage clothes would be neat just to have them.
the real story is getting spied on by your fellow citizens: cell phone cameras, spouses spying on cheating spouses via pc snooping programs, electronic tollbooth records, etc.
and yes, the reverse: little brother: citizens spying on the government, a la the rodney king beating in los angeles, over 15 years ago
but unfortunately, a meme gets head of wind: the government is spying on us all, and it gets kneejerk in its conclusion, and unquestioned
but that's not the real story here. mainly because of motive: the government has very little reason to care where you were at midnight last night. but your wife or husband does
the government also doesn't care much if you are a subway flasher. but your victim with a cell phone camera does
and so these are the real stories going on with the growth of video recording technologies and other intrusive electronic surveillance
but the big brother meme will not die, driven by paranoid fantasies a la b-grade hollywood movie plots
folks: the government doesn't care that much about you. but YOUR NEIGHBOR, YOUR WIFE, YOUR BOYFRIEND: THEY DO
THAT'S the real story: how new intrusive technologies empowers THESE people, not the government... AND the real story is about how these technologies embolden citizens to fight the government too!
enough with orwell, 1984, and big brother. in its time, it was a powerful story. nowadays, it has lost it's analytical strength about the state of the world
a lot of you are forming your concerns with a fable written by a guy who was mostly concerned with dealing with nazi era and cold war era governmental issues. that era is over. you all need a new meme. the big brother meme is dead. it has no more real thematic power in the state of the world as it is today. a lot of your are living in brains that work in the cold war era in terms of analyzing realistic fears, listing valid concerns, and forming a useful agenda. and you are failing it
enough with big brother. that meme is dead. everyone turn your attention to little brother. a new list of concerns for you to contemplate. a new reality. god bless george orwell. a great writer. i loved animal farm. but with the passing of communism's grip on the world, so has the era of orwell, so has passed the validity of the facts about the world he lived in that formed the power of his stories
welcome to the 21st century folks. please update your world view. it is outdated
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Except for the fact that it wasn't for locating were or if he was home.* It's details like that can get a case lost.
*There was other evidence gathered as well other than thermal images (see the write-up).
WTF are you talking about? These are weapons of war and military intelligence, designed to be used in war zones; such as when they're searching house to house for insurgents, or clearing a building. The government is not keeping tables of "gait DNA" of the citizens. It's not a giant conspiracy to find and confiscate your pot. Other than a few crackpots like Hillary Clinton (with her "fairness doctrine"), no one in the government is campaigning to eliminate opposition.
Well said. It blows my mind, these paranoids running around talking about the US government trying to silence the people, eliminate opposition, blah blah blah. It's a total disconnect with reality and obsession over an orwellian cold war mentality that is no longer relevant... at least it's not relevant in the US. The government couldn't give a crap about opposition. The protesters at the anti-war rally the other day got bummed out because the cops wouldn't arrest them for their "die in" so they had start climbing over capital building security fences to get arrested. In this country you can say whatever the hell you want, short of a credible threat of violence, and you can do whatever you want, short of messing with other people's lives. That's the reality. If it doesn't conform to your persecution fetish, I'm terribly sorry. Live with it, or move somewhere where you will be actually be persecuted, so you can bitch about it without being utterly insane.
http://www.mysecureisp.com/
...will saying someone wears a tin foil hat be an expression of how wise you think they are?
This space available.
You know, if I'm headed towards a world where a high tech government and its corporate hacks have every moment of my life recorded, can predict what I do before I even do it, and knows exactly what I think, I'm not so sure that an all out war followed by some sort of a theocratic dark ages is really all that bad.
It seems to me that if humanities most learned people are racing to either create more machines that can make us obsolete, or, develop ever more tools that enslave us, that if we're really just not better off with bows and arrows and swords and trebuchets after all. That's not to say that the technology isn't cool, it is. I love my computer, air conditioning and relatively cushy life. But, honestly, the future seems downright gloomy when we start talking about brain scanners, and I wouldn't mind if there was an inquisition simply to whack those men and women that would even dare to research such things, let alone invent such machines.
