Coming Soon: Ubiquitous Long-Term Surveillance From Big Brother

alphadogg writes "As the price of digital storage drops and the technology to tap electronic communication improves, authoritarian governments will soon be able to perform retroactive surveillance on anyone within their borders, according to a Brookings Institute report. These regimes will store every phone call, instant message, email, social media interaction, text message, movements of people and vehicles and public surveillance video and mine it at their leisure, according to 'Recording Everything: Digital Storage as an Enabler of Authoritarian Government,' written by John Villaseno, a senior fellow at Brookings and a professor of electrical engineering at UCLA."

Comments

Accountability

[bonch]

The ubiquity of the technology may contribute to the ease of surveillance, but authoritarian governments were already doing bad things. Ubiquity of technology empowers protest movements just as much as it empowers government, creating a public accountability that wasn't there previously and enabling a transfer of information beyond government restrictions. I believe the tradeoff is worth it because ubiquitous technology in the hands of citizens can be more powerful than in the hands of government.

Re:Accountability

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubiquity of technology empowers protest movements just as much as it empowers government...

There's an asymmetry in this power relationship since the governments can accumulating data on itself. Think of this relationship as a system admin and a regular user.

Re:Accountability

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, only so much. For example, police brutality at Occupy protests was documented by multiple angles every time, because most everybody has a camera phone. How can an authoritarian PD wiggle out of that?

Re:Accountability

[epyT-R]

tell that to gun owners who've had their firearm ownership rights neutered so that government officials have an advantage..

Re:Accountability

[bonch]

The asymmetry is balanced in numbers. The regular users outnumber the system admins, and the citizens outnumber the government. We already saw social technologies contribute to the so-called Arab Spring demonstrations this year.

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[Anonymous Coward]

LIES.

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[mr1911]

I believe the tradeoff is worth it because ubiquitous technology in the hands of citizens can be more powerful than in the hands of government.

Your statement is great in theory. By using ubiquitous they way you did, you seem to assume the government and citizens will be on an equal playing field. That is almost assuredly not the case, and the deck will be stacked in the government's favor.

The ubiquity of the technology may contribute to the ease of surveillance, but authoritarian governments were already doing bad things.

Your statement is undeniable. The problem here is that the more power and ability the government has, the more it is likely to be used against you. Or more simply, governments you may not consider authoritarian today are likely to be authoritarian tomorrow.

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[planimal]

blame that on your state. i can walk into any gun store and walk out with as many rifles as i can afford, and as many pistols as i can afford six days later.

Re:Accountability

[rickb928]

Why do you assume they need to wiggle out of it? If no one cares, or no one pursues any remedy, there's nothing to wiggle out of at all.

And New Yorkers may well vote for a Mayor that would continue the policy. OWS didn't endear themselves to the rest of the 99% in NYC, so they may well find out they have little or no support.

Then we're reduced to the argument that like it or not, protesters deserve at least minimal protection of their civil rights, which they do. And this becomes an old argument in big cities; The rights of the inconvenient v. the rights of the masses. We're going to have to lobby for the rights of the inconvenient, because sooner or later, we are all inconvenient to someone. Yep, even you.

Re:Accountability

[Anonymous Coward]

Easy, take all the cell phones in the area as "evidence" to be used again everyone for committing the crime of "protesting".

Re:Accountability

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, only so much. For example, police brutality at Occupy protests was documented by multiple angles every time, because most everybody has a camera phone. How can an authoritarian PD wiggle out of that?

A few tips:

Flood the MSM with gossip from the latest reality show.
Put up blogs saying the footage was false
Astroturf blogs with misinformation and lies.
Start censoring the internet by removing links showing footage

A month or two later, nobody will remember it and those who do will find it hard to get links to prove it.

This can't be blamed on the advent of technology or perceived as something new as the art of propaganda has always been here. Just to quote Joseph Goebells, Hitlers chief propagandist:

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

Re:Accountability

[tomhudson]

blame that on your state. i can walk into any gun store and walk out with as many rifles as i can afford, and as many pistols as i can afford six days later.

You're doing it wrong. Walk into any gun store with a rifle, walk out with as many pistols as you can carry the same day*

(*note for the humour-impared - it's a joke, already!)

Re:Accountability

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Authoritarian governments that pass SOPA and NDAA? The Military Commissions Act and PATRIOT?

I am in the mind of Walt Kelly's Pogo: "We have met the enemy, and they are us."

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism

Excerpt from pages 166-73 of "They Thought They Were Free" First published in 1955
By Milton Mayer

But Then It Was Too Late

"What no one seemed to notice," said a colleague of mine, a philologist, "was the ever widening gap, after 1933, between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider. You know, it doesn't make people close to their government to be told that this is a people's government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing, to do with knowing one is governing.

"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.

"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.

Re:Accountability

[e9th]

That is not so. The state can buy as many MP5s as they can afford. Mere citizens cannot.

Re:Accountability

[thomasw_lrd]

I can walk into any gun store and get any number of rifles or pistols I can afford instantly. Depends on your location. I'm assuming you're also from the United States of America.

Re:Accountability

[ohnocitizen]

"I believe the tradeoff is worth it because ubiquitous technology in the hands of citizens can be more powerful than in the hands of government" - The government can spend millions of dollars on infrastructure and software to analyze and track this data. Basically the more resources required to tackle data, the further the balance tips in favor of government. Add to this the certain to follow laws restricting access to such surveillance (in addition to those that already exist). The government in the US has contemplated allowing government agencies to lie about whether data even exists, in addition to refusing to provide it. There's no way this ends up being in the favor of citizens.

Re:Accountability

[Local ID10T]

The ubiquity of the technology may contribute to the ease of surveillance, but authoritarian governments were already doing bad things. Ubiquity of technology empowers protest movements just as much as it empowers government, creating a public accountability that wasn't there previously and enabling a transfer of information beyond government restrictions. I believe the tradeoff is worth it because ubiquitous technology in the hands of citizens can be more powerful than in the hands of government.

This sounds like the government's justification for increased surveillance and restrictions on sharing information.

Re:Accountability

[Gideon Wells]

Possible, merely theoretical solutions that have no basis in what would happen:
* Confiscate Cameras: http://www.infowars.com/cops-confiscate-cameras-at-ohio-congressmans-town-hall/
* Delete data: http://www.pixiq.com/article/chicago-police-delete-journalism-professors-video-footage
* Destroy phone/camera: http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2011/06/miami_police_destroy_cell_phon.php
* Use of a live streaming/storage to avoid confiscation/destruction? There's tech for that:
** http://inventorspot.com/articles/spy_technology_how_disable_a_cell_phone_15035
** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_jammer
* Wiretapping laws: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/03/05/1954216/Leave-a-Message-Go-To-Jail?from=twitter
* Camera blocking devices:
** http://www.gizmag.com/norte-photoblocker-club-beer-cooler/20820/
** Unable to find it, but I'm sure I remember Kipkay having a video showing how to make glasses that would blind any camera sensitive to infrared.

Some of this, such as the wiretapping cellphone case, has been overturned. I believe. This is just off the top of my head. I'm sure there is more for real cynics with time to list.

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[Grishnakh]

We're going to have to lobby for the rights of the inconvenient, because sooner or later, we are all inconvenient to someone. Yep, even you.

No, we don't have to do any such thing. Instead, we can just sit back and let authoritarianism grow and civil liberties die out as we're doing now, until pretty soon our society isn't much different from that of Nazi Germany (except instead of picking fights with highly industrialized adversaries and eventually getting our asses kicked, we just pick fights with backwards countries and exploit them for their resources).

Re:Accountability

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and you can tweet about that on your way to having your balls electrocuted by a government official.

Re:Accountability

[Anonymous Coward]

But you can't buy the exact same models the state or the fed can which is his point.

Re:Accountability

[Grishnakh]

So what? MP5s are only effective in certain situations, like close-quarters battle. They're no match at all for some rednecks with long-range hunting rifles. We've seen in war after war after war that snipers are extremely effective against regular foot soldiers. For some reason, a lot of people seem to think that full-auto == invincible, even though the range on something like an MP5 is rather pathetic.

Re:Accountability

[AngryDeuce]

Ubiquity of technology empowers protest movements just as much as it empowers government, creating a public accountability that wasn't there previously and enabling a transfer of information beyond government restrictions.

Which is why they're putting the legal mechanisms in place to shut down this technology at a moment's notice. The "internet kill switch" is just one facet of this, but there are other developments (National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2012, for instance) that are related to shutting down protests and silencing dissension right here in the U.S.. There are reports that our armed forces are being trained to handle domestic civil unrest situations currently, as well.

