Or even more annoying, what if the cable or your internet is out for an extended period of time. I would usually use that time to watch movies but if they have to authenticate or stream from a web service, I'm SOL
Except it allows users to be charged multiple times for the same content. You buy the movie from one place. Then on every other device that you try to watch it on that does not have the downloaded file, they charge you a service fee to access your content and stream it to that device (XBox 360 with Netflix comes to mind).
The only way to distribute videos online is DRM free. Yes it will be pirated just like music, but most people will pay for their content and sales will skyrocket due to the new method of distribution. The people who don't want to pay for movies will crack the DRM and share it anyway. Studios will rake in the money due to minimal cost of hosting and no physical medium. This will also create new avenues for companies to host your purchases for streaming reasons, or preconfigured and expandable home servers with STBs that handle the download and storage of your movies. Seems a little like a no-brainer to me.
I stand, or rather sit, corrected. I should have researched it more before posting. The main point of what I was saying is that the images don't just make the blurry images clear.
*slaps self* Will research more before posting in the future
Wrong, the way the 3D works is that it runs at twice the speed of a normal movie, alternating frames for the eyes. The glasses are polarized to show only one of the two frames on each eye. This creates stereoscopic vision which is how we perceive 3D in real life. The video is shot with two cameras(real or virtual for the rendering) placed apart at a distance similar to distance between the human eyes. This could be achieved on a standard TV if it is 120Hz capable.
Seconded, if I didn't have a 2 yr old, that needed a babysitter, me and my wife would have already seen the movie about five-six times. We saw it this weekend and wanted to buy another ticket immediately afterward to watch it again. This is the movie that will finally get me to buy a Bluray player.
I remember fixing PBs back in the late 90's, one simple upgrade lasted over a year because the computer decided to stop working, then work again, then stop working, etc. Thank god those machines are no longer available.
RTFA, Netflix has not released any zip code data, that was for their second contest which has not yet launched. The first only released movie history and a unique ID to the user(not the username)
by "basic cable" he meant broadcast cable. ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, PBS, and local programming(along with others I am probably forgetting) are broadcast over the air, not just on cable. If you are within range you can watch those channels for free, in HD even.
Only problem with that calculation is that 8 hours of the day the computers are used for what the school meant for them, so the calculation would be more like
40 watts x (24 hours x 365 days - 8 hours x 5 days x 52 weeks) x 10 years x 5000 machines x $.06/kwh = $801,600, 20% less than specified.
Most criminals are not this sophisticated when it comes to burglary, especially for one type of item.
Besides, on social networking sites, the metadata that contains geotag info is stripped when it resizes and resaves the image, same goes for flickr, photo bucket, etc. Unless you are hosting the images on your own server you have nothing to worry about.
If you buy a 50" Plasma and bring it home, anyone driving by while you take it inside now knows you own a 50" Plasma and where you live. Where does it stop?
While theoretically, it is possible to figure something like this out for a robbery or something like that, the chances are incredibly slim, and nothing you do with the exception of completely unplugging and never leaving you home is going to make you completely secure. This is just fear mongering, you are at no higher risk with internet than you are with normal conversation (you tell friend 1 you just got a tv, they tell their friend that a friend of theirs just got that new TV, later on you leave on a trip and tell your friend, whose friend happens to be around/friend 1 tells, and now he can go steal your TV.) It is the nature of socializing, you are gonna give information that is innocuous by itself but when pieced together information can be used for bad deeds.
If the ports are only disabled when displaying said content. If the premium content is on demand and optional, while standard broadcast/cable channels operate the way they already do, I don't care. I already use HDMI on my cable box, and most consumers with any form of HD do as well. Component still holds on in some areas, but the worst that will happen with them is they wont get the new content, but still get what they always have until they upgrade. Sounds pretty reasonable to me.
Pirating software is, wait for it, WRONG! Whether it is illegal or not, it is wrong. The argument that it is Microsoft's fault for the malware due to them trying to protect their products is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. That mentality is the same as a burglar suing a homeowner if they hurt themselves while robbing a home. Or blaming the owner of a car for an accident caused by someone stealing the car. It is not Microsoft's responsibility to ensure that software works perfectly whether it is pirated or not. Blame the pirates, not Microsoft.