So wow, the ultimate goal of 500 years of the reformation is to turn us into borg and then replace us with robots that have no flesh to them at all. I'll be on the cameras on every corner. I'll get my chip and my brain scans in order to get a job or even a house. But before that day comes, probably when the dump I'm taking is about to be scanned too, I may just let out one last cheer of rebellion for the Pope who tried Galileo, and say, Galileo, you idiot... ya put us on a road to a worse slavery and darker hell than you could have ever imagined.
What's the point of knowing that the earth revolves around the sun when you might get arrested because you don't like a particular shade of blue and are therefor stastically more likely to commit a crime, and then the scan of your brain because you are pissed off and afraid will be used to prove that you are angry and unsettled and most definitely a criminal.
Just drop the a-bomb already. This future fucking sucks.
This is my sig.
He glanced at me quizzically, noticing my apprehension.
"Yeah, I know," he said. "It sounds very Star Trekkish, but that's what's ahead."
Excuse me?!?
Precisely which episode of Star Trek??? Mirror, Mirror or The Wire?
[End Of Line]
for the first hand-held device, to be used by local law enforcement:
IF heartbeat > 90 bpm
THEN "They're trying to kill you! Go in Guns Ablazin!"
(Please forgive my BASIC. I haven't used it since the Timex PC.)
it's just teenage psychology. youthful rebelliousness is nothing new, it's nothing more than developmental psychology
every society, in every time period has them: the malcontents, the discontents. very loud. very impotent. story as old as time. but what gives the malcontents real power every now and then in world history is a formative idea. a VALID formative idea, upon which to base a genuine revolution
unfortunately, most of the malcontents don't have any good ideas. they have plenty of malformed half-ideas based on naive and misinformed concepts about human nature, and generalized anger at everyone and everything, but nothing upon which to grow and form a base. and so they come, they boil, they rage against the machine, and they disappear, not leaving a mark in history
as excited and enraged as these protestors seem, they are really a boring old organic story. and perhaps why orwell appeals to them so much is that it fits so well into the generalized paranoid hysteria about the ancient mythology of us versus them. but orwell is not an idea upon which to form a real revolution to build a new, better society. it's merely a fable about an existing society that feeds a psychological need, and little more
orwell, in today's world, is nothing more than fear-based wish fulfillment. propaganda for the lowest common denominator. which, considering orwell and his history and antipathy towards propaganda, is an ironic footnote on the great man's works. no longer do his works illuminate. they merely feed a paranoid pessimistic partisan vibe
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Ah, so, use the toy to find someone with a rapid heart rate inside, shoot them before they shoot you.
Smart. not.
story sounds like it was written by a high-schooler trying to put the scare on the proles.
me. --a by-product of public education
Second, it is not non-invasive and passive. It is *very* invasive even though it may be passive. It is like going though your secret diary with a MRI and then calling the result non-invasive. Non-invasive to the the diary (or skull), but very invasive to my privacy.
Third, we already can alter mood externally. Since I am too lazy to search more than the top results in Google (though the following excerpt is accurate, ignoring the article if you want)
source: http://www.haarp.net/mindcontrol.htm
The Russians did transmit at ELF to US Embassy in Moscow at about that time. US Diplomats complained about chronic fatigue and general depression. Ignoring the psedu-science above, being able to read the mind accurately will also allow you to control that mind.
Meow meow meow meow, meow meow meow meow"
I know you've all heard, "if you don't like it here, why don't you go somewhere else," or something to that effect. That doesn't sound like such a bad idea. Third world countries are improving their IT infrastructure. Mexico is cracking down on its police corruption and gang violence. I'm sure their economies are going to improve too since industrialized nations are outsourcing much of their work to those places. You might lose a few freedoms, because each country has different laws and restrictions, but you'll most likely gain more since the US & UK have so many laws, ordinances, codes, rules, and regulations.
For a long while, people have immigrated here and brain-drained there own countries. It's sort of like an economy of human resources. If other countries become more attractive, then like business, people will start moving there too.