Plus with the work that government contractors have been caught doing in the way of astroturfing, I seriously wonder if the technology will remain clean enough to function. I wouldn't put it past the government to put people to work obstructing the flow of information. There's been plenty of comments I've seen on Occupy articles (particularly on CNN) that are almost too antagonistic, reposted over and over every time it gets bumped off the first page, coupled with scores of other similar comments by people using handles like "John126421" and "BearsFan583".

Google will censor search results if the government tells them to, just like any other company with a presence here in the U.S., the ISPs will cut service, the phone companies will turn off the towers. It hasn't gotten to that point yet but it will if unrest gets to the point of Arab Spring here. There is so much back scratching going on between these telecoms and the government that there's no way that the people can be sure that they will maintain the ability to communicate on their infrastructure. Short of putting our own networks in (which won't happen without massive collaboration, not to mention a lot of money) I'm thinking that we're not going to have these avenues when we really need them, so we'd better come up with some lo-tech alternatives.

Re:Accountability

[Grishnakh]

All true, but the one thing that works against the government is that it frequently has a tendency to simply be incompetent. Just look at the TSA for example. Or look at the military and its contractors, with various weapons projects getting so expensive and set back by delay after delay and massive cost overruns that they eventually fall apart or by the time they're delivered, they're already obsolete. Heck, the U.S.'s most advanced spy drone was just captured by the Iranians simply by jamming their communications and spoofing GPS signals; granted, the Iranian government isn't exactly some guys in their garage, but they're also not one of the world's most powerful and richest governments either.

Re:Accountability

[element-o.p.]

Your state sucks, then -- albeit, not as much as some others might. I didn't have to wait six days when I bought a Ruger Super Blackhawk a few months ago (Alaska, FTW!!!)

However, and more to the point, I think epyT-R was commenting more on the difference between the types of firearms an average citizen can buy vs. the firearms that the military has on hand. Sure, you can buy an AR-15 or a Beretta FS92, and if you are willing to jump through a few hoops, you can even buy a full auto M-16 or AK-47. But how many people do you know who have something like the 30mm chain gun in an Apache helicopter, or the 20mm Vulcan minigun in the nose of an A-10 Warthog?

Re:Accountability

[Smallpond]

Well, only so much. For example, police brutality at Occupy protests was documented by multiple angles every time, because most everybody has a camera phone. How can an authoritarian PD wiggle out of that?

Many states have moved toward making it illegal to take pictures of police beating up citizens because it violates the citizen's privacy.

Re:Accountability

[element-o.p.]

"Don't taze me, bro!"

Re:Accountability

[Anonymous Coward]

MP5 vs sniper. Seriously like it matters when you're fighting an army of drones.

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[e9th]

The point is that the state will never allow citizens to be on the same footing as itself when it comes to firearms.

And do you really think that more men were killed by snipers than by M-16s and AK-47s? Incidentally, at least two local police departments near me will issue MP5s (selective fire!) to any officer who cares to qualify.

Re:Accountability

[SFtheWolf]

Typically they're killed by IEDs, another low tech weapon fired from a remote distance.

Re:Accountability

[Anonymous Coward]

Without getting into the endless "how to conduct guerrilla warfare" discussion, it gets more complicated when the other guys have tanks, helicopters, flir cameras in the sky, UAV's, javelins, shot direction and ranging equipment, cruise missiles, mk19's, armed ground rovers and capable snipers of their own with even better equipment.

Situations like Iraq showed us that, while people with guns and IED's can do damage, the k/d ratio is so bad you'd more-or-less have to have accepted martyrdom to opposed such a well trained, well equipped fighting force.

Re:Accountability

[Archangel Michael]

Further, I'd suggest that normal "police" operations are fairly "open", while insurgency is usually quite camouflaged, hidden, and behind cover.

We've see this in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Where the tide is actually turned, is in Artillery and Air Operations. There aren't enough "troops" to wage a war against insurgency without air support.

Re:Accountability

[AmiMoJo]

Your statement is great in theory. By using ubiquitous they way you did, you seem to assume the government and citizens will be on an equal playing field. That is almost assuredly not the case, and the deck will be stacked in the government's favor.

Exactly this. In the UK PC Simon Harwood was caught on camera murdering an innocent man who was walking away from him for no apparent reason, and it still took journalists and years of legal wrangling to even start a manslaughter case against him. For some strange reason the CCTV in the area wasn't working that day, but fortunately a couple of people caught it on camera phones.

Similarly when the police accidentally murdered an innocent man on the London Underground in the wake of the 7/7 bombings for some reason all the surveillance technology wasn't working and in the end no-one was actually punished for it.

The police always try to cover up wrongdoing by their colleges and the Crown Prosecution Service tries to avoid bringing cases against them. Their hand has to be forced by overwhelming evidence and media attention, and even then sometimes they just lose vital files and the crime goes unpunished.

We can't allow the government to have wide ranging surveillance. It is abused far too often, because that is human nature, and the abuses are rarely punished and powers rarely taken back. It really is a slippery slope, with each incremental power grab requiring monumental effort to claw back.

Re:Accountability

[SFtheWolf]

But what is the alternative? Stop developing communications or information technology?

Don't forget that there are rapidly diminishing returns, which levels the playing field to some degree. A secret spy satellite network is much more advanced/thorough/organized than any surveillance technology the public has access to, and yet in most urban contexts a bunch of people with camera phones + internet access could easily acquire data that is comparably informative (or superior in some cases).

Re:Accountability

[fahrbot-bot]

...technology in the hands of citizens can be more powerful than in the hands of government.

"You can't stop the signal Mal."

Re:Accountability

[Anonymous Coward]

If no one cares, or no one pursues any remedy, there's nothing to wiggle out of at all.

At least some people care. Charlie Brooker's 3rd Black Mirror show on Channel 4 on Sunday in the UK is about every bit of people's lives being recorded. The first two were interesting.

Re:Accountability

[hedwards]

Afghanistan is a bad example. Logistically it's a nightmare to conduct operations in there, especially for the US. The US doesn't have guaranteed bases in the region and as such has to keep on the good side of some pretty questionable characters.

Strategy is what arm chair generals think wins wars, logistics is what actually wins them. Take a look at the Art of War and it's almost completely about the logistical aspects of ware. Granted a lot of it would be considered a war crime in modern day, but the fact remains that the strategies are as devastatingly effective now as they were when the book was written.

Re:Accountability

[hedwards]

Doesn't really matter, even if you were able to buy the same firearms that the military uses, you'd still be at a severe disadvantage. Firearms help, but you're not going to be buying RPGs, ordnance or have access to the kind of surveillance equipment that the military industrial complex provides the government.

Re:Accountability

[hedwards]

That's not as strange as it might sound. I used to work security at an undisclosed location and the cameras would often times not be working properly. Either they'd be frozen or they couldn't move or they just out right didn't work at all.

CCTV is only as effective as the monitoring and maintenance provides for.

Re:Accountability

[slackware 3.6]

Ubiquitous technology in the hands of the government is backed by guns also in the hands of the government.

Re:Accountability

[avandesande]

The number of people native to Iraq who can handload a rifle and shoot under a MOA you can probably count on one hand- there are hundreds of thousands in the US.

I think culture is an important difference you are neglecting.

Re:Accountability

[suutar]

For this to be relevant, the larger group has to be willing to do something; at the very least they have to be willing to actually look for and at the information.

Re:Accountability

[fish_in_the_c]

They don't need too. They just say that's what you get if you don't do what your told.
Fear is the way these things are done. You obey or die.

Re:Accountability

[mr1911]

But what is the alternative? Stop developing communications or information technology?

How about limiting government and punishing those responsible?

Abuse of power is far too often not punished. If a government agency is caught abusing its power, it should be completely shut down (e.g. DOJ - search for fast and furious, as it relates to gunwalking) and for a government employee caught doing so, especially when trying to cover it up, it should be a capital offense (search for Eric Holder as it relates to the previous example).

Granted my plan has absolutely no chance of being implemented (you can't expect someone to press for a law that may eventually send them to prison), but I can still hope.

Re:Accountability

[fish_in_the_c]

As simple evidence it doesn't matter. Consider the protest and Tienanmen square. everyone knows how it ended. What effect did it have?

Re:Accountability

[SFtheWolf]

If a government agency is caught abusing its power, it should be completely shut down (e.g. DOJ - search for fast and furious, as it relates to gunwalking) and for a government employee caught doing so, especially when trying to cover it up, it should be a capital offense (search for Eric Holder as it relates to the previous example).

Do you realize just how easy that would make it for anyone with a grudge or conflicting viewpoint to engineer the shutdown of an entire agency?

I don't disagree though that an individual abusing the power their government granted to them should be the end of their political career.

Re:Accountability

[fish_in_the_c]

even the weapons they admit to having .. never mind the equipment that 'doesn't exists'

Re:Accountability

[timeOday]

"... truth is the greatest enemy of the State."