That is such an idiotic idea that whoever came up with it at the GAO should be fired. The idea of what should and should not be allowed would be very arbitrary. Take sites like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc. They make money from traffic to their site. If they shut down/slowed access to such sites nationwide it would financially cripple them. Companies will have to have their own contingencies for such incidents, it is not the government's responsibility to ensure they can keep operating the way they prefer, it is the companies responsibility to ensure they can continue to operate however necessary.
I can agree with just about everything you said, particularly about having the over powerful machines used for a simple task. I guess my point of view is based on the time I spent employed by the US Government (US Air Force to be exact). As a fellow veteran once told me:
"If you spend anytime employed by the US Government, you will be amazed that this country is as powerful as it is."
Meaning that with the kind of resources these organizations have or potentially have at their disposal, their mismanagement prevents them from utilizing it's full potential. They may or may not have future plans for reeducation, and while the American people at this point would probably not even realize it was happening, I can't see them being able to pull something like it off.
I also try to not read to far in to most seemingly innocuous actions taken by our government for two reasons: 1. I still have hope for our government that while certain individuals are dangerous and can't be trusted, due to our constitution and the checks and balances in place that they wouldn't/couldn't get away with something as scary as a re-education campaign. 2. I don't have enough confidence in the few that would attempt such a thing to actually be able to pull it off.
Also, as far as JFK's statement about secrecy. I understand the sentiment, but based on the mentality of the American people, as well as the media, I feel that if all information (especially that of the CIA such as under cover agents and terrorist watch lists) was available it would put more lives in danger than it would help. Imagine if after 9/11 (I hesitate to even mention 9/11, but it is the only event I could think of that really gets my point across) people were able to know who the CIA thinks might also be terrorists. I feel that many innocent people would probably lose their lives, in more ways than just death (family, friends, jobs, etc) due to the sentiment at the time. And, lets face it, even if the government was completely transparent, people would still think they are hiding something.
My sentiment may seem a bit naive, but while I may be wrong about some, if not all, of my thoughts, I would rather trust (with open eyes) until I was given a reason not too than be critical and distrustful of everything. Many things I read about send up immediate red flags, but this one didn't. I just feel that there are too many other variables required for this to be a threat.
I will admit, though, that my trust level has only gone up since Bush left office, if I had read something like this a few years ago I would be expecting the reeducation to begin within the week.
Of course there is that threat, but if they had that kind of technology, why on Earth would they be investing in a private company to do something like this? The CIA may not have public oversight in the way that we would like, but at the same time in true matters of national security, thank god they don't. There are certain things that just don't need to be known by all. If this was some nefarious plot, I think they would probably be more under wraps, at least about who did the investing.
I am pretty sure they will use this as it was designed, as a marketing tool. They will use this power, as you said, to better sell what they want to the American people.
What this company does is pretty simple, given the manpower, the CIA could easily create something on there own, the fact that they are using a commercial entity tells me that they don't have the highly sophisticated systems you spoke for this operation.
I know it is easy to think of the CIA, FBI, and other top secret government agencies as nefarious entities with their own agenda, but when it comes down to it, they are other American people just like us. They have agendas, sure, but not all are nefarious, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. We have no reason to believe that there are bad plans being made to silence/censor/reeducate the American people.
And as far as the terrorist search goes, my hats off to them if they find that kind of information on PUBLIC forums. But I can tell you, that the red tape they will have to go through to get information on a "hunch" is more than it is worth because in matters of user privacy, cases still have to go through some department of the judicial system. In a way, there is your oversight because for the CIA to arrest, search, or seize property of an American citizen, they would still need a warrant which requires a judge to sign off, for now at least.