"Sir! There's a large male in there with an extremely raised heart rate in front of a computer and he appears to be pumping his hand!"
He's obviously watching us on the screen and readying his shotguns!"
I'm pretty sure you didn't mean to lump all members of a religion, will multiple groups and varying beliefs, together with the most extreme fundamentalists of that group. Maybe its just that you picked up an Insightful moderation for a poor attempt at humor. Yes, there are parents who misguidedly over restrict their children's access to the world. They and their children pay a fearful price when the world is found anyway and the child has no means of coping with it or its temptations. Christianity is not alone with this problem. Perhaps you should have said something more like "fundamentalist religious parents" or "overprotective and self delusional parents"?
To be slightly more on the topic, I think we would have much more to fear from the Minority Report type of law enforcement that would follow searching for unvoiced emotions in the general populace. Imagine thinking about committing a crime, not talking about but just thinking about it briefly, being considered the same criminal act as the crime itself. Except, you have no way to prove that their machine is wrong, that you were not planning to commit a crime.
"What luck for the rulers that men do not think." - Adolph Hitler
And 10 years from now, the technology will be much smarter. We'll scan a person with one of these things and tell what they're actually thinking.
Yeah, I'll believe that as soon as I get my flying car highway.
Whatever is used by the military will find its way to the increasingly paramilitary law enforcement of major metropolitan areas. UAVs are just one example, http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/air_space/4213464.html
Where is the limit on automated surveillance before privacy becomes nonexistent or a crime? At least with people watching people, the watchers eventually become bored and move on, that or the cost of surveillance becomes to high for the expected reward. With cheap hardware, you can spy on anyone all the time looking for whatever you fancy. Think of it as Google for the state.
"What luck for the rulers that men do not think." - Adolph Hitler
You've heard of that that uber-illiberal state, have not you? This is were the main Senator Kennedy is coming from, along with Senator Kerry...
Also known affectionately as "Taxachusetts" is now considering:
Woo-hoo!.. I guess, as long as it is for raising revenue (which will negatively affect everyone), rather than for fighting crime (which mostly negatively affects criminals), it is Ok with illiberals...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Or, they're masturbating. Jeez.
You can keep your tinfoil hat on!
Now, wait a minute. Are they "sensing" through American walls (cardboard, wood and plaster) or through European walls (bricks or concrete) ? There's quite a bit of difference here, as anyone who tried to set up a WLAN may have found out
Is post WWII the people in eastern germany were spied upon by the government and I thought we learned a lesson from that, but it seems I'm wrong. Most of the people are fine with being tracked, spied, logged and filed.
When you go to the US you have to fill out forms and if you eat halal in the plane you probably get your +1 terrorist bonus.
The cases where people got on THE LIST by accident or mistake are there and it ruins their life. And nobody gives a shit. Still.
Democracy (us, eu): The former system of the free.
Privacy is terrorism.
All i can see this tech doing is creating more nervous people, i think just about every one gets a little bit nevouse going though customs, with the way they look at you.
I think this is an excellent advance or improvement of previous technologies. Surveillance is already a part of modern living in most cities. In most cities there are surveillance everywhere - from highways to known criminal areas. This is not a surprising new discovery with a load of privacy infringements. It is merely that they are taking the surveillance to a next level.
Arguably, a video camera taping a murder in the streets is rather useless. It is only good to find the perpetrator later. It is good that they can now actually implement new technologies (such as hear-rate sensing) in previously quite useless surveillance technologies. The ideas in Minority Report do have a striking resemblance to this article, but maybe not in such a caliber as portrayed in the movie. This is an excellent way of being one step ahead of criminal activity.
A little case study: In Johannesburg, South Afica they have CCTV camera installed all over the city. The reason for this is that the police do not enter the area as it is too dangerous. They rather wait for some criminal activity and then respond to it which is most of the time too late. These new technologies will allow police to act pre-emptively to stop any activity.
About the Big Brother parallel - Big Brother have been watching us for quite some time. In most cities, actually. However, before he was looking at us some Pharmacy bought glasses. Now he will have a chance to view us with an electron microscope - seeing what's happening inside. This is clearly an invasion of private space but then again it is just the expansion of a concept that has been with society for quite some time.