I would really like to know why anybody (who is not playing a villain in a movie) would say such a thing? Is there any reliable source? Some dude on the Internet says no, for what it's worth.

Re:Accountability

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubiquity of technology empowers protest movements just as much as it empowers government

I disagree. It's relatively easy for any government to go where we hide and spy on us. It's much harder for use to go where they hide and spy on them.

Re:Accountability

[mr1911]

Do you realize just how easy that would make it for anyone with a grudge or conflicting viewpoint to engineer the shutdown of an entire agency?

To bastardize a quote from Thomas Jefferson:
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too few government agencies than to those attending too many

Re:Accountability

[alexo]

Well, only so much. For example, police brutality at Occupy protests was documented by multiple angles every time, because most everybody has a camera phone. How can an authoritarian PD wiggle out of that?

They don't need to wiggle out of it, they can just ignore it, like the NYPD did.

Re:Accountability

[Anonymous Coward]

While that is plausible by itself, what is not plausible are all these cases of police crimes where there is some kind of request to get the surveillance footage from the police dash cam or from the government-monitored CCTV and said footage is missing due to technical issues all being some sort of mere collective coincidence.

Re:Accountability

[LaRainette]

can you access/record/store hundreds of thousands of Terabytes of CCTV, telephone communications, SMS, chat, emails?
Can you as a citizen, pay thousands of people to retroactively investigate on the life of other citizen ?
How are citizen more empowered by big browser than governments ?
As some dude said someday on the interwebs : "Staline would have LOVED facebook". And I might add, no jews would have survived the holocaust if it had taken place in Y2K.

Re:Accountability

[Tokolosh]

You left out shutting down the cell phone system: http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20091822-245/s.f-subway-muzzles-cell-service-during-protest/

Re:Accountability

[LaRainette]

Your point being that Goebbels is in no way a villain in a movie ?
I mean the guy's job was basically to sell the systematic extermination of Jews, gypsies, gays, lesbians, mentally retarded and physically challenged, you would think he was ok with saying more chocking things than "the truth is the greatest enemy of the State", especially in a private context.
That being said I wasn't there so I can't testify.
Coincidentally , in Mein Kampf, Hithler has a rant about "the jews' big lies" which is very similar to the quotation above, so maybe it was indeed forged. History is written by the winners after all.

Re:Accountability

[LaRainette]

Are you actually angry because you cannot buy sufficient fire power to outpower the entire US military ?
Because if so I need your name and address please. First I'll send a psychiatrist, and 2nd I'll make sure to get at least a Thousand miles away from you !
I mean you do realize that :
A] The right to bear arms was never intended for citizen to be able to fight off policemen or the military, but because it would facilitate the formation of militia to DEFEND THE STATE NOT FIGHT IT.
B] The concept of a state of rights and law, of government and democracy finds its most primary root in the concession made by the people to the government of the monopoly of righteous violence.
Read Thomas Hobbes, or even better Max Weber.

Re:Accountability

[LaRainette]

No, but demand accountability, make this a major issue debated, demand the creation of independant bodies to oversee the use of the datas, and more importantly demand laws that prevent the private companies to harvest the data in the first place, because today the number 1 source of information regarding dissidents in countries with authoritarian regimes like Yemen, Syria, and before Lybia and such, are Facebook, Google & telephone companies.

Re:Accountability

[shutdown -p now]

You're doing it wrong. Walk into any gun store with a rifle, walk out with as many pistols as you can carry the same day

And get a pound of lead free, as a bonus?

Re:Accountability

[shutdown -p now]

What difference do your MOA skills make when you're up against armor? Or, say, an enemy sniper which has live feed from a drone? Or even common infantry which can and will call in an air strike as soon as you snipe the first one of them?

Re:Accountability

[Anonymous Coward]

I presume you went on a rant as soon as you read Goebbels in my comment instread of actually reading it?

Re:Accountability

[Anonymous Coward]

I was just browsing some conservative blogs last night and I think you missed one of their actual responses.

Say they deserved it. For people who lived through Kent State, they can easily say these "radicals" are taunting the wrong people, threatening our society, and unaware that cops have itchy trigger fingers. Oh wah! Pepper spray? You're lucky they didn't shoot you. The soldier who got shot in the face with a tear gas canister? Should have seen that coming.

Source: some conservative submissive midwestern housewife http://boldcolor.blogspot.com/2011/12/mic-check.html

So, yeah. the really dangerous way to deal with violence at the OWS is to just accept your enemies as stupid and deserving of their fate. Acceptance and indifference...

Re:Accountability

[Anonymous Coward]

Some time each day needs to be spent feeding the System false information to make the total feed worthless. Easier said than done, I know. But it may be the only defense an individual will soon have.

Re:Accountability

[AmiMoJo]

Sure, all I mean is that for some reason whenever there is a case for the police to answer there is an unfortunate technological or administrative breakdown.

Re:Accountability

[Eponymous Hero]

nazi germany began by picking fights with backward countries (austria, poland, czechslovakia) and when nobody did anything (they weren't inconvenient yet, or were to overspent from ww1) they moved on to highly industrialized nations, having expanded its power greatly by feeding on the backward countries. we don't have to but it will happen. history repeats itself.

Re:Accountability

[Eponymous Hero]

it is so. i can buy an mp-5 if i want. i can also buy an ak-47 if i so choose. i saw a guy leave a pawn shop once with an ak-47. he put it across the handlebars of his bicycle and rode home with it like that. perfectly legal in arizona. my friend loves his mp-5 but his ar-15 is his favorite.

Re:Accountability

[Eponymous Hero]

yes you can. you can't buy the same +P rounds, but you can get the same models.

Re:Accountability

[timeOday]

Obviously what he did was horrible. However, I think it is better for history to portray "monsters" realistically, rather than with horns on their head - otherwise we'll probably fail to recognize the next one that comes along. (They don't normally jump out at you and scream "I hate truth!")

PS, I did not write the other, AC reply to you.

Re:Accountability

[BlueStrat]

But how many people do you know who have something like the 30mm chain gun in an Apache helicopter, or the 20mm Vulcan minigun in the nose of an A-10 Warthog?

The A-10 uses a GAU-8 Avenger 30mm autocannon (the A/A 49E-6 Gun System), not a 20mm Vulcan.

How about the family members that are posted at the local National Guard base with it's armory and squadron of A-10s?

If it got to the point that the US government employed the US military to attack US citizens, you can be guaranteed that a not-insignificant portion of those military personnel and military assets will go over to the side of the citizens. There would most definitely be a very nasty fight. Chances would be quite good that the government would end up using nukes domestically.

Strat

Re:Accountability

[toby]

The ubiquity of the technology may contribute to the ease of surveillance, but authoritarian governments were already doing bad things

This kind of evasion was used by the citizens of every other 20th C state which soon after descended into fascism. = "It can't happen here," etc. Of course it would be nice if it "couldn't happen" wherever you live. But please study some history.

Re:Accountability

[e9th]

You can buy a neutered MP5 with the single-shot trigger group. Try buying one with the 2- or 3-shot burst or the full auto trigger group. You can buy a neutered M-16 de-milled to single-fire. Try buying a real one.

Unless you're the state.

Re:Accountability

[Deliveranc3]

Since taxes on the rich can rise about 50% it's not always going to be true that citizens outnumber government employees.

These technologies, like nuclear weapons, will always be with us. That means that they will eventually be abused.

I know you think you have free will but I've never started a book with a Jewish author and ended up reading a Nazi or vice versa.

People need many things to become incensed enough to buck the system. Most importantly they need central points of incandescence to catch fire (In Les Miserables it was the act of a marquis running over a child then paying as a recompense).

More importantly people are desperate for self determination and pride, following someone else's bright idea is physically painful for some if not most people. Authoritarians can always say they are maintaining order, a simple thing to sell especially if the order is your boss.

In the U.S. nationalism is the big motivator, the more the rest of the world hates you the more nationalism sets in.

It will take a huge leap for police and the armed forces to step outside state run media, appreciate the nature of their country and co-ordinate. Especially since legitimacy is a vital ingredient in the three ring binder approach to law enforcement which turns police, the law, and the military into little more than a machine.

Re:Accountability

[Deliveranc3]

Good point, and the thrust of those cases were "He's insane" or "it was an accident." Not that those involved got a little push from someone higher up.

It becoming standard operating procedure not to tell people what they're actually doing. Not asking questions is a good way to get promoted, another good way is to get the job done without micromanagement.

When people are a paycheck away from letting their dog/wife/grandma die they make some pretty horrific decisions. This is a factor of the difference between the rich and the poor, countries with small gaps have little crime, countries with big gaps have massive crime. The relative wealth of the country plays a small role but it's not the most important metric.

In many powerful countries today the poor are so badly off that they vote to receive the tiniest tax break. They don't realize that by voting for the right they are accepting that everyone more wealthy than them is better than them.