My point was that by spying on everyone, they are not really spying on anyone. Back to the home analogy, they get pictures of the neighborhoods to see what kind of people live in that neighborhood. Even more so, this really isn't even like monitoring your house, more like monitoring a meeting hall, they want to know what was said during a public meeting. Would you be worried if you went to a political party meeting and a member of the CIA (or any other government agency) was there? I for one would be happy that someone from the government might be listening to what was being said because that opens up the opportunity for it to be heard by the powers that be. And I doubt that the CIA is interested in anything but political information. Could this information be abused, of course it could, but then again, every ability the government has can be abused. I just personally don't see that much risk to them knowing what my political views are.
Yes, it would take a lot of manpower. So they are doing their best to automate the process, to offload as much of that effort onto sophisticated machines as they possibly can. Such as the ones this firm is using. In other words, the CIA seems to agree with you and is obviously doing everything it can about the "problem" of how difficult it is to spy on everyone.
What, did you think they would just give up?
Automating the process isn't as easy as it sounds. To truly identify someone you need their IP address, and hope that the IP address is there personal one, not from a internet cafe or hot spot. You might get lucky based on an email address, if the email address is both valid and has the personal information available. But to achieve this you need to be able to get user records from the companies that have those addresses, as well as the logs from the sites that have the postings. As shown on previous/. articles, sites don't tend to give up that personal information freely. And with there being not standard of user names on all sites, there is no easy way to tie users together. My ID, DrummerGeek0, ties to me here, but does not in other places, and I know that some of my user names on other sites are tied to different people because I couldn't register them. Add on to that the millions of troll/spam accounts out there. As I said before, this would be a logistical nightmare that couldn't just be automated.
The "sophisticated machines" you are speaking of just scrape a site and parse the contents. It looks for certain keywords and follows logic to determine the tone of the statement. That is nothing compared to tracing out who someone is.
And the idea that they are monitoring what you do, they are monitoring what you say in public forums that are available to everyone, if this truly worries you, keep silent and don't post, but this is no different than all other forms of recorded public communication. You give up the right to privacy when you post, you wave a flag saying that YOU have an opinion, and YOU want it to be heard. I don't see a problem in the CIA, or anyone else(government, commercial, or individual) deciding to listen.
I am not in support of big government, or the government knowing everything I do, but if I post a political statement, I am usually hoping it is listened to. Otherwise, why state it? That seems to be the scare here too, is that if I disagree with this administration they will silence/censor/kill me. If you are seriously concerned about that put on a tin foil hat and stay offline, otherwise look at this for what it is, a way to monitor the pulse and sentiment of the American people another way, online. This may lead to change in policies, it may lead to astroturfing, or it may lead to nothing, just another piece of information the CIA has that they do nothing with.
Just seems a little too "1985" to me, I just don't see the government having the kind of manpower needed to do something to that extent. Just look at/., they had to start having the members of the user base police themselves because of the amount of trolling, and that was just to clean up the comments. Imagine if they wanted to tie every user to a flesh and blood person (with SSN not email). Now multiply that by the sheer amount of public forums out there, it would take a HUGE organization just to handle that, and even then it would takes years if not decades to have any even remotely usable information.
The only problem I see with that analogy is that you are saying it is someone watching everything I do, and only me. While monitoring the blogs can lead to that, I would see this as a van that drives through my neighborhood everyday, taken pictures of the houses. While still a little unsettling, all they are really going to see is what I put out for them to see. I may have a yard sign that supports a candidate or says some religious/political statement, but everything else about me is kept inside. If they want to know more about me in particular they would have to narrow it down to me as an individual and then investigate me further, multiply that by the millions of users online and that would be a logistical nightmare.
While it is easy for them to see who lives in a particular house based on the address, it is a completely different scenario to know that all around, and still have any meaningful information. The amount of manpower it would take to tie a real 'meatspace' individual to their cyberspace id is pretty high and would take a considerable amount of time to do it for everyone they monitor.
While this may seem like a precursor the "1985" big brother scenario, I just don't see it going that route. I think this will more than anything be another form of metrics. Similar to reading the minutes from organizational meetings and newspaper editorials, as well as phone/street polls.
