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The Internet Archive Is Building a Canadian Copy To Protect Itself From Trump (theverge.com)
The Internet Archive, a digital library nonprofit that preserves billions of webpages for the historical record, is building a backup archive in Canada after the election of Donald Trump. The Verge adds: Today, it began collecting donations for the Internet Archive of Canada, intended to create a copy of the archive outside the United States. "On November 9th in America, we woke up to a new administration promising radical change," writes founder Brewster Kahle. "It was a firm reminder that institutions like ours, built for the long-term, need to design for change. For us, it means keeping our cultural materials safe, private and perpetually accessible. It means preparing for a web that may face greater restrictions. It means serving patrons in a world in which government surveillance is not going away; indeed it looks like it will increase."
With Trumps position on libel laws, smart move to project against legal action.
Still need to project against the ever-in-the-news cyber vulnerabilities. In today's world, physical location only goes so far.
It means serving patrons in a world in which government surveillance is not going away; indeed it looks like it will increase.
Why didn't they start this years ago when Obama extended and expanded the Patriot Act? Sounds like more leftist hypocrisy and hyperbole to me.
If you have a domain name under which you have a lot of content -- an example is kuro5hin.org -- and, after a decade or so you find yourself impoverished and stressed to the point that you can't renew the domain registration (as did Rusty Foster), a domain squatter jumps on it and holds it hostage for thousands of dollars. When that happens, frequently even "The Wayback Machine" is told to deep-six the archived content by the simple expedient of placing a robots.txt file in the home directory of the hijacked domain. "The Wayback Machine" then dutifully removes public access to the content. OH but the fun doesn't stop there! So now let's say you fork over the ransom money to the domain squatter, get the domain name back and remove the robots.txt. Of course "The Wayback Machine" then restores public access to all those articles... right?
WRONG!
archive.org does keep it stored and it is accessible to those with insider status, but no more public access EVER.
There really is value in hoarding history and if you can get away with it by doing it "on accident" all the better!
Seastead this.
Nah. Put it in Mexico; it will be protected by a big wall.
It's going to have to be in all in french now, right? And, aren't some of their harassment laws much worse? Some of this internet archive certainly offends some minority.
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
Great idea, but not sure Canada is all that safe. Trump or some other government entity could easily coerce Canada into seizing the servers. Better to put backups in several out of the way places around the world and not even disclose where they are.
Really to protect from Trump? I'm not a supporter, but the paranoid reactions to his presidency are just insane. If that truly is the reason, it is just nuts.
How do they know Trump wont try and annex Canada during the next four years?
That should have been done years ago. It's stupid to keep something unique, important, and easily duplicated in a single country. The "Trump" point is that some people think he's got a low regard for constitutional rights, and will pack the Supreme Court to this end. This could make it possible (and legal) for the government to effectively revise history by editing the archives.
They should be keeping copies of the archive in multiple locations, along with parity files which can be used to validate potentially compromised and reconstruct corrupted data. That way if one location goes down or is destroyed (fires happen), you still have copies elsewhere. If one site gets hacked and the data changed, you can cross-reference the parity info with other sites to determine which is real and which is modified, and revert the changed data. Kinda like a worldwide ZFS or RAID 5.
Trump makes for a convenient excuse. But given that they're literally keeping snapshots of history, they should already be taking these steps just to safeguard the integrity of the data.
Time to build another wall! Make them pay for it too with an import tax on beaver pelts and maple syrup!
Not with the Liberals in power, Trudeau and Trump are far apart ideologically.
Now if it was the dearly departed Lord Steven Harper was in power I would be much more concerned about this happening. As someone who voted for the Cons in the past but didn't this past election I can't see them getting into power anytime soon, they went off the rails in their last term in office and during the last election. The "barbaric cultural practices" garbage they proposed will haunt them for a long time to come.
... from following the UK with its "new and improved" surveillance law?
Damn. We're going to run out of floppies.
I like it when a group knows what it's talking about.
They are not saying "we'll just put it in the cloud and it will be safe forever!"