Most people can't tell what you're thinking when you're there talking to them trying to get them to understand what you're thinking.
The question is ...
"If it was found that surveillance cameras reduce crime, stop terrorists and made apple pie free, would you support their installation?"
Deleted
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Echelon.
AT&T
4,285,000 CCTV cameras in the UK"
Well, blow me, but I don't think that 4,285,000 video cameras were installed by vindictive girlfriends and envious neighbors, who you seem to suggest are the real threat. --It seems, rather, that somebody in government might have a deeply rooted obsession with keeping the populace under surveillance.
You seem to think that the term "Big Brother" is intended by those using it to refer literally and only to George Orwell's exact vision of totalitarianism. That's just silly. Dangerous governments which do not reflect, and which seek to subvert and undermine the will of the people, come in a variety of flavours, but they all operate in the same spirit. As such, "Big Brother" is a useful term to use when referring to this kind of government because everybody is already familiar with it and understands what it implies. Find another term which so aptly sums up a half million CCTV's and a secret system to evesdrop on all telephone and computer communications. To call "Big Brother" a meme is not just peculiar, but outright discordant with the reality of governments which are furiously spending enormous effort to ensure that everybody really is being watched and listened to all the time.
You suggest that the government doesn't care what Joe Average says or thinks. That's nuts. If they didn't care, why would they spend such enormous effort to shape people's beliefs and behavior? It took a lot of work to sell the Iraqi war. WMD's and Iraq's fictitious connection to 9-11, and now the 'threat' of Iran are not penny ante school election campaign posters.
Yes, Joe Average, since he has already been sold the Bush bill of goods, dosed up on anti-depressants, fattened into gluten goo by an inverted food pyramid, addicted to television and video games, and overworked and debt ridden, hardly needs to be especially worried over. But psychopaths are eternally paranoid. The craving for safety and control is an endless hunger which seek to monitor and control every possible vector of threat. This is why the UK has a camera on every corner, and why AT&T, (and heaven knows who else), is actively working with the secret services to make it possible to monitor every single person in the USA who has ever clapped one ear to a telephone receiver. Or do you still believe that the "War on Terror" is the real reason? There was a time when you wouldn't have written such drivel.
--The sad part is that this circletimessquare clown used to be an intellectual of some significance, but these days his arguments are painfully weak, his once boldly acerbic style has gone soft and he is sounding dangerously close to confusing his W's with his M's. (He certainly can't seem to find his shift key anymore.) The problem with cleaving to the dark side is that it rots your brain.
Hm. . .
Well, now shucks! I went and used lots of words and punctuation and I said I was going to try to avoid that. Terribly sorry. I guess I'll just never be a bridge-building diplomat.
-FL
In proto-facist UK you watch Big Brother
(on the tele)
So what are the options for an individual at this point? I can think of the following:
Do nothing.
Pros: Easy, feasible.
Cons: Do this long enough, and all your other options may well vanish.
Get involved in official political system.
Pros: Socially acceptable method, if successful, significant gains with few serious risks.
Cons: Labour-intensive, difficult. Not a permanent solution, but a neverending struggle. Unlikely to do more than delay the inevitable. The tech is out there, it will be used.
"Smash government"
Pros: Exciting, if executed well might yield increase in freedom.
Cons: Difficult, risky. Requires much planning and ability to raise support. Even if successful, not likely to be a long-term solution. Not even likely to be a short-term solution: Even if you have no government, or a new one, the tech is out there and it will be used.
"GTFO" - buy private island, go hermit etc.
pros: depending on how much you're willing to give up, potentially quite easy. Success mostly dependent on oneself.
cons: If going the private island route or similar, very expensive. Any route not involving hiding somewhere no-one can find you will involve being prepared to defend yourself, and even the hiding options may. Requires significant preparation and considerable personal sacrifices. In order to reliably stay below the radar, one must render oneself insignificant.