If you look at world wide statistics the left has traditionally improved the overall economy and quality of life FAR more than the right. If you take slavery into account in the U.S. (when the republicans won far more) and in Facist countries (Germany, Italy, Japan) usually during war or imperialism the numbers become incredibly obvious... that said the right might be able to come up with a factor to swing it back in their favor... but I doubt it.

Re:Accountability

[Deliveranc3]

Well if I was designing something to kill people for the army that's the most powerful in the world, and one of the most difficult locations to attack as well. I'd have some moral qualms.

The cost overruns are probably due to having to restructure the project (by management who's probably technically inept, but who can't pass the buck) so that you have more employees who don't actually know what they are building and who have to be paid more because of the incredible moral quandaries they encounter.

This is being designed for a country with no open enemies and that can't afford to teach their soldiers Farsi so they can go out and explain the values of the U.S. system of government.

A country that could have won in Vietnam by dropping refrigerators, but didn't have the insight.

When you invent something it can be used forever, and eventually it'll fall into evil hands.

Re:Accountability

[element-o.p.]

I stand corrected -- thanks for the education. And FWIW, I agree that it would indeed be a nasty fight if push came to shove. The cynic in me suspects that more military personnel would "do their duty" than join the revolution, but then again, the spring uprisings in the Middle East are probably a better indication than my cynicism :)

Re:Accountability

[BlueStrat]

I stand corrected -- thanks for the education.

No problem, happy I happened to know a little bit about the A-10 to pass along. I live about 2 miles from a major Guard base that's home to a squadron of A10s (A-10As and A-10Cs). Spent more than one or two evenings sharing adult beverages with A-10 pilots, many of whom saw action.

They love the A-10, not only for it's awesome firepower, but more importantly the aircraft's toughness. I was regaled with many a story (and quite a few pics) about pilots returning to base and being totally amazed by the amount of battle damage their aircraft sustained and still got them home.

The aircraft is designed to fly with one engine, one tail, one elevator, and half of one wing missing.(!!) From some of the after-action battle-damage pics I saw, it well exceeds design spec in practice. It appeared in some pics like they were brought home by only 2/3rds of an aircraft!

The cynic in me suspects that more military personnel would "do their duty" than join the revolution, but then again, the spring uprisings in the Middle East are probably a better indication than my cynicism :)

I would have to agree that the chances of most or even over a quarter of the US military going over to the civilians would be small. Still, that's a sizable chunk of the mightiest military on the planet, nothing to sneeze at. Heck, even that small portion could likely thrash a large number of other country's military forces. Plenty enough to cause horrendous destruction and loss of life in an all-out civil war. The US would never be the same.

More than likely a foreign military would be called in to quell any domestic US rebellion. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if there aren't secret agreements already in place for just this contingency. I mean, those in power are extremely unlikely to ever halt their ambition for ever-more power, never mind surrendering any of the power they've gained over the past 100 years, and they have to have thought of what will eventually happen and what they would have to do to survive with their power intact.

Strat

Re:Accountability

[arisvega]

I believe the tradeoff is worth it because ubiquitous technology in the hands of citizens can be more powerful than in the hands of government.

Or, the "tradeoff is worth it" because the goverments are going to go ahead and do it anyway, so citizens might as well find a way to use technology to their benefit sooner rather than later.

There is no "tradeoff" here. You could had called it a "tradeoff" if you had a choice, which you do not.

Re:Accountability

[DarkOx]

And where in the Constitution is the right to bare arms, qualified with after a six day waiting period and baring we find a reason to stop you. The law is BS. You should be able to purchase ANY firearm no questions asked anytime.

Re:Accountability

[Ryanrule]

People in power say all sorts of crazy evil shit.

Re:Accountability

[LaRainette]

Yes I totally agree with you. Don't demonize, it's counterproductive.
I was only objecting to your argument that he could not possibly have said something so shockingly anti-democratic. The fact is that Nazi Germany propaganda was very fiercely anti-democratic, democracy held the same role in their propaganda as Communism during the MacCarthy era in the USA (and still today in the discourses of the right).
So it is possible that he said that. or not.

Re:Accountability

[shiftless]

Afghanistan is a bad example. Logistically it's a nightmare to conduct operations in there, especially for the US. The US doesn't have guaranteed bases in the region and as such has to keep on the good side of some pretty questionable characters.

Yeah, but the flipside is U.S. politicians don't have to sleep in Afghanistan at night. When the battle comes to their own homes, what good is a cruise missle or tank?

Re:Accountability

[Skal Tura]

I suppose the citizen getting beaten does not violate any rights of the citizen.

Authoritarian? or any Western country as well?

[Moskit]

Funny that article writer wrote "authoritarian". This applies to almost any country - with USA being the prime example (CarrierIQ^3), or ubiquitous cameras in UK.

If people think their governments do not spy on them just as in "authoritarian" regimes, they are so wrong...

Re:Authoritarian? or any Western country as well?

[bonch]

The obvious difference is that public outcry led to severe criticism of Carrier IQ as well as a possible FBI investigation.

Re:Authoritarian? or any Western country as well?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you don't know what "Authoritarian" means. The US and UK are obviously not libertarian, and the label definitely applies. What are you reading into the choice of word? Do you think the list of "authoritarian" regimes excludes Western governments?

Re:Authoritarian? or any Western country as well?

[Anonymous Coward]

The last 3 UK Labour governments pursued a policy of economic neo-liberalism and social authoritarianism. While this authoritarianism is no where near the level of repression witnessed in the likes of Middle eastern countries, it is a bit naive to think of Western governments are the good guys and the rest are best. For non-UK citizens, here is a few blogs which gives an idea of what NuLabour as they were called got up to:

http://nulabour.org.uk/
http://newportcity.blogspot.com/

Please note that (UK) Labour have been out of power for over a year so these are old blogs.

Re:Authoritarian? or any Western country as well?

[onyxruby]

Be definition all government is authoritarian. That being said if you think the US is a leading culprit in being a /fascist/ government, than you really need to learn more about most other governments around the world actually operate. I certainly think they go to far on many things (SOPA etc), but to call them a prime example is ignorance at best.

Re:Authoritarian? or any Western country as well?

[Waffle Iron]

This FBI investigation reminds me of the ending of Casablanca, where the French police captain says "Round up the usual suspects."

Re:Authoritarian? or any Western country as well?

[b4dc0d3r]

I hate to go all tin-foil hat on you here, but I'm probably about to. I look at TV, and we have basically three genres to choose from, in mainstream media at least. One is comedy, escapism at its finest. Another is reality TV, where you see everything someone else does. The last is the crime drama (Law and Order and CSI franchises, Maybe the Cold Case types, and one-offs like The Mentalist, Criminal Minds, Unforgettable, Castle, Blue Bloods). There is very little else on.

Look at the progression of the majority of programming - the crime drama has taken over, and always "chasing the bad guys" . Even L&O Criminal Intent, which is supposed to show the bad guys' perspectives, shows them in a terrible light.

And the progression of technology, so that now CSI has become the butt of jokes with all of its impossible tech, which is no longer so impossible.

I'm not saying this is the case, but I can't prove otherwise. We are gradually, whether intentional or not, becoming used to the idea that an ever-present layer of surveillance is good for us. As long as it helps bad guys get caught, it's good. You never see it being misused, unless it's part of the plot and the bad guy gets it in the end.

And then there is "Person of Interest". I was oddly interested in this based on the previews, to see how they treated it. And to my dismay, a single guy can eavesdrop on any conversation and track any person, almost as bad as Morgan Freeman's Batman machine. With limits where it makes the plot more interesting.

USA is being conditioned, whether it is intentional or a fluke, to accept that recording everything is good for us, through entertainment. I watch these shows and I am horrified, others probably don't pick up on the big brother aspect. Call me a nutter, I'll call this a hypothesis.

Re:Authoritarian? or any Western country as well?

[Grishnakh]

It depends on how you define "fascism" (which has long been a subject of debate). If you go with the Mussolini definition of "corporatism", I don't see how any government in the world can top the US for being fascist.

Re:Authoritarian? or any Western country as well?

[Hatta]

Funny that article writer wrote "authoritarian". This applies to almost any country - with USA being the prime example

That's not funny, that's accurate.

Re:Authoritarian? or any Western country as well?

[Anonymous Coward]

You may have a point about more crime drama on TV but I think that deep down, no matter what politics a person they follow, they are socially conservative and desire security and are fearful of change of any sort. IMHO, this is why crime fiction is always popular as the good guy has always got to triumph over the bad guy.Maybe this insecurity is what you are getting at?