Nouvelles de jeux et technologies en français. TC
I would think a more decentralized solution would be in line. Home servers, or for the oppressed low cost ISP tier masses, "peer to peer"..., or for the really oppressed, "sneakernet".
Having the internet archive in a single place, with any sort of centralized authority was a bad idea from the beginning. Centralized services are targets, end of story, game over.
The progressive elements have become nothing if predictable. It wasn't that long ago that Obama got the Nobel Peace prize simply for being elected President. Now we have the opposite but equal over-reaction with. Instead of Obama saving the world, we have Trump destroying it. I have no doubt that just like Obama didn't earn the Nobel Peace prize, Trump won't earn the terror his election has triggered.
-- Slashdot, making the Left look conservative since 1997.
Obama's the one that let the NSA capture all the communications in the US.
If history has shown us anything, it's that both the left and the right will attempt to expunge information from archives...but the left does it on a bigger scale. Look a the Cultural Revolution under Mao, or the various programs under Lenin and Stalin. Heck, just look how the left in the US is rewriting history.
Nothing to see here folks, other than unfounded paranoia.
Don't let the door in that big beautiful wall hit you on the way out with all that data..
Seriously? You are doing this because you are worried Trump might make you destroy your data or what? Where do folks get such foolishness into their heads.. I get the impression that, like the pending vote recounts going on what will accomplish nothing of importance (Trump will still be president come January), this is really just a scam to get attention, funding or both...
BTW, you really SHOULD have multiple copies of your data already. If it's your company's life blood you had better have as many copies as you can afford to keep in varying geographic locations and an active program to keep said backups freshened, tested and ready to keep you in business should some natural, or man made disaster take out your primary business location. If you don't, you are stupid... More stupid than this little "Trump scares me" press release is.. Come on, you need a business continuity plan here, and not because of who's going to be president, but because the world is a dangerous place and you never know when the HQ server farm will end up a pile of ashes or spread out over a few square miles by a really strong wind.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
America is the only place in the world where it is legally permitted to criticize anyone and everyone.
See, for example: The creepy tyranny of Canada's hate speech laws
See that "Preview" button?
He's the bogeyman you can threaten everyone with. Liberals piss their drawers at the mention of his name. Experienced journalists tear up when they hear his name. I don't think anyone was this frightened of HItler.
>>if you are financially secure
Any further specification is superfluous and agenda-driven.
I've decided to build a giant dome with battery powered artificial "sunlight" as I heard Trump is going to outlaw the sun. I've also added some support braces into my home's roof in case the sky does actually fall, and I've heard a credible rumor that he may in fact be a transgendered succubus.
Geez people get a grip. It's like half the population of the country is throwing a temper tantrum like a toddler who acts like the world is ending because they can't get the toy they want. Under a Trump presidency - some things will not go the way you want. That $15 minimum wage ain't happening and student loans for useless degrees aren't going to be forgiven. Overall though - things aren't going to change much.
Sit back, and relax. Maybe you'll like the way he handles the country, but probably not. Regardless, the country isn't going to fall apart.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
I'll ignore all the political aspects of this discussion and simply point out that this is a rather expensive proposition. I don't see a recent size estimate, but we know that the site increased from 10PB to 15PB between 2012 and 2014, so it's reasonable to estimate that it's around 23PB today.
How expensive is 23PB of storage, including the serves themselves? If we use BackBlaze's cost estimates (they build custom high-density chassis) of $0.036/GB, we get a figure of roughly $868k USD spread across 49x4U servers. Of course, that's just the hardware. The colocation space (including power and connectivity) would be at least $10,000 CAD per month.
Once again, we are reminded at how fragile and easily triggered our SJW friends are in the left wing. Republicans endured Obama, liberal bed wetters need to grow up.
I've often said that Trump won't be as bad as the left says, if only because that isn't possible.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
They should be more concerned with the shenanigans happening in the UK (Investigatory Powers Act), which might have a more lasting impact on the data they host in CANADA than anything Trump would do.