I was totalitarian survalience society, so I moved to USA thinking it was much better. It wasn't. USA is now much worse than the "communists" countries were back in the 1980s, all their "rights" are gone: first ammenment, 2nd, 4th etc. Habeas Corpus deleted. I was disappointed in all of them, so I am now living in a so called 3rd world country and happy beyond believe. By the time they screw this place up i will be an old fart and NOT give a damn
fuck karma, I like saying the truth better
You have been trolled. You have lost. Have a nice day.
And read it I have.
I took some literary license, trying to tap into the mood of times passing that both represent. I do think that the full powers of NeoCon Minions are fading; their time is passing. It may yet be bumpy, but not stable.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Oh, you actually composed that rather than found it somewhere and pasted? In that case, kudos. :) I assumed it was some meme I hadn't seen yet, but for a slashdot post that's a fair effort! ;)
:)
Now I'll have to cut and paste it in a bunch of places, any comments the last verse elicits will just serve to make the message more memorable.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
Does this have anything to do with the Ministry of Funny Walks?
in my basement I may get arrested? When is the right time to overthrow the government exactly?
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
... it will also show whether someone inside a house is looking to harm you, because if they are, their heart rate will be raised.
This kind of reasoning is simply bogus. Just like a polygraph can't really show whether somebody is lying, this device can't tell whether a person wants to harm somebody. A heart rate can be raised because of so many things - the guy can have been working out, he may have thought about his sexy girlfriend or snorted coke (sorry, I mean he had a big cup of coffee); and of course, there is no guarantee that a would-be murderer isn't simply a cold-blooded psychopath, who doesn't feel anything about killing people and therefore doesn't show up on this thingy.
We'll scan a person with one of these things and tell what they're actually thinking.
Really? A person's thoughts don't run like the text of a book - we all think about a number of things at the same time. The brain isn't simply a 'thinking machine' it is a complex system that controls and monitors a huge number of functions - our conscious thoughts are simply a small part of this. We can, by closely analysing the output of brain scans, guess what a person is looking at (but only because their head is fixed in the scanner, so we can tell the exact position of the cranium); we can guess the general outline a persons thoughts by looking at which brain centres are active, but this is only if we have analysed that person's brain activity against a number of known thoughts - where you ask a person to think about certain things and then analyse the brain activity. This is something that is fairly individual - we all accumulate a small amount of brain damage during life, not enough to make us disabled, but enough to make the dream of creating a universal thought-reader in about 10 years' time completely unrealistic.
I have the right to be secure in my documents and person.
You better be sure,before you scan ME with that device that it will fit comfortably in,and withdraw easily from your ass.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Homer to bart: I know you can read my thoughts boy, "MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW"
we will eventually reach a point where "everybody" really means "everybody"
No. Think again.
Money and power will always create an aristocracy for whom surveillance do not apply. Think about "state secrets". Would the President let you watch his every action? It seems unlikely.
Proponents of the "transparent society" such as David Brin have not given this enough consideration. This is deliberate ignorance of history. Communism is a good example of an idea that failed to take into account the fact that people who could obtain power would certainly abuse that power. Stalin's peasants might have been starving to death, but Stalin certainly wasn't. Future Stalins will be able to spy on the peasants as well as starve them, and the peasants won't be looking back.
Even today, Britain's proposed "identity register" will have more than one level of secrecy. Celebrities and policians will not be amongst the proles in the register, for "security reasons". Do not expect this to change.
What's frightening is that these people developing this stuff haven't yet seen an ethical issue with what they're doing.