This quote from a Sherlock Holmes story sums up this insecurity:

"“It was in the latter days of September, and the equinoctial gales had set in with exceptional violence. All day the wind had screamed and the rain had beaten against the windows, so that even here in the heart of great, hand-made London we were forced to raise our minds for the instant from the routine of life, and to recognize the presence of those great elemental forces which shriek at mankind through the bars of his civilization, like untamed beasts in a cage. As evening drew in, the storm grew higher and louder, and the wind cried and sobbed like a child in the chimney.”

http://betterholmesandgardens.blogspot.com/2011/07/you-like-this-weather-chas-using.html

Re:Authoritarian? or any Western country as well?

[Hatta]

Of course it did. Carrier IQ is not part of any government surveillance program, so the government loses nothing by pretending to care about surveillance. This investigation will find that nothing illegal took place, and the carriers will at most pay a token settlement. If it were a government surveillance program, it would just be defunded and reestablished under another name.

Re:Authoritarian? or any Western country as well?

[StikyPad]

Just because the governments of democratic countries have authority doesn't make them authoritarian. Authoritarianism differs from democracy in general in that the leader maintains (and usually achieves) power by claiming it for himself, and in the US in particular in that there is usually little or no separation of powers.

While you're free to argue about the effective differences in practice, or the lack thereof, or even to claim they are the same, the fact remains that they are not. Pretending that they are a) only makes it easier for people to dismiss you as a lunatic, and thus any subsequent claims as the ravings thereof, and b) doesn't create a useful starting point for a discussion of how to improve, because a government without any authority would rather defeat the point -- we might as well revert to allowing the strongest chimp to run the show.

Re:Authoritarian? or any Western country as well?

[element-o.p.]

I don't completely disagree with you -- there are indeed far worse examples in terms of how governments treat their own citizens. However, I would argue that you would be hard pressed to find a government that has such a negative influence on as many people worldwide as the U.S. And the trend even here within our own borders with, as you mention, SOPA, PATRIOT Act, and the like is very, very disturbing.

Re:Authoritarian? or any Western country as well?

[TubeSteak]

The obvious difference is that public outcry led to severe criticism of Carrier IQ as well as a possible FBI investigation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protect_America_Act_of_2007#Domestic_wiretapping
Public outcry led to severe criticism of the telecom industry and... Congressionally granted retroactive immunity?
I wish this public outcry thing had results that were a bit more consistent.

Re:Authoritarian? or any Western country as well?

[Moskit]

No, I do not think USA has a fascist government. No need to learn more ;-)
I wrote however that they are a prime example of spying and collecting data due to 1) being considered a "free" country for such a long time, 2) being far from that stereotype. You would not be surprised Soviet Russia did it, or East Germany, or Libia. But USA? :-)

As far as collecting information on people goes, USA is IMVHO very advanced, it's just not that you get impression this data is used very visibly, as in "authoritarian" countries.

In any case the article should not single out "authoritarian" countries, as the technology is available to all.

Re:Authoritarian? or any Western country as well?

[onyxruby]

Than my apologies for misunderstanding what you meant. I will not argue at all about the US spying on and collecting unfathomable amounts of information...

I too often see the clueless who think that because they can't smoke pot or got a parking ticket that they live in a fascist government.

Re:Authoritarian? or any Western country as well?

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

Carrier IQ is a child's toy compared to Palantir.

Re:Authoritarian? or any Western country as well?

[Moskit]

Article is about advance in technology that allows to use it in authoritarian countries. My point is that this advance in technology is applicable to all countries for specified purposes.

I do not claim that democratic countries are authoritarian, just that they use the same technology, and often for the same goal, just not always so openly.

Discussion here would be similar to discussion about guns. Gun itself is not good or bad. It can be used by a good policeman or a bad policeman, enemy soldier or own soldier.

Re:Authoritarian? or any Western country as well?

[forkfail]

In the West, it's the big corporations that are doing the spying. They just haven't flexed their muscle yet. But given the truism about knowledge and information being power and all, that's where Big Brother's taken up abode in the West.

Re:Authoritarian? or any Western country as well?

[HornWumpus]

That often repeated definition never mentions that Italian corporations were extensions of the Italian government. Like the Dutch east India company etc.

'Corporation' means different things in different places and times. Only the Italian government could charter a corporation.

Freddy and Fanny, not IBM and Microsoft.

Re:Authoritarian? or any Western country as well?

[Grishnakh]

Right, except it's a little backwards now; instead of the government controlling the corporations, the corporations control the government. But it's rather irrelevant, like the question of the chicken or the egg, because it's such a minor distinction in practice; in either case, the two powers are intertwined and control society, and the regular people have no say whatsoever.

Re:Authoritarian? or any Western country as well?

[shutdown -p now]

If you go with the Mussolini definition of "corporatism"

If you do, you also have to go with the definition of "corporatism" itself, which has nothing to do with corporations in the modern sense, but rather something closer to a merchant guild or trade union.

Re:Authoritarian? or any Western country as well?

[cheekyjohnson]

but I think that deep down, no matter what politics a person they follow, they are socially conservative and desire security and are fearful of change of any sort.

What makes you think that?

Re:Authoritarian? or any Western country as well?

[Thing 1]

I've actually been thinking similar thoughts, but more along the lines of government espionage than government crime-solving. Some top shows these days are Burn Notice, Covert Affairs, (the short-lived) Undercovers, and the most recent episode of Person of Interest had a tie-in to the CIA. It concerns me because people are being influenced by this; about two months ago, I heard for the first time a radio ad for working for the CIA.

The cop dramas also routinely show abuse of authority by those cops; this also tends to get the populace used to these acts, especially when those cops who use these negative tactics end up "winning" by the end of the show. It's not a great lesson, but I'm a solitary voice in a drowning hurricane.

authoritarian

[convolvatron]

at this point i dont think we need the qualifier anymore.

'authoritarian governments will soon be able' -> 'governments will'

Re:authoritarian

[Anonymous Coward]

These regimes will store every phone call, instant message, email, social media interaction, text message, movements of people and vehicles and public surveillance video

They already are. Case study: Sweden, the so called FRA law, the EU directive for "data retention", http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_data_retention

Sweden is generally considered a benevolent regime, yet all data is monitored, saved and mined for whatever the government pleases. (Hello FRA my friends)

It will go downhill from here.

Re:authoritarian

[Anonymous Coward]

at this point i dont think we need the qualifier anymore.

'authoritarian governments will soon be able' -> 'governments will'

Governments now...

Re:authoritarian

[scorp1us]

'authoritarian governments will soon be able' -> 'governments do'

There are no retention laws on license plate scanners, toll booths, really anything. Most retention requirements are written from the stance of minimums, not maximums.

^^^THIS^^^

[Anonymous Coward]

E-nuff.

US already does this

[Anonymous Coward]

This has been in place since the early 80's at least. It was upgraded just after 9/11 with the NSA wiretaps at the telco level.

Nothing new here, other than the fact that most people don't know it is happening.

Whelp...

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess it's time to start traning pigeons. Fear not, PigeoNet is on its way, folks.

Re:Whelp...

[jamstar7]

They'll just pass more laws regarding the licensing of pigeons. Good luck proving you're not a terrorist when they catch you with an unlicensed pigeon sitting on your windowseal.

Re:Whelp...

[uninformedLuddite]

RFC1149 is the one you are looking for.

A race between utopia and oblivion

[Paul Fernhout]

http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/2846ca1b6bee64e1
"As I see it, there is a race going on. The race is between two trends. On the one hand, the internet can be used to profile and round up dissenters to the scarcity-based economic status quo (thus legitimate worries about privacy and something like TIA). On the other hand, the internet can be used to change the status quo in various ways (better designs, better science, stronger social networks advocating for things like a basic income, all supported by better structured arguments like with the Genoa II approach) to the point where there is abundance for all and rounding up dissenters to mainstream economics is a non-issue because material abundance is everywhere. So, as Bucky Fuller said, whether is will be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race to the very end. While I can't guarantee success at the second option of using the internet for abundance for all, I can guarantee that if we do nothing, the first option of using the internet to round up dissenters (or really, anybody who is different, like was done using IBM computers in WWII Germany) will probably prevail. So, I feel the global public really needs access to these sorts of sensemaking tools in an open source way, and the way to use them is not so much to "fight back" as to "transform and/or transcend the system". As Bucky Fuller said, you never change thing by fighting the old paradigm directly; you change things by inventing a new way that makes the old paradigm obsolete."

Other related thoughts:
http://pdfernhout.net/on-dealing-with-social-hurricanes.html

Re:A race between utopia and oblivion

[Anonymous Coward]

like was done using IBM computers in WWII Germany

WTF?! There were no IBM computers in WWII. Computers didn't exist for starters, it wasn't until Bletchley Park's work on the Enigma decoding before we got anything remotely like a computer. IBM didn't enter the computing field until the 1953.

You obviously have no clue. Go and learn about Alan Turing's work for a starting point.