If your agenda is equality for all Americans, then yes.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
We do not have 1/4 the free speech laws as America. In fact right now we are looking at Bill C-16, which may class improper pronoun use as harassment. Making it entirely possibly that every time someone transitions, all archives of their past gender would need to be updated or erased. While I am not positive this one law is a serious threat to The Internet Archive operating in Canada, it shows how tenuous their situation would be if they operated in Canada.
This is as ridiculous as American citizens talking about moving to Canada. You already need id to vote here and we do not allow illegal immigrants to stay in the country. We are the exact thing all these people do not want America to become.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Canada is not far enough, and it's part of the 5 eyes. Are you kidding me?
isnt canada still technically ruled by the queen of england??
No Canada is technically ruled by the Queen of Canada. The title is held by the same person but it is entirely separate and equal to her title as the Queen of England. The Canadian and UK Parliaments are equal but separate: no law passed by the UK parliament affects Canada and no law passed by the Canadian parliament affects the UK. But please don't let these facts get in the way of a good rant...
To think these people only just now realized that they probably shouldn't have all there eggs in the US basket. Did I miss some big rollback in the surveillance state under Obama or credible commitments from Clinton to deal with it? ...pretty sure I didn't.
Questionable judgement all the way around, both for their naivety to date and for their leftist knee jerk reaction.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Trump was the only major candidate who has always said that gay couples deserve the same protections and rights as all other couples.
Sanders, wishy-wash in 2000, would not give an opinion.
Hillary, stated with no ambiguity that marriage was between a man and a woman exclusively in 2000.
Trump "I do favor a very strong domestic-partnership law that guarantees gay people the same legal protection and rights as married people. I think it’s important for gay couples who are committed to each other to not be hassled when it comes to inheritance, insurance benefits, and other simple everyday rights.” - 2000
If last year Hillary was against Homosexuals, how are we supposed to know what her opinion is going to be next year?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
The trouble with Trump is that between his complete lack of experience in government, and his continued declarations of clearly unconstitutional ideas, he's an unknown. Most people don't have a reason to be terrified of anything, this is true. However, it gives people an opportunity to take stock of things and do a little risk assessment.
In this case, I think it's a good move. Not because Trump will ruin the world, but becuase "Oh, hey, now that you mention it, all this really really important information in a single country is a pretty dumb move, because, laws and stuff can change."
Lincoln didn't have the power to suspend Habeas Corpus. Roosevelt didn't have the power to send American citizens of Japanese-decent to internment camps.
You are wrong, the Supreme Court said that he did and it was Constitutional, and that's the only legal opinion that matters. In addition Korematsu v. United States has not been overturned.
You are also wrong about Lincoln suspending Habeas Corpus; that is explicitly allowed by the Constitution: "The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it" The Civil War was most certainly rebellion; thus explicitly allowed.
Congratulations on batting 0 for 2. (I'm in no way stating that I agree with the laws; only that the actions were lawful according to the court case and letter of the law. )
OMG. I just love the histairia.
Conservative, mod down for violating
Americans have equality.
What YOU are after are special privileges. You think equality is about seeing what someone else earned and demanding that it's what YOU deserve as well.
Leftist idiots are going to expand the Internet Archive. Yay!
They aren't going to accomplish what they think they are going to do. It would be pointless anyway, the whole premise is retarded. But that's okay. The Internet Archive is getting bigger!
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Trump may have promised to burn books and build a wall, but if he's only building a fence now, I'm guessing the books will just end up with singed corners.
Canada is too close
A good point.
It's like the late Weimar Republic creating a backup in Austria.
This is just unfounded paranoia. Go ahead and build the copy, but build it because backups are a good idea in general.
Borders really don't stop the US if it's a problem that isn't a media-driven fiction like this.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
...the Canadian Prime Minister said that he'd going to build a wall on the US-Canada border to keep the Americans out of his country. Oh, and he said he's going to make the Americans pay for it.
Although surveillance expanded dramatically under Obama, these guys didn't object.
They gave Obama a pass, but are exceedingly harsh on Trump. As we know, this can only be explained by racism... So, fook them — they aren't getting a penny from me until they publicly renounce this wasteful effort.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Egypt, does it still exist, or has it been shut down by the new Pharao?
