Surprised nobody’s brought this up. Yes, this is exactly the type of people I want regulating my internet and personal information. Totally.
That is kind of disturbing, why is dragnet information gathering so tolerated in today’s society, especially the US?
Especially with efforts to remain private such as TOR being rolled up there doesn’t seem to be a place to hide.
In fact deliberately limiting your internet presence is seen as a sign of guilt. So what the hell are people supposed to do?
[quote]Edward wrote:
That is kind of disturbing, why is dragnet information gathering so tolerated in today’s society, especially the US?
[/quote]
It’s necessary for the regulation of victimless crimes. We Americans love punishing criminals, even if