Without any ability to organize, we will never be able to define who "they" are.
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Snowden’s leak of classified US government information acquired during his work for the National Security Agency (NSA) confirms that the US government is gathering and archiving online data and metadata on a massive scale. The data is stored at NSA data centers, where zettabytes of cloud storage are available to authorities. Snowden’s revelations have again framed the debate over the balance between our privacy rights and our need for security.
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The point we should derive from Snowden’s revelations – a point originally expressed in March 2013 by William Binney, a former senior NSA crypto-mathematician – is that the NSA’s Utah Data Center will amount to a “turnkey” system that,
in the wrong hands, could transform the country into a totalitarian state virtually overnight.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/13/prism-utah-data-center-surveillance?CMP=twt_guThe common wisdom in the US is that we are too well armed for this kind of thing. We have too many guns, it could never happen here.
This line of thinking illustrates a complete and total misunderstanding of what we would actually be up against.
The only way to mount any effective armed resistance would be to organize. We would have to know who to point our pitchforks at, and we would have to know why they were the enemy.
This new technology is specifically targeted at disrupting our ability to organize. This is what folks need to come to terms with. Only a very small number of individuals need to be removed from the public to accomplish this end.
My guess is that less than 1/100 of 1% of the population would need to be detained in order to create such a totalitarian state. For a town like mine of 30,000, that is less than 3 people. If such a crackdown were to occur overnight, what is it that these folks who have all the guns and feel so safe right now, what is it that they will do? Will they shoot the sheriff deputy when he comes to serve a terrorist warrant on the neighbor? Who, exactly, will they point their guns at?
I believe that this is the question that should be asked. Not: "can it happen here?" but, instead: "what would it look like if it did happen here?"
By the way, there have been many reports that Haliburton has built detainment facilities that can hold up to 1/100th of 1% of the country's population, so that's where I come up with that figure. It is actually way too high a number.
Recent Historic Example: During the Iranian uprising several years ago, only 800 people were arrested, IIRC, and only three or four were killed in order to put down a revolution that was very broad and very deep. Remember that this was a population in which many had lived through the overthrow of the Shah. (Since the revolution was put down, most, if not all, of the 800 who were detained have been executed.) IIRC, the US had no official position on any of this. My understanding of these events is two-fold: that we need to have a bad guy in order to have a nuclear confrontation and that the thwarting of this uprising would not have been possible without our technology. YMMV. Total population of Iran is about 75 million and the only arrested (and have since executed) about 800, which is about 0.0001% or way less than what one might normally think is necessary.
This spying on the public, it's apples and oranges.
There are two separate concerns, for sure. One is the privacy issue associated with listening to phone conversations/reading emails, along with all the questions of whether or not the laws are constitutional, or whether or not they are even being followed. This has always been the case with the 4th Amendment, ever since the country was founded.
The second concern is completely new, and it has to do with the use of metadata. Metadata is used to create the targets for a counterinsurgency operation. Sometimes (or according to research, in most cases) the most influential person in a social network (or insurgency) is not the most high profile or the most vocal individual in the group. With very large groups (OWS for example), this new technology identifies those individuals who's participation in the group is the most critical.
That, in a nutshell, is what the metadata is being collected and used for. It should be obvious how this information can be used/misused to affect our first amendment freedoms, specifically our right to peaceably assemble. There are
a couple of stories floating around today about how the MIC is targeting opponents of the keystone pipeline. This counterinsurgeny
technology and training is being used against law-abiding citizens right here in America.
Because the algorithms being used are easily handled by computers, and because no errors are introduced by trying to decode or translate any communication content, the system can create a very precise mapping of our social networks. Only actual metadata associated with each communication is logged into the software, and from that the algorithms sort out the social connections.
Almost everything about this particular type of surveillance is new. The science behind the algorithms that are used and the computers that store and sift the data are new. The idea behind controlling the pubic is not new, however. It has been done before, and very effectively, even without this new weapon.
This all fits into the bigger picture of the War on Terror. Remember that our country was founded by insurgents. Many, if not all of our heroes, would have been easily thwarted under this type of surveillance regime and folks have written about how
Paul Revere could have been stopped.
For some basic info about how the science is implemented, google the keywords: thesis+insurgent+social+network
This use of the metadata seems to be the more dangerous issue. The eavesdropping can be used to disrupt/detain/dissuade/discredit a target. But the scientific selection of targets is what thwarts our (the ones who are trying to change things) ability to properly organize any resistance. This is serious. Without organization we have no idea who to aim our pitchforks at.
Basically, we are racing toward future where you either support the 1% or else you are a terrorist. This path leads to the restoration of slavery. There is no doubt about it.
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To their own detriment.