There are eleven million illegal immigrants in the US. That number is falling, and has been for some while. However, you're still talking about deporting more people than live in the state of Georgia. Are you going to pay for that? How do you imagine you would begin rounding people up? Are you going to start demanding citizenship papers from anyone with brown skin? Do you imagine you will be able to do that without mistakes and massive rights violations? Honestly, if that is really a goal of yours, I feel badly for you, because the logistics and legal challenges alone are probably insurmountable. I would also like to point out the inherent contradiction between supporting small government and calling for government action on an unprecedented scale.
Having many people do illegal things is not good for the rule of law. The problem however has gone somewhat outside the reach of the law. Expanding that reach is dangerous and expensive, especially when you consider the cost of removing those 11 million people from the economy. It kinda has a "Final Solution" vibe to it as well, but we'll forgo any direct comparisons.
Now I don't know if you have ever given up your language, your family, your job, and your culture, and tried to make life work in another country, but let me tell you from experience, it is unbelievably difficult. The people who can accomplish it are exceptional. I haven't ever heard of any particularly good reasons to restrict the free flow of labor, trade, ideas, and information. My ancestors came to this country to work and to build a better life, and they were spat on for it, but things have worked out well enough in spite of the fears prevalent at the time. From an economic standpoint it would seem to make more sense to get people registered and paying taxes than housing and transporting them, paperwork being generally cheaper than paperwork and plane tickets. All told, mass deportation sounds like an exceptionally stupid and spiteful move. There may be laws which are worthwhile to take an absolutist position on, where there is no good argument to be made for the opposing view. I'm not particularly interested in ruining our economy and society to pursue this goal of yours, and think your arguments for doing so are pretty poor, even if they are widely shared. However, my consolation is that while the electorate cannot be trusted to make an informed decision on the matter, the politicians are not so stupid. While there is certainly plenty of bluster about the issue (it's seemingly useful to rile people up), I don't believe there has been any actual legislation which attempted to do anything about it, nor do I believe that any will be forthcoming. The question of why conservatives keep voting for people who claim to oppose rights for queers and foreign-born persons, but who have a record of failure to do so, is left as an exercise to the reader.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
They could even use Oil from Texas to turn it into a Fire Wall.
You are legally permitted in Canada to criticize anyone and everyone. You are just not allowed to do it in any way that incites hatred or promotes genocide.
According to Wikipedia (emphasis is mine):
Under section 318 of the Criminal Code it is illegal to promote genocide. Under section 319, it is illegal to publicly incite hatred against people based on their colour, race, religion, ethnic origin, and sexual orientation, except where the statements made are true or are made in good faith
In addition to Canada, most European countries have similar laws, i have lived there and I don't think it limits one's abilities to express one's opinions if one has any respect for the historical truth so I would be interested to know where you think the problem is with this law.
So you are advocating equality of the outcomes, not just equality of opportunity?
i think you ought to also factor in that different data merits different levels of redundant backups. Not every bit of info ever scrapable from the web requires the same level of concern as far as archiving goes. Obviously this is no doubt part of the process already. Your back of the envelope calculations need to factor that in. I'm guessing you probably want to take the 1% most generally valuable data of that 23GB and have 10X more backups of it than of the rest. I'm thinking a globally distributed 'p2p' versioned filesystem is the right way to go about it. Same basic principle bittorrent uses IIRC- effectively the more accesses data gets, the more prominent it's position in the multi-level distributed effective caches. No central authority or copy. The potential for abuse of that central authority or copy is simply too high in my opinion.
They're building it in Canada instead of Mexico. Don't like Hispanics much, do we, Brewster?
You seem to think the law magically enforces itself.
Conservatives and Republicans are commonly slandered as racists and bigots and any other number of terrible things by the left on a continual basis. The left keeps repeating this lie in the hope that it will be believed, and it is by the fools who fall for it.
Now the leftists are putting their money where their mouth is and actively spending time and resources to pretend that the incoming Republican president is somehow out to get them.