Most of these blogs will not freely give up their logs and user information, and any other method of tracking will be guess work at best. Multiply that amount of time by the amount of users in cyberspace on all of these different blogs, the government would need an entirely new division to handle it and it still would take years to have anything even remotely useful.
Remember ear damage is not generally not recoverable.
So it is recoverable?
You just proved my point though. I do not want to hide my information and I freely make it available. While my posts and other information could be used for nefarious purposes, it doesn't need to be aggregated for that, at the same time if my data is used to positive purposes such as keeping an eye on what a community is thinking to make better decisions, I am all for it. If you don't want your information used in either way don't participate.
My opinion is that your opinion is useless if you don't want to be attached to it. I fully believe that what I post is correct and wouldn't post it otherwise, so I have no problem with you knowing who I am. That is why my email address is next to user name.
This sounds naive, but on principle this should be opt-in only. If this were for marketing purposes, it certainly would be. But for stuff which actually matters (life, liberty, et al.), it's beginning to look like non-participation is the only opt-out. And the chilling effect is as effective as any active anti-dissent measure.
How is that different from the real world (as in not online)? Why should there be any difference between online participation and real world participation. If you disagree with something or have suggestions on how to better run something, how is this different than participating by writing and editorial, attending a protest/picket line, or simply attending an organizational meeting with similar interests?
Because individualized personality profiles can be built of off seemingly innocuous data.
Sure they can, but unless you are posting information you don't want people to know or are trolling, why do you care. The same goes for talking to people in person. If you make speeches or comments regularly at a town hall meeting or a similar function, eventually the people in attendance will begin to know how you think and what your personality is. And that information will get to the people/organizations that the statements are about. I think something like this will help weed out the more clever trolls, and help make useful information more influential. Unless the CIA starts rolling out death/silencing squads I don't see any issue.
Like I said I think the only real issue is that my tax dollars are going to fund it.
Slashdot Mirror
Or even more annoying, what if the cable or your internet is out for an extended period of time. I would usually use that time to watch movies but if they have to authenticate or stream from a web service, I'm SOL
Except it allows users to be charged multiple times for the same content. You buy the movie from one place. Then on every other device that you try to watch it on that does not have the downloaded file, they charge you a service fee to access your content and stream it to that device (XBox 360 with Netflix comes to mind).
The only way to distribute videos online is DRM free. Yes it will be pirated just like music, but most people will pay for their content and sales will skyrocket due to the new method of distribution. The people who don't want to pay for movies will crack the DRM and share it anyway. Studios will rake in the money due to minimal cost of hosting and no physical medium. This will also create new avenues for companies to host your purchases for streaming reasons, or preconfigured and expandable home servers with STBs that handle the download and storage of your movies. Seems a little like a no-brainer to me.
Who leads and who follows?
I stand, or rather sit, corrected. I should have researched it more before posting. The main point of what I was saying is that the images don't just make the blurry images clear.
*slaps self* Will research more before posting in the future
Wrong, the way the 3D works is that it runs at twice the speed of a normal movie, alternating frames for the eyes. The glasses are polarized to show only one of the two frames on each eye. This creates stereoscopic vision which is how we perceive 3D in real life. The video is shot with two cameras(real or virtual for the rendering) placed apart at a distance similar to distance between the human eyes. This could be achieved on a standard TV if it is 120Hz capable.
Seconded, if I didn't have a 2 yr old, that needed a babysitter, me and my wife would have already seen the movie about five-six times. We saw it this weekend and wanted to buy another ticket immediately afterward to watch it again. This is the movie that will finally get me to buy a Bluray player.
Oh god, the night mares, WHY DID YOU REMIND ME.
I remember fixing PBs back in the late 90's, one simple upgrade lasted over a year because the computer decided to stop working, then work again, then stop working, etc. Thank god those machines are no longer available.
RTFA, Netflix has not released any zip code data, that was for their second contest which has not yet launched. The first only released movie history and a unique ID to the user(not the username)
by "basic cable" he meant broadcast cable. ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, PBS, and local programming(along with others I am probably forgetting) are broadcast over the air, not just on cable. If you are within range you can watch those channels for free, in HD even.
is not to play.
