...I'm okay with being REALITY-based.




Tuesday, May 20, 2003
      ( 3:51 PM )
 
Creepy Creepy Creepy...
Brought to you by your Government

Alert reader (and my really well-read husband), P, sent me this info today: We can all lay awake creeped out sleep safer tonight. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has decided to reassure us by renaming the Total Information Awareness program. It will henceforth be called the "Terrorism Information Awareness" program. Whew. Thank god they will be only using it to go after terrorists! Oh, and not only that, they are expanding their abilities to collect information on us terrorists. DARPA has admitted that it is increasing their data mining capabilities, "giving U.S. agents fingertip access to government and commercial records from around the world that could fill the Library of Congress more than 50 times."

Not only that, but DARPA is planning to use the new "Lifelog" system... a data mining system that can literally "dump everything an individual does into a giant database: every e-mail sent or received, every picture taken, every Web page surfed, every phone call made, every TV show watched, every magazine read. " This program, the Pentagon says, can be used in so many wonderful ways! For tracking the education of service members, keeping them up on the latest training, to even training robots!!

From Wired:

Sure, LifeLog could be used to train robotic
assistants. But it also could become a way
to profile suspected terrorists, said Cory Doctorow,
with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. In
other words, Osama bin Laden's agent takes a
walk around the block at 10 each morning, buys
a bagel and a newspaper at the corner store
and then calls his mother. You do the same
things -- so maybe you're an al Qaeda member, too!

This is yet another step by BushCo to erradicate not only Americans' civil liberties, but the right of every human being on earth to his or her privacy. In order to "battle" terrorism, our government will use the vast resources available through computing contractors to track everything they can in order to "pinpoint" who might be a terrorist.

The sick thing is, that while the public, the media and all manner of politicians should be shouting from the rooftops about the failed "war on terrorism" and how BushCo has in fact made it even MORE dangerous for Americans since 9/11, there is silence. And in that silence, BushCo will twist its failure into another excuse to expand its power and control...and invasion of our private lives: "Look, we're still battling that evil Al Qaeda! We need to use all the resources that we can to catch those evil terrorists...so while we've totally given up on our commitment to Afghanistan, and we don't care about keeping our word on anything having to do with Iraq, now's the time we need all Americans to sacrifice: give up your personal data! You never know, with us having the capability to know what you're buying, we might just catch a terrorist!"

This is so incredibly creepy that if it weren't true, i'd think it was bad sci fi and laugh at the lack of believability. Unfortunately, it's true. Sleep well.



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