Such histrionics are only possible for people who have it easy. People who actually had to work hard for a living could not afford the luxury of such fake outrage.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
My estimate included no redundancy at all. So admittedly I significantly under-estimated. In practice, you'd want to have at least the equivalent of raidz2 or raid6 arrays, if not full backups.
No I'm advocating you (a) learn to read and (b) stop mindlessly spouting slogans.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
He defeated Clinton who had been building her career up for this election over the course of 30 years, had unconventional, "ethics be damned" style support from mainstream media and DNC, raised a ton more money, etc. He picks up politics a year and a half ago and beats Clinton by a margin not seen since Reagan. He also beats the openly hostile press, both parties' establishments, and well over a dozen of other primary candidates, and does it with one third the money and people of the opponent. And then armchair politicians like you go to Slashdot and post drivel about him not knowing what he's doing. Enough already. The dude is pretty darn smart. He knows _exactly_ what he's doing.
http://www.newsweek.com/clinto...
We won. You lost.
And to quote your side from a few years ago, "Elections have consequences".
Live with it the way we've had to do for the past eight miserable years.
No, that still sounds pretty unrealistic. It's far too easy to make that sort of thing look bad — because tearing people away from their friends and families is bad. Whether it's more or less bad than living in a country without permission is open to debate, but I find it very strange that you're taking an absolutist position on immigration law while being willing to compromise your beliefs about strong governments.
As Janet Napolitano was so good as to provide me with a timely reference for this discussion, it seems there are "nearly three quarters of a million" people who have been protected under the DACA. Also keep in mind that they're mostly kids and young people. Can you imagine the shitstorm that would erupt? Riots in the streets, lawyers coming out of the woodwork, and there's only one way the Press would spin this.
There are what, a million or so police in this country, right? And another million or so National Guard. Finding the manpower for this would be awful, and since the government is fortunately not regularly rounding up people en masse they are poorly prepared to do so. We're not going to get away with interment camps this time, either. And what good would deporting "a small fraction" of these people do? Wouldn't that still leave a larger problem? How is that an acceptable compromise to your principles? The idea that people will leave their jobs to follow their kids home is pretty naive. These are young adults, not infants.
I really do have to hand it to whoever dreamed up DACA, it seems like an excellent "thin edge of the wedge". I can understand why you'd be upset about it. I think you are wrong and your arguments ill-founded, even immoral. But I am completely sure that taking action against illegal immigrants would be impractical and politically suicidal.No, the safe and cheap and principled option is for amnesty. It's not like it would be the first time.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
So should such equality of outcomes be completely independent of individual's actions?
So how is the view from the inside epistemic event-horizon you inhabit?
No. Communities need to decide on some level of independence they wish to support. But "equality of opportunity" is an empty catchphrase that attempts to dress up whistling and looking the other way as engaging the issue in some way.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Tell me, is that word salad as delicious as it sounds?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Your impotent rage makes its normally bitter taste much more palatable.
Your impotent rage makes its normally bitter taste much more palatable.
I think your fatasy is a delicious drssing on the said word salad.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I disagree with you. Equality of Opportunity is the American Dream. Rags to riches. Work hard to do well. Equality of of Outcomes is shared misery. It is what Soviets had - no matter what you do you won't get ahead.
Now, these are principles. In practice we don't have equality of opportunity. The system is rigged to favor entrenched players. You are a lot more likely to be born into money than work your way into it.
To me, Equality of Outcomes is problematic not because it establishes the floor (you won't do worse than that), but because it also establishes a ceiling (you shouldn't do better than that). I think you should be talking about social contract, safety nets and so on instead of equality. Fundamentally, you will never reach equality because individual players are not equal. Some are smart, some are dumb, some run fast some run slow. No matter what metric you apply, you can't have everyone 'above average'.
Was it him who said he's going to close up that Internet?
Website Just Down For Me? Find out
I think setting a reasonable ceiling is a great idea. Inequality will maximize if left unbounded (we can already fit the people who colliectively own half the world's wealth into a double-decker bus, and nobody would have to stand), and making it possible for people to make millions of dollars a year encourages economically damaging behavior like cash hoarding and tax haven usage. If that money can't be put into executive pay it will be pushed into other areas including pay for the middle and lower classes, who will spend most of the money immediately instead of letting it pile up in a foreign bank account.