Only problem with that calculation is that 8 hours of the day the computers are used for what the school meant for them, so the calculation would be more like
40 watts x (24 hours x 365 days - 8 hours x 5 days x 52 weeks) x 10 years x 5000 machines x $.06 /kwh = $801,600, 20% less than specified.
Most criminals are not this sophisticated when it comes to burglary, especially for one type of item.
Besides, on social networking sites, the metadata that contains geotag info is stripped when it resizes and resaves the image, same goes for flickr, photo bucket, etc. Unless you are hosting the images on your own server you have nothing to worry about.
If you buy a 50" Plasma and bring it home, anyone driving by while you take it inside now knows you own a 50" Plasma and where you live. Where does it stop?
While theoretically, it is possible to figure something like this out for a robbery or something like that, the chances are incredibly slim, and nothing you do with the exception of completely unplugging and never leaving you home is going to make you completely secure. This is just fear mongering, you are at no higher risk with internet than you are with normal conversation (you tell friend 1 you just got a tv, they tell their friend that a friend of theirs just got that new TV, later on you leave on a trip and tell your friend, whose friend happens to be around/friend 1 tells, and now he can go steal your TV.) It is the nature of socializing, you are gonna give information that is innocuous by itself but when pieced together information can be used for bad deeds.
Ok, go ahead and mod flaimbait or troll now
This is going to degrade into time cube quickly at this rate, 4 synchronous days in one Earth rotation. Link
WARNING: Your head will hurt if you stay on that site for more than a few seconds.
If the ports are only disabled when displaying said content. If the premium content is on demand and optional, while standard broadcast/cable channels operate the way they already do, I don't care. I already use HDMI on my cable box, and most consumers with any form of HD do as well. Component still holds on in some areas, but the worst that will happen with them is they wont get the new content, but still get what they always have until they upgrade. Sounds pretty reasonable to me.
Pirating software is, wait for it, WRONG! Whether it is illegal or not, it is wrong. The argument that it is Microsoft's fault for the malware due to them trying to protect their products is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. That mentality is the same as a burglar suing a homeowner if they hurt themselves while robbing a home. Or blaming the owner of a car for an accident caused by someone stealing the car. It is not Microsoft's responsibility to ensure that software works perfectly whether it is pirated or not. Blame the pirates, not Microsoft.
That is such an idiotic idea that whoever came up with it at the GAO should be fired. The idea of what should and should not be allowed would be very arbitrary. Take sites like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc. They make money from traffic to their site. If they shut down/slowed access to such sites nationwide it would financially cripple them. Companies will have to have their own contingencies for such incidents, it is not the government's responsibility to ensure they can keep operating the way they prefer, it is the companies responsibility to ensure they can continue to operate however necessary.
I can agree with just about everything you said, particularly about having the over powerful machines used for a simple task. I guess my point of view is based on the time I spent employed by the US Government (US Air Force to be exact). As a fellow veteran once told me:
"If you spend anytime employed by the US Government, you will be amazed that this country is as powerful as it is."
Meaning that with the kind of resources these organizations have or potentially have at their disposal, their mismanagement prevents them from utilizing it's full potential. They may or may not have future plans for reeducation, and while the American people at this point would probably not even realize it was happening, I can't see them being able to pull something like it off.
I also try to not read to far in to most seemingly innocuous actions taken by our government for two reasons:
1. I still have hope for our government that while certain individuals are dangerous and can't be trusted, due to our constitution and the checks and balances in place that they wouldn't/couldn't get away with something as scary as a re-education campaign.
2. I don't have enough confidence in the few that would attempt such a thing to actually be able to pull it off.
Also, as far as JFK's statement about secrecy. I understand the sentiment, but based on the mentality of the American people, as well as the media, I feel that if all information (especially that of the CIA such as under cover agents and terrorist watch lists) was available it would put more lives in danger than it would help. Imagine if after 9/11 (I hesitate to even mention 9/11, but it is the only event I could think of that really gets my point across) people were able to know who the CIA thinks might also be terrorists. I feel that many innocent people would probably lose their lives, in more ways than just death (family, friends, jobs, etc) due to the sentiment at the time. And, lets face it, even if the government was completely transparent, people would still think they are hiding something.