Amnesty International
i was talking about making the leap from typical garden variety malcontent to real revolutionary
and to do that, you need an organizing principle, a firm valid set of ideas upon which to base the growth of a new society
that is rare and hard
and all i see around me today is loud boorish typical malcontents
as a side note, there is conformity in noncomformity: a lot of the "revolutionaries" you will encounter are western upper middle class wannabes, who fetishize rage against the machine and che guevara, but are otherwise consumers of commoditized culture
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
(snicker)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
to paraphrase shakespeare: "methinks the lady doth protest too much"
in other words, that was quite The Charge of the Light Brigade in response to my simple tell-it-like-it-is. have i rattled your cage darling?
in orwell's time, the biggest threat to the world were totalitarian regimes. in our time, the biggest threat is terrorist organizations. times have changed. you don't have to change with it, you can stay stuck in the past if you like, but don't mistake your delusions with the reality on the ground
enjoy your ivory tower, and i'm sorry for giving you a glimpse of reality that clashes with your mythology
xoxoxoxoxoxoxox
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I've been working in the Chellappa team that mentions the article, I can tell you that this is just marketing. All this technology is really far from being used in real environements. Actually, it has still to be proved that it can be useful in real situations (an in laboratory scenes as well...). So don't worry by now. Right now there some companies that do intelligent videosurveillance (objectvideo, ioimage, davantis, nice, etc.) but they still have many problems in just detecting people and vehicles. All systems still give many false alarms are not able to recognize people in real environemnts.
Fuck George W. Bush and his band of criminals.
Over 250 posts and I didn't see any Wii joke! Hey, guys, there was so much to do...
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
Brought to you by the same people that gave you the Intoxilyzer 5000 alcohol test!
Equip your law enforcement officers with the latest in thru-the-wall mind reading technology. Never proven wrong! (At least not in court)
Just disrupt the deflector shield with a tachyon burst.
One in fifty.
1 in 50.
Now give every one of those one in 50 spy cameras mounted on their lapels. Audio bugs hanging out of every button. Get them to place bugs in their friends houses, hallways, gardens, streets, cars, bedrooms, pets, offices, buses, everywhere. Give the bugs wireless connectivity back to centralized government control offices. Record Everything. Everything.
Does anyone think this won't happen?! Here's a back of the envelope calculation I made earlier.
For audio only, and still quite expensive, but everything is just getting cheaper.
Freedom is Doomed.
P.S.
For the record, I am not a conspiracy nut. I'd like to think of myself as a cynical realist.
May the Maths Be with you!
the concept of telepathy is pure fiction and could not work because no two people have the same native internal base dictionary
How do you know that telepathy relies on an internal base dictionary?
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
I'm just glad a crooked cop got shot
The Poland of today has come a very long ways from what it was in the 60's, 70's or even the 80's. It's even a very good European vacation destination for an American traveler since it is not a very high-priced place to visit and your money goes farther there. The locals are still very friendly to American tourists, which can't be said so much for a lot of the western Europe countries lately.
Those interested in this topic might also enjoy the book Welcome to the Machine Science, Surveillance, and the Culture of Control by Derrick Jensen and George Draffan. It's a thorough look at the cultural implications of all the tech and policies that go into the watching.
Inability to feel pain is usually the result of a genetic disorder. Start here:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/conditions/01/27/rare.conditions/index.html
or here:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002079182_nopain02.html
Well, in other words, just google...:-)
Also not coincidentally, these have been two nations I refuse to set foot in for even an hour for the last several years.
Times change, and these are not the old friends we once knew. The people are fine, but their governments are dog mad and cannot be trusted to act ethically, or even not violate international law on a hunch. Not for me, thanks.
And let me ask you this: if Germany had invaded Poland using guerrilla
The point is academic. The reality is, the USA was threatened with British spies during the war of 1812, German and Japanese sabotuers in both World Wars, soviet saboteurs during the cold war, all funded by adversaries that were at the time, our equal military match. Yet, it is only today that we have to turn the constitution upside down because of a bunch of panzies afraid of a few semi-literate muzzies trying to blow something up.
You know what? Spare us all the airport aggravation and just get rid of all of this stupid security. If an airplane gets hijacked, passengers should just get up and beat up the people that did it. If the plane is about to hit something, shoot it down. Better a few hundred people die every now and then then to throw away all of our freedoms.
If the muzzies blow up something big, then just do a reprisal bombing on something precious of theirs, like that silly meteorite they worship.
But all of this economic and social cost of security is costing us more billions to GDP than any terrorist act ever would. Sometimes you just got to take your suicide bombing like a man, so the whole of the country can move on.