Re:A race between utopia and oblivion

[Paul Fernhout]

http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
"IBM and the Holocaust is a book by investigative journalist Edwin Black which details the business dealings of the American-based multinational corporation International Business Machines (IBM) and its German and other European subsidiaries with the government of Adolf Hitler during the 1930s and the years of World War II. In the book, Black outlines the way in which IBM's technology helped facilitate Nazi genocide against the Jewish people through generation and tabulation of punch cards based upon national census data."

Re:A race between utopia and oblivion

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM did sell tabulating, punch card and other business equipment to Nazi Germany. They also did the same for the WRA for Japanese-American internment in the USA during WWII.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_during_World_War_II

Re:A race between utopia and oblivion

[Waffle Iron]

WTF?! There were no IBM computers in WWII. Computers didn't exist for starters

IBM sold punched card tabulating machines at the time. They were like a useful subset of a SQL database, but not 100% automated. Human intervention was required to help orchestrate the computations. This mature technology probably handled real world business (and genocide) tasks much better than the flaky early computers would have.

Re:A race between utopia and oblivion

[StikyPad]

Or, you know, it could be something in the middle. People are really good at acclimating to their circumstances, and no matter how great things get there will always be malcontents. If scarcity of resources and materials wasn't an issue, then it'd be scarcity of mates. If it wasn't scarcity of mates, it'd be popularity. If it wasn't popularity, it would be real estate, or mental/physical capacity, or lifetime, or whatever. Some people will always find something to be unhappy about, and then they'll convince other people to be unhappy about those things too.

Re:A race between utopia and oblivion

[Paul Fernhout]

That's a sensible point, and I won't disagree with the general truth of it, but the 21st century problem is that our weapons of mass destruction (nukes, plagues, bureaucracy/holocaust, and soon robotics and nanotech) have become so powerful that we need "A Newer Way Of Thinking" to deal with the consequences of all that power.
http://anwot.org/
Otherwise, just a few malcontents empowered by such WMDs could doom us all, as could just an accidental use of them. So, for our own protection, we need to work towards a global society that has a greater proportion of fairly happy people, and a very low proportion of people who think they have gotten a terribly raw deal. That means rethinking security in terms of mutual security and intrinisic security, and thinking deeply about rich/poor divide issues.

Re:A race between utopia and oblivion

[Anonymous Coward]

Please don't post again. People of your type aren't welcome here. Go back to Reddit or wherever it is you came from.
And by your type, I mean small-minded people who have to resort to (even small) ad-hominems to attack anothers point without even looking in to it, which would take barely a few minutes.

I sure hope you don't have an account and aren't moderating. Not that it will matter, terrible posts like this get obliterated anyway.

What?

[Dunbal]

As the price of digital storage drops

Someone hasn't checked prices recently, post flood.

Re:What?

[geekmux]

As the price of digital storage drops

Someone hasn't checked prices recently, post flood.

I'm sorry, I couldn't stop laughing over the idea that you think anyone in charge of Government spending is worried about a price tag.

Re:What?

[Grishnakh]

Yep, it's kinda funny that all these big governments (like the UK and USA) and their desires to gather information on their citizens, not to mention computer users big and small worldwide, are all dependent on one tiny little country in southeast Asia for their hard drives. What's that saying about putting all your eggs in one basket?

My response

[blackbeak]

I was gonna comment, but then....

can they beat the encryption?

[Anonymous Coward]

These days, anyone who cares about privacy is already encrypting their emails, IMs, and so on. The existence of such tracking by even first world western governments is not a secret or a surprise to anyone who hasn't been living in a cave for the last decade.

So, given that people who care about their communications privacy already use encryption, I can't imagine they have the resources to break that. All they can do is go after the people who *don't* care about their privacy, and those people, by definition, don't care.

Re:can they beat the encryption?

[Anonymous Coward]

They will save the encrypted transmissions for a future when the encryption is no longer effective.

Re:can they beat the encryption?

[HornWumpus]

After we're all dead then. I don't see what good that will do them.

And prosperity will never be found again

[lightknight]

The burden of all these extra security measures is beginning to exert a force on the economy. It's like watching the birth of a quantum singularity...interest followed by naked terror, as you realize that you can't outrun it (but not for lack of trying). I liken it to a particular episode of Stargate SG-1 (A Matter Of Time): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWpfr_0RmuM

The people of the US are like that team, running across the desert, knowing they are doomed.

On a separate note, the fact that the US people are so submissive to their rights being stolen from under them reminds me of Russians facing the Gulag; they don't try to escape, even though they could, they just go along with it because fighting against it does not occur to them.

 

Re:And prosperity will never be found again

[Anonymous Coward]

On a separate note, the fact that the US people are so submissive to their rights being stolen from under them reminds me of Russians facing the Gulag; they don't try to escape, even though they could, they just go along with it because fighting against it does not occur to them.

The average person doesn't perceive any loss of rights, which is why they aren't fighting against it. Fourth amendment? Fifth amendment? Well those are for criminals, and I'm not one of those. Domestic surveillance? Well I'm too boring for the government to lock up, and they say it keeps the terrorism away...

Re:And prosperity will never be found again

[Anonymous Coward]

On a separate note, the fact that the US people are so submissive to their rights being stolen from under them

Submissive? They love it!

Take the new show "Person of Interest." It's apparently one of the hottest new shows ever. The premise?

A universal government surveillance computer monitors all cameras and phone conversations, as well as being able to automatically activate cell phones microphones as necessary, to record and track every single person in the United States.

Sadly, there is a downside to this program, and it's a downside that the protagonists seek to remedy: to ensure that it doesn't infringe on people's rights, it only focuses on people preparing to commit acts of terrorism.

So the protagonists go out of their way to "fix" this "flaw" by tracking down people identified by the surveillance computer who aren't terrorists. I need to emphasize this again: the protagonists are the people who think a nation-wide surveillance program should target everyone. And this is one of the hottest new shows this year.

And, no, from what I've seen, they've never addressed the privacy implications. The best we get it bemoaning that the surveillance machine doesn't give them enough information.

But you see this in other cop dramas as well. Warrants are solely ways for murderers to go free. Police - as protagonists - are allowed to torture suspects to win confessions. Without any sort of consequence. They're shown as the "good guys," torturing the "bad guys" to get them "off the streets."

The American people aren't just submissive in seeing their rights stolen, they're actively clamoring for more rights to be stolen in the name of "catching bad guys!"

Re:And prosperity will never be found again

[element-o.p.]

the fact that the US people are so submissive to their rights being stolen from under them

I think the word you are looking for is "complacent", not "submissive". We have at least two generations of school kids who are basically ignorant of history, and who have spent their entire lives believing that the U.S. are -- and always will be -- the "good guys", with the inevitable result being that they cannot even conceive of the idea that our government might not always have their best interests at heart.

Re:And prosperity will never be found again

[lightknight]

The average person would not perceive a drop in the oxygen content of the air they breathe; that does not mean it isn't affecting them.

In other news, what you don't know really can kill you. ^_^

Re:And prosperity will never be found again

[lightknight]

^_^. Two sides of the same coin. If you are complacent with the deterioration of your rights, then you are submissive to the usurped authority of those who are taking them away from you.

Think of it this way -> from the viewpoint of those who seize your rights, what difference is there between you submitting to their laughable authority versus being complacent as they deny you your ancestor's hard fought inheritance? None.

Them -> "Oh, you aren't submitting to me, but merely being complacent as I take away your liberties? Well, whatever you tell yourself that helps you sleep at night." Functionally, they are identical.

Re:And prosperity will never be found again

[lightknight]

Gruesome.

Reminds me of the villain / hero paradox of storytelling. The audience sides with the villain, emotionally, exploring their darker impulses, right up until the hero shows up, when they switch sides, and as an act of redemption join in the emotional orgy that is the dispensing of the villain's punishment. Perhaps that's a part of the reason that a fair portion of the human race always searches for a darker, edgier, more twisted villain than the straight-lace variety; as society becomes more, *cough*, liberal (in the classic sense of the word), *cough*, with its acceptance of various behaviors, the forefront of what is / isn't acceptable is always being pushed further away. And then there's those people who prefers villains to be simply that, "a bad guy," no first name and rarely very complicated.

Re:And prosperity will never be found again

[element-o.p.]

Yeah, I would be hard-pressed to argue your point, at least in terms of how "they" look at it. From the "us" perspective (what you do to solve the problem), however, there's a bit of a difference. Ignorance can be cured with education. Timidity can't.

FTFY

[Covalent]

Already Here: Ubiquitous Long-Term Surveillance From Big Brother

There, fixed that for you.

Re:FTFY

[betterunixthanunix]

Indeed, and this trend was foreseen years ago, which is why anonymity systems were designed to thwart such efforts under the assumption that records might be kept for a person's entire lifetime.

Better have a case of No-Doze.