My sentiment may seem a bit naive, but while I may be wrong about some, if not all, of my thoughts, I would rather trust (with open eyes) until I was given a reason not too than be critical and distrustful of everything. Many things I read about send up immediate red flags, but this one didn't. I just feel that there are too many other variables required for this to be a threat.
I will admit, though, that my trust level has only gone up since Bush left office, if I had read something like this a few years ago I would be expecting the reeducation to begin within the week.
Of course there is that threat, but if they had that kind of technology, why on Earth would they be investing in a private company to do something like this? The CIA may not have public oversight in the way that we would like, but at the same time in true matters of national security, thank god they don't. There are certain things that just don't need to be known by all. If this was some nefarious plot, I think they would probably be more under wraps, at least about who did the investing.
I am pretty sure they will use this as it was designed, as a marketing tool. They will use this power, as you said, to better sell what they want to the American people.
What this company does is pretty simple, given the manpower, the CIA could easily create something on there own, the fact that they are using a commercial entity tells me that they don't have the highly sophisticated systems you spoke for this operation.
I know it is easy to think of the CIA, FBI, and other top secret government agencies as nefarious entities with their own agenda, but when it comes down to it, they are other American people just like us. They have agendas, sure, but not all are nefarious, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. We have no reason to believe that there are bad plans being made to silence/censor/reeducate the American people.
And as far as the terrorist search goes, my hats off to them if they find that kind of information on PUBLIC forums. But I can tell you, that the red tape they will have to go through to get information on a "hunch" is more than it is worth because in matters of user privacy, cases still have to go through some department of the judicial system. In a way, there is your oversight because for the CIA to arrest, search, or seize property of an American citizen, they would still need a warrant which requires a judge to sign off, for now at least.
My point was that by spying on everyone, they are not really spying on anyone. Back to the home analogy, they get pictures of the neighborhoods to see what kind of people live in that neighborhood. Even more so, this really isn't even like monitoring your house, more like monitoring a meeting hall, they want to know what was said during a public meeting. Would you be worried if you went to a political party meeting and a member of the CIA (or any other government agency) was there? I for one would be happy that someone from the government might be listening to what was being said because that opens up the opportunity for it to be heard by the powers that be. And I doubt that the CIA is interested in anything but political information. Could this information be abused, of course it could, but then again, every ability the government has can be abused. I just personally don't see that much risk to them knowing what my political views are.
Yes, it would take a lot of manpower. So they are doing their best to automate the process, to offload as much of that effort onto sophisticated machines as they possibly can. Such as the ones this firm is using. In other words, the CIA seems to agree with you and is obviously doing everything it can about the "problem" of how difficult it is to spy on everyone.
What, did you think they would just give up?
Automating the process isn't as easy as it sounds. To truly identify someone you need their IP address, and hope that the IP address is there personal one, not from a internet cafe or hot spot. You might get lucky based on an email address, if the email address is both valid and has the personal information available. But to achieve this you need to be able to get user records from the companies that have those addresses, as well as the logs from the sites that have the postings. As shown on previous /. articles, sites don't tend to give up that personal information freely. And with there being not standard of user names on all sites, there is no easy way to tie users together. My ID, DrummerGeek0, ties to me here, but does not in other places, and I know that some of my user names on other sites are tied to different people because I couldn't register them. Add on to that the millions of troll/spam accounts out there. As I said before, this would be a logistical nightmare that couldn't just be automated.
The "sophisticated machines" you are speaking of just scrape a site and parse the contents. It looks for certain keywords and follows logic to determine the tone of the statement. That is nothing compared to tracing out who someone is.