Do your duty, and quit whining!
This is my sig.
I suggest this edit to:
"It is creepy to a lot of people, but he leads a normal life as a high-end carpenter, husband, and father."
to read:
"It is creepy to a lot of people, but he leads a normal life as a husband, and father, high-end carpenter."
Or, is he a high-end father, high-end husband, AND a high-end carpenter...
(Sorry, I'm just poking fun at rules of English...series, etc..."
Captcha: "particle"
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Because street view just isn't enough anymore!
orwell write what he wrote when things like east germany were being created, where a very orwellian state existed to keep people unfree and trapped in an inferior system. the revolutionaries were those fighting for a better idea
but the challenge today is that you have people who are free, and the spying is being used to fight revolutionaries fighting in the name of militant fundamentalism, fighting for an inferior idea, and simple criminals. such that these tools are being used IN THE SERVICE OF the free, against vile totalitarian forces, not to prevent people's freedoms
thus, when you put up a bunch of cameras in a newark housing project, the residents enthusiastically support it, because it cuts down on crime. when you did the same kind of surveillance in cold war era east germany, the populace hated it, as a tool of an oppressive state. do you understand the difference there? you don't seem to
so let's put it this way: you argue against the sentiment of the average joe on the street. 9/11 and osama bin laden are real. out of control crime is real. emperor palpatine and agent smith are a fantasy, stalin and hitler are dead and defeated
so welcome to the 21st century bub, adjust your concerns accordingly. you are going to find yourself more and more out of step with the agenda of the common man, who one would hope in whose name you fight for. instead, now, you are merely a shrill out of touch voice in the wilderness
i'm just telling you like it is friend. go ahead and yell at me, shoot the messenger. doesn't change reality and the sentiment of the average guy on the street now does it?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Who reads 1984 and then says to himself, "wow, that sounds like a great idea. I should work on tech to do that"?
geez.
Its possible that I'm viewing some p0rn and the ony thing at risk of harm is the poor monkey about to be spanked.
Have gnu, will travel.
It's true that this high tech surveillance equipment is used all of the time. In fact, those using the most sophisticated equipment are not Scotland Yard or the CIA, but none other than the New England Patriots. :)
http://www.science-fair-projects-now.com
This is what I've hear anyway. I hear that the cheapest and easiest way to get massive amounts of electromagenetic noise is a cheap dimmer switch on an AC circuit such as a lamp. I'm not quite sure why that is, but I've read that this is the kind of thing that really causes headaches for people trying to do remote monitoring as opposed to some fancy James Bond signal jammer doohickie. I'm not sure if the same thing applies to cheap carbon potentiometers on a DC circuit. I'm sure somebody here knows and perhaps even has some math to back it up.
--Though now you sound oddly disjointed. Were you experiencing dizziness while writing this last entry? (I'm not actually joking when I ask that.)
.
.] so welcome to the 21st century bub, adjust your concerns accordingly. you are going to find yourself more and more out of s
Anyway, let's go through it. .
orwell write what he wrote when things like east germany were being created, where a very orwellian state existed to keep people unfree and trapped in an inferior system. the revolutionaries were those fighting for a better idea
Yes, government was corrupt and totalitarianism was on the rise. Today, the same is true, we both would seem to agree. So far, so good.
but the challenge today is that you have people who are free, and the spying is being used to fight revolutionaries fighting in the name of militant fundamentalism, fighting for an inferior idea, and simple criminals. such that these tools are being used IN THE SERVICE OF the free, against vile totalitarian forces, not to prevent people's freedoms
So, if I understand your prose here, the 4 million CCTV's and Echelon and similar are being used to fight totalitarian forces. . ?
Hm. First of all, aside from the fact that the term 'totalitarian forces' can only with great awkwardness be used to describe militants and simple criminals, and that 'revolutionary' is also a rather odd term to choose when describing supposed terrorists acting from beyond the borders, I'd have to say that you are placing a great deal of trust in the government and in the official story of 'terrorism'.
