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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."
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.
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...
at this point i dont think we need the qualifier anymore.
'authoritarian governments will soon be able' -> 'governments will'
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
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I was gonna comment, but then....
Everything and its opposite is true. Get used to it.
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.
I am John Hurt.
That's all fine and good, as long as authoritarian regimes remember that Santa Claus is watching them .
air and light and time and space
I think it's time for us to get together to build an underground internet.
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.
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.
It's called "Facebook," and twits are lining-up to dump their entire lives into it.
Regards;
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.
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.
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.
Any cop or HR individual can always find something wrong. Always.
Check your premises.
Try to make it through one day without breaking at least one law, I dare you.
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.