[pro151]

If they decide to "mine" my data, movements and activities, they will be fast asleep within 15 minutes.

Re:Better have a case of No-Doze.

[seandhi]

Unfortunately, taken out of context, even the most mundane activity can be made to appear criminal. Also, even the most boring people run afoul of some taboo that can be used against them.

"authoritarian governments" is redundant.

[jcbarlow]

Governing implies authoritarianism.

The one true higher power

[PopeAlien]

That's all fine and good, as long as authoritarian regimes remember that Santa Claus is watching them .

Mining will not be enough...

[Squidlips]

At some point in the near future, all cars will be equipped with GPS transponders. These are already required for many trucks; personal vehicles are next. The People's Republic of Massachusetts and some other states are considering requiring it for autos, supposely to tax your mileage, ha. Next will be a requirement for all of us to carry a personal GPS device, like, ah, a cell phone.

Re:Mining will not be enough...

[Anonymous Coward]

"supposely to tax your mileage, ha"

Ha, indeed. Too bad every automobile doesn't come with a tamper-resistant device that *already* tracks mileage. We could call it, I dunno... an odometer, maybe.

So, in other words,

[Anonymous Coward]

Americans and British are screwed.

Just in Case...

[bradorsomething]

I think that long term surveillance is a good thing for prosperity and for our great nation! The government is doing the right thing. Our leaders know what they're doing!

This is my true opinion... anyone who posted an opinion with this name otherwise has been stealing my accounts... probably a malicious evil hacker!

Why?

[HalAtWork]

Why spend all that money? Why will taxpayers want to put their cash towards a grossly mismanaged and costly project that will erroneously fuck over tons of people with no benefit whatsoever? This is really a pie in the sky idea that will never fly.

Re:Why?

[tqk]

Why spend all that money? Why will taxpayers want to put their cash towards a grossly mismanaged and costly project that will erroneously fuck over tons of people with no benefit whatsoever?

i) TSA
ii) PIPA/SOPA
iii) (R. Regan's) Star Wars
iv) Desert Storm ...

It is time to build an underground internet

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's time for us to get together to build an underground internet.

Re:It is time to build an underground internet

[Thing 1]

... Or, an above-ground guillotine.

Here to stay

[U8MyData]

Unless something really bad happens to destroy the technological revolution that we are all a part of, it's here to stay. There needs to be stronger, iron clad privacy, individual, and economic legislation in place to provide due process in a time where decisions are made in an instant. The Occupy protests, although very visable, have little chance on making a serious impact on what they are protesting. Rather, you have to be in the game to change the game. I had a thought the other day, if they really wanted to make an impact, why didn't they put together a petition, circulate it, send it to D.C., make it a matter of historical public record, and see what happens? As it stands they are remarkably forgetable. To that end, citizens need to, from within the game, *demand* protections from this inevitable reality before it is too late.

Re:Here to stay

[mjr167]

That would require them to know what they wanted...

Soon? Soon?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's already happening. In the country hosting the TLAgency that is both employing the most mathematicians and the single biggest buyer of the most computer hardware on the planet. And who've already retroactively condoned and indemnified collaborating telcos in law. I could go on, but, well, you know who is clearly at it already. Those "authoritarian regimes" are nothing but feeble also-rans, really. Deny it if you will. Where do they get their means from, eh?

summary and title are wrong

[hypergreatthing]

Coming soon? Sorry it's already here.
Authoritarian Government? No, try every single one.
Controlling the people has become harder with information being spread so fast, but there are ways to single out people and beat them into submission with information.

No shit sherlock

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't know you could be so highly esteemed for pointing out the obvious.
The paper is well documented and proves its point, but this information is only useful to basic of information consumers.
Another example of academics waiting too long to draw a conclusion.

Authoritarian Governments?

[kidcharles]

Can we dispense with this false dichotomy between "authoritarian" and (I suppose) "democratic" governments. It is part of this great fantasy that this sort of thing will only happen in bad third-world countries whose leaders wear military uniforms and chomp on cigars. Our grand democratic leaders would never do such things, except they do all the time and want to do more of it.

Saddest part

[ThatsNotPudding]

The phrase 'authoritarian government' fits the US oh so very well now - those who would deny it are either ignorant or complicit.

Re:Saddest part

[Anonymous Coward]

When there's nothing worth modding I have 15. Today I have none.

Everyone send them a video

[kawabago]

Deluge them with pictures of yourself with your finger up your nose to protest this surveillance mentality. As a society, do we want our every move recorded? Hoodies became popular with young people because of ubiquitous surveillance so it is safe to say that overall, society does not want to have it's every move recorded.

They have this NOW.

[Hasai]

It's called "Facebook," and twits are lining-up to dump their entire lives into it.

FOIA

[ThatsNotPudding]

The very first thing the Republicans will do if they get their hands on the White House and Senate again is destroy the Freedom of Information Act. To the Right, accountability and truth are as deadly as a wooden stake is to a slumbering vampire.

Unimportant nobodies = Government.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, they do it because they are scared of us. Boohoo, pussies. Posted this with my real IP. Come get us nazi faggots. :)

My father was murdered

[Anonymous Coward]

and what really helped speed up capturing the killer was a video recording made by one of those ubiquitous little cameras you see in the elevator of the condo he was living in.

I'm not saying that the killer would never been identified without it but it certainly helped narrow the number of suspects quickly (my dad was famous and had a lot of potential enemies).

While I agree that unfettered access by the government to monitoring devices is not good (especially if, as is the case in much of the world, the government is definitely not on the side of its people), there ARE benefits to having these surveillance systems around. I believe that the U.S. is under a long term trend of declining violent crime. While there are doubtless many factors explaining that, could this be one of them; the fact that with sufficient effort there is a good chance law enforcement could find some sort of record placing you at a specific region and time period. The fact that every video cam in every ATM, store, gas station, garage, apartment entrance, public building etc. could be recording one should give an (intelligent) person pause (criminals usually aren't too smart though).

Anyway, like it or not we are definitely headed to an always on surveillance world. Maybe our only hope is to have a legal system that severely rations the information that is given to law enforcement; giving them only the information needed to solve each individual crime on a case by case basis. (This is what was portrayed in Greg Bear's book "Queen of Angels", excellent portrayal of the near future).

Re:My father was murdered

[tqk]

... there ARE benefits to having these surveillance systems around.

Condolences on your Dad. :-P

I agree. Tech. can be useful and used for good. That's why we do it in the first place.

On the other hand, once the politicos pass laws mandating all CCTV feeds are patched into LEOs and LEOs store everything and troll it at leisure, hello Stasi! They've already abused to the max National Security Letters in collusion with AT&T et al, and Congress gave the latter retroactive immunity for it. You've still got TSA agents sexually assaulting innocent travellers. Your DoJ is still dragging its feet on putting the Banksters in jail, ...

IFF you !@#$heads can fix your gov't to the point that they once again must get a subpoena to get at this stuff and must delete it soon after if nothing's found, ubiquitous CCTV wouldn't threaten anyone but bad guys. However, with the PATRIOT Act still in force more than a decade after 9/11, that's not the trend I'm seeing. I fully expect SOPA/PIPA (The Great USA Firewall(tm), aka Internet censorship) to pass eventually in one form or another. I expect you'll wind up with mandatory GPS embedded in all vehicles. I expect present USA citizens to cheer on the coming surveillance society.

I'm also expecting a fairly messy revolution/civil war soon too. Condolences on that as well. I'm a little surprised it hasn't started yet.

The future?

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're saying they don't already?

I saw a mudcrab

[AdamJS]

I saw a demo a month ago of a software product in development that only needs the sparsest of details about your friends, and a few time-lapsed satphotos or GPS data about/of your vehicle at specific times to be able to predict *exactly* where you would be on a given night (barring outlier events, like an earthquake - though there were examples of how to factor that in if you think it's a possibility). And the kicker, is that the mass-majority of the data this system needs (for North Americans and western Europeans) is already available for free.

Sometimes these articles are hilarious

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes I make comments that others disagree with. Sometimes the people who disagree with me cyberstalk me and try to create problems in my life. When I reverse the tables and check out who these cyber stalkers are I typically find rants about religion and government intrusion into the web. The hypocrisy of this "do as I say and don't do as I do" ridiculousness is pretty crazy and it actually validates the perverted logic behind cyber surveillance programs.

Suggestion to cyberstalkers: Do not stalk people on the Internet and complain when "big brother" starts doing it. Do not write or help write trojans or malware and then complain when "big brother" starts following your lead. Do not steal credit card numbers and complain when "big brother" starts doing it. Do not use a remote desktop tool and then complain when "big brother" starts doing it. Do not censor by removing posted content or posting content in other peoples screen names or images as other computer users and then complain when "big brother" censors people.

Not so bad

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

Just don't do anything wrong and you will be fine.