But we'll go with your version for now, seeing as it appears to be the reality you have decided to champion today.
thus, when you put up a bunch of cameras in a newark housing project, the residents enthusiastically support it, because it cuts down on crime. when you did the same kind of surveillance in cold war era east germany, the populace hated it, as a tool of an oppressive state. do you understand the difference there? you don't seem to
Assuming again that such efforts are met with universal praise, (which they are certainly not), those who believe in government benevolence have failed to recognize the many problems with the issue of terrorism. The bombings on the London subway system which the world watched with 'shock and awe', were highly suspect in many regards. False flag maneuvers are a very effective ploy, particularly when a government also controls the news agencies. Fear is a powerful tool when you want to dull rational thinking in order to advance your agenda with respect to controlling a population. There is plenty of documentation regarding both the psychological tactics and the key events in question, so I won't bother posting a lot of details. I will assume that you are familiar with them, and that for some reason, you reject them.
Thus, it seems to me that you are suggesting that the government is not in any way deliberately using the climate of fear they have generated, and that they are simply using their spying in a 'nice' manner to keep the population safe from, "vile totalitarian forces".
Pardon me for saying, but this strikes me as a tad naive, particularly for one who is surely familiar with the patterns that governing bodies have emulated time and again over many years of history. To think that governments today are beyond such tactics suggests also that corruption and greed have also been deleted from the rule book. Suggesting that governments today work any differently than they did fifty years ago, or a thousand years ago, is hardly bourn out by the basic fact that human behavior still includes, as you describe, the faculty for fundamentalist militarism and rampant crime.
so let's put it this way: you argue against the sentiment of the average joe on the street. 9/11 and osama bin laden are real. out of control crime is real. emperor palpatine and agent smith are a fantasy, stalin and hitler are dead and defeated [. .
The NSA has had this since the early 1980s. It's called Remote Neural Montoring. See NSA whistleblowers evidence for a suit he filed against them
http://www.mindcontrolforums.com/pro-freedom.co.uk/cov_us.html
And they were added because the States were worried that the Constitution without such amendments would create too strong of a central government
Yes, and the concern Madison had, which proved to be correct, was that the Bill of Rights would be confused and obfuscated into an enumeration of what our rights are. Correctly read, the Constitution ALREADY had the Bill of Rights implicitly in it, becuase the government could only make laws about commerce, raise an army (but only temporarily so), and so on. Even without the bill of rights, the federal government has NO right to regulate guns, NO right to regulate marriage, NO right to regulate even the environment, education, abortion, and so forth. And it certainly has no right to search and seize, regulate speech, quarter troops, and so forth, because those powers were not given to the Congress.
It is a libertarian document.
To that extent then, the strict constructionalists and the living document people are both selling a lie. The Constitution is a STRICT document, but the government is strictly only allowed to do a limited set of things, BUT, by the same token, because the government is limited to only certain things, it is also a LIVING document, because, as society advances, we automatically HAVE ALL THE RIGHTS.
This is my sig.
"No officer, I was just playing Silent Hill 5 with my DirectX13 VWorld headset. It's great, almost like killing real people!" "oh ok, you can go then..."
They're inventing universal translators, tricorders and mind melds.
Will it take into consideration that my heart rate will be elevated if I'm annoyed because I think there's strange people monitoring my heart rate through the walls?
It's the switching noise from the device. Unshielded, undamped, "un-evertyhinged".
It comes across as a train of near-infinite impulses which looks like broad spectrum electromagnetic "white" noise.
you obviously are going to shoot the messenger. fine. i'm not going to sit here and take your flak when i'm just describing the reality of the situation to you
reality: PEOPLE WELCOME THESE CAMERAS
now, YOU go out and tell THEM why this is wrong. leave me the fuck out of it. i'm not going to be attacked by you just because i'm trying to explain reality to you
dude: PEOPLE WELCOME THE CAMERAS
is that bad? is that good? don't fucking cast your withering bullshit at me asswipe just because i'm syaing, good or bad, it's REAL
popular attitudes, not on your side. deal with it. don't fucking attack me just because i tell you like it is and you don't want to hear how it is
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it