And the idea that they are monitoring what you do, they are monitoring what you say in public forums that are available to everyone, if this truly worries you, keep silent and don't post, but this is no different than all other forms of recorded public communication. You give up the right to privacy when you post, you wave a flag saying that YOU have an opinion, and YOU want it to be heard. I don't see a problem in the CIA, or anyone else(government, commercial, or individual) deciding to listen.
I am not in support of big government, or the government knowing everything I do, but if I post a political statement, I am usually hoping it is listened to. Otherwise, why state it? That seems to be the scare here too, is that if I disagree with this administration they will silence/censor/kill me. If you are seriously concerned about that put on a tin foil hat and stay offline, otherwise look at this for what it is, a way to monitor the pulse and sentiment of the American people another way, online. This may lead to change in policies, it may lead to astroturfing, or it may lead to nothing, just another piece of information the CIA has that they do nothing with.
Just seems a little too "1985" to me, I just don't see the government having the kind of manpower needed to do something to that extent. Just look at /., they had to start having the members of the user base police themselves because of the amount of trolling, and that was just to clean up the comments. Imagine if they wanted to tie every user to a flesh and blood person (with SSN not email). Now multiply that by the sheer amount of public forums out there, it would take a HUGE organization just to handle that, and even then it would takes years if not decades to have any even remotely usable information.
The only problem I see with that analogy is that you are saying it is someone watching everything I do, and only me. While monitoring the blogs can lead to that, I would see this as a van that drives through my neighborhood everyday, taken pictures of the houses. While still a little unsettling, all they are really going to see is what I put out for them to see. I may have a yard sign that supports a candidate or says some religious/political statement, but everything else about me is kept inside. If they want to know more about me in particular they would have to narrow it down to me as an individual and then investigate me further, multiply that by the millions of users online and that would be a logistical nightmare.
While it is easy for them to see who lives in a particular house based on the address, it is a completely different scenario to know that all around, and still have any meaningful information. The amount of manpower it would take to tie a real 'meatspace' individual to their cyberspace id is pretty high and would take a considerable amount of time to do it for everyone they monitor.
While this may seem like a precursor the "1985" big brother scenario, I just don't see it going that route. I think this will more than anything be another form of metrics. Similar to reading the minutes from organizational meetings and newspaper editorials, as well as phone/street polls.
Most of these blogs will not freely give up their logs and user information, and any other method of tracking will be guess work at best. Multiply that amount of time by the amount of users in cyberspace on all of these different blogs, the government would need an entirely new division to handle it and it still would take years to have anything even remotely useful.
Remember ear damage is not generally not recoverable.
So it is recoverable?
You just proved my point though. I do not want to hide my information and I freely make it available. While my posts and other information could be used for nefarious purposes, it doesn't need to be aggregated for that, at the same time if my data is used to positive purposes such as keeping an eye on what a community is thinking to make better decisions, I am all for it. If you don't want your information used in either way don't participate.
My opinion is that your opinion is useless if you don't want to be attached to it. I fully believe that what I post is correct and wouldn't post it otherwise, so I have no problem with you knowing who I am. That is why my email address is next to user name.
This sounds naive, but on principle this should be opt-in only. If this were for marketing purposes, it certainly would be. But for stuff which actually matters (life, liberty, et al.), it's beginning to look like non-participation is the only opt-out. And the chilling effect is as effective as any active anti-dissent measure.
How is that different from the real world (as in not online)? Why should there be any difference between online participation and real world participation. If you disagree with something or have suggestions on how to better run something, how is this different than participating by writing and editorial, attending a protest/picket line, or simply attending an organizational meeting with similar interests?
Because individualized personality profiles can be built of off seemingly innocuous data.
Sure they can, but unless you are posting information you don't want people to know or are trolling, why do you care. The same goes for talking to people in person. If you make speeches or comments regularly at a town hall meeting or a similar function, eventually the people in attendance will begin to know how you think and what your personality is. And that information will get to the people/organizations that the statements are about. I think something like this will help weed out the more clever trolls, and help make useful information more influential. Unless the CIA starts rolling out death/silencing squads I don't see any issue.
Like I said I think the only real issue is that my tax dollars are going to fund it.