Re:Not so bad

[forkfail]

Any cop or HR individual can always find something wrong. Always.

Re:Not so bad

[RogueLeaderX]

Try to make it through one day without breaking at least one law, I dare you.

searching before the fact

[Anonymous Coward]

It's unconstitutional as it's searching before the fact. I'm sure the Supreme Court won't see it that way, as they tend to vote the status quo unless it's egregiously wrong.

to my mind, a search is:

1. securing access to the material
2. examining it to see if it's what they want to seize
3. seizing it.

recording everything is steps 1 & 3, so they can decide to examine it later.

How they curtailed bombing in Baghdad

[swb]

I read someplace that this is kind of how they curtailed the car/roadside bombings in Iraq that were so common there.

They put up enough drones to cover the city with video; when a bomb went off, they basically rewound time and followed the car that blew up back to where it came from, which often was a bomb factory or other insurgent facility.

Re:How they curtailed bombing in Baghdad

[twosat]

It was probably the JSTARS or Joint STARS surveillance planes that you read about. They use Synthetic Aperture radar to observe terrain and record the screen views which they can replay to backtrack an event. http://www.379aew.afcent.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123130660 http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htecm/articles/20060326.aspx

Asymmetrical Warfare

[Phoenix666]

Governments are incredibly inefficient. They're even more inefficient than Big Corporations. Bureaucracy hobbles them both. People who work for Government or for Big Corporations are the bottom of the barrel, because no one intelligent and creative would long survive an environment where their work and activity are constrained by a PHB with a room-temperature IQ but an incredible sociopathic ability to kiss ass.

So let's place any tech tool in the hands of those people versus in the hands of an intelligent, creative, and highly motivated person who is unconstrained by the illusion that governments and big corporations know best and can manage better. I'll put my money on the latter every time.

There are people who will think that's scary, but to me it's an ever bright beacon of freedom: the people will always prevail.

What makes you think it's restricted...

[frank_adrian314159]

... to "authoritarian" governments, citizen?

Internet archive already there?

[recharged95]

Wouldn't it be easier to just use the wayback machine

Only Ourselves Are To Blame

[Anonymous Coward]

We can stop all of this right now. We can, so to speak, nip it in the bud.

If unopposed, it will come. It is inevitable.

The answer is not technology. The answer is legislation and constitutional ammendments. We, the people, can just say "No!" and it will not happen.

But are we doing it? Are we inspired by the future potentialities to take the appropriate action now?

We can only blame ourselves.

Flip the script.

[couchslug]

Reliance on the assumption that targets will use monitored systems can be exploited instead of turning into a pissing match.

  to think Establish a flawless online profile which reinforces what you prefer spies to think of you, drop online connections which may be embarrassing, and lead a double life.

If you are a revolutionary, act alone without trail and or communicate directly. It's perfectly practical to research almost any subject in a "benign" way.

The bar is very basic. Either be willing to accept your situation or be delighted to kill and willing to die to change it. Anyone worth opposing is worth killing. Syria is learning this lesson as army deserters fight back. Libya learned it and killed Qaddafi. Either kill with gusto or accept your fate. Your country, your situation, your call.

Self-testing

[phorm]

How about building in a simple self-test. At a certain time, a hi-bright LED (red or whatever) should shine into the camera. On whatever is monitoring the camera, it should be able to tell that things work so long as it gets a "Red" every Tuesday at 02:00, etc.

It won't get over the issue of fuzzy pictures, etc, but should work OK as a basic test.

soon?

[nurb432]

Its already been happening.

Everybody Start Generating Data

[Anonymous Coward]

Make use of whatever communication mediums you don't have to pay too much extra for to transfer as much data as you can on a continuous basis. We need bots that generate billions of emails a day about pointless crap like penis enlarg.. .. .... goddammit, just once in my life I want to come up with an idea for something that doesn't already exist.

Kill code

[Catbeller]

The police could send a "kill camera" signal to every phone and appliance in the zone that has wifi or cell access, so that nothing will take a picture.
Apple already applied for the patent (has the patent) for killing cameras in a specified area with a kill code.
Think it through. There is nothing to stop them from developing a kill code, and they probably already have asked for one from manufacturers. It'll be here, sooner rather than later.
If the tech generation has a failing, it is that it believes that their tech is intrinsically on their side - it's why I have such a hard time getting people to care about computerized vote counting. The machine ain't your friend, not when you don't control it.

Re:Kill code

[Anonymous Coward]

That's ridiculous

But only because it is not currently possible to kill the phones, corral the protestors, take their non-transmitting cameras, and make a convincing enough argument that they shouldn't brought up that this happened, through pre-trial use of force.

Re:Kill code

[randyleepublic]

There is no such thing as friendly (tamper-proof) automated vote counting. Geeks who think so are engaging in mental masturbation. The proper goal of a voting system is to keep fraud to a minimum. The best way to do that is to deliberately make the process as labor-intensive as possible. Basically the way it should work is for a mandated day off work for all except a few critical people, such as emergency room personnel. No travel. People would have a choice between staying at home, and going to their local polling place and helping count the ballots. By hand. With pen and paper.

Re:Kill code

[shiftless]

Think it through. There is nothing to stop them from developing a kill code, and they probably already have asked for one from manufacturers. It'll be here, sooner rather than later.

And every time it's used, during some event of police brutality, it'll turn a hundred citizens into radicals calling/fighting for revolution.

No, the days of fear and intimidation in this country are coming to an end. We haven't forgotten what it's like to be free, because the Internet has reminded us.

Tomorrows resistance...

[Anonymous Coward]

will blow up data centers!

get informed: sousveillance

[Onymous Coward]

And, folks, make sure to do your part by learning about this asymmetry.

Here's one idea worth knowing about: sousveillance.

It's been coming

[Anonymous Coward]

It's been coming since 1984. The year.

Second Amendment anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Firearms: enabling the downfall of authoritarian governments since 1776.

Anti-gun socialists are on -which- side of this argument, do you think?

This or something like it...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Computer, Information and Technology Bill of Rights
- the 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution

1. Information obtained for or created out of a commercial relationship is property. Any individual whose information is obtained for a commercial relationship or created out of a commercial relationship retains full ownership of that Information Property. No commercial entity shall require an individual to waive any rights to his/her Information Property.

2. There is a Reasonable Expectation of Privacy in all matters dealing with personal information, Information Property and location information when obtained by any means other than direct observation. This includes location information obtained by GPS, IP Address, Mobile Phone or any other means of ascertaining a person(s) location via personal Information Property.

3. Congress shall make no law abridging a citizens right to anonymity on the Internet as this right serves a greater democratic good than does any other good that may be achieved by forcing individuals to be numbered and named.

4. There exists a right to access the Internet only as the Internet is available to an individual, and only so far as an individual’s means and opportunity allows access. No commercial entity or individual shall be taxed to provide Internet access for another individual not including the creation and maintenance of infrastructure relating to the Internet.

5. Access to the Internet shall not be taxed.

6. Information Property shall not be seized or changed by the government.

7. Information Property shall not be taxed.

8. Information Property shall not be traded on exchanges or affixed a value by Congress, the Executive branch, the several States or commercial entities. Only by the Information Property owner or through a court of law shall the value of Information Property be determined.

9. Fair public use of an Individual’s Information Property exists and is defined as: collection, storage, and synthesis of a persons Information Property for non commercial means related to normal government functions, worthy research, or historical catalog.

10. There must exist three identifying markers before information becomes Information Property. Such as Name, Address, Telephone Number or Name, Credit Card Number, Purchase Information. One identifying marker shall be considered Information Property if it is used in such a way as to gain access to other identifying markers.

11. Governments shall make NO LAW that censors content on the Internet or restricts access to content on the Internet to persons over the age of 16 except in cases of legitimate and clear copyright infringement or impending situations of National Security. Censorship of the Internet creates a Chilling Effect on 1st Amendment rights and privileges. Censorship is best done by individuals and families.

12. No remedy shall be available to industries and/or businesses that suffer from copyright infringement when it can be proven that industries and/or businesses conspired against the market place to fix content delivery methods or price -- or sought punitive damages above the actual damages done by an individual’s infringement of copyright(s).

13. Fixing, adjusting, changing hardware, firmware on owned electronic equipment is the right of the owner and shall not be waived through commercial arrangement. Fixing adjusting, changing software on owned electronic equipment is the right of the owner and shall not be waived through commercial arrangement unless fixing, adjusting, changing software is done in a fashion that adversely and maliciously affects public or government networks, systems or computers.

14. End User License Agreements and all agreements crafted to be like End User License Agreements (EULA) that are over 500 words must have a plain English equivalent of less than 500 words that accompanies the original EULA. No EULA shall contain language that unnecessarily burdens the licensee. There must exist in all End User License Agreements a parity of rights and privileges beyond the mere exchange of services and products for consideration.