The impossibility of reaching perfect equality is no reason to abandon all efforts at improving the situation. We can't prevent all murders but we still try to minimize them. Everyone doesn't have to be made "above average" but allowing them to make a decent enough living to support themselves and a family is a good start.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Where do you get the idea you have to protect fro Trump when it was _I_ who was asking the archive to be protected BECAUSE it managed to save TWO versions of my domain... and now ONE version at least is gone! But I still have copies. The same happened with Geocities! I HAVE COURT EVIDENCE AND DOCUMENTS IN BOTH. Had, in Geocities, lost. Now this one! You are supposed to defend yourselves from the ANTI-TRUMP, and whatever hid my domain backup is a criminal, deep criminal. You will lose more than win if you do not pay attention to this. Of course I will not publish the domain name here, but currently it only contains doteasy 404 pages, despite being quite active and changing and having had very good hits to save its contents. Why did they have to go without spidering? I would have even found the Geocities sites and the drawings and the music and everything else...
He defeated Clinton who had been building her career up for this election over the course of 30 years, had unconventional, "ethics be damned" style support from mainstream media and DNC, raised a ton more money, etc. He picks up politics a year and a half ago and beats Clinton by a margin not seen since Reagan. He also beats the openly hostile press, both parties' establishments, and well over a dozen of other primary candidates, and does it with one third the money and people of the opponent. And then armchair politicians like you go to Slashdot and post drivel about him not knowing what he's doing. Enough already. The dude is pretty darn smart. He knows _exactly_ what he's doing.
Are you masturbating while you write this?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Sounds like a perfect application for the Interplanetary File System.
Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
Specifically commenting on the historical archive (wayback machine) of the Internet Archive: Is there REALLY a need it?
Before everyone jumps on this with two feet let me clarify. I get that there is history here and history is good to preserve for educational purposes. The problem is judging what is significant enough to preserve and that is largely subjective. This leads to the default reaction of preserving everything. Do we really care what www.dickies.com used to look like? No offense to Dickies BBQ, I just picked them at random and found that I can see what their page looked like in 1996! This ability is admittedly cool and fun. It also aids in some limited real-world applications like law enforcement, auditing, historical reference, and perhaps as an occasional last-resort backup.
But is it really necessary? Isn't this the digital equivalent of hoarding--filling your home with everything you ever bought, are given, found in the street, or salvaged from a dumpster? We also do this with emails, Facebook, tweets, photo libraries, and software. For most of these things you can go back forever.
Is this an obsession with the past or an obsession with immortality? Do we fear the "death" of any piece of knowledge no matter how trivial? There is a philosophical question out there that asks, "What do we do when homes for the dead outnumber the homes for the living?" In other words if the whole world is one day covered in cemeteries where do the rest of us live? Granted the digital world is not constrained by a limited resource such as land. This is part of the problem. Physical things take up space and eventually you are forced to get rid of things when the exceed your personal threshold of what is "tidy" assuming you have one. Digital things just require a bigger hard drive that doesn't grow in dimension and you can get one of those anytime. Now you can keep 30,000 photos of your cat--most of them identical, most will never be looked at again, but never delete! (so said Google when Gmail Archive rolled out)
Not bounded by physical space we end up keeping digital content for the sake of keeping it even if the vast majority of it has no actual value to ourselves or society. Is the loss/death of stuff such an anathema to the human race that we just can't bare to let go?
The problem I see with things like the Internet Archive is that there is no curator. A curator of a museum has to decide what is significant and thereby keeps the museum to a manageable and consumable size. There are no bounds to this museum. Some might say that is a good thing. I suggest that it reflects a growing obsessions with things, digital or physical, in society that is leading us astray from things that really matter.
What are we going to do when the whole Internet is a giant cemetery?
After the last 8 (12... 16....) years of expanding surveillance, reduction of gov't oversight, etc, NOW they think of this? I mean I get that the current bandwagon is that this is the end times, but everything they're looking at protecting themselves from has been rolling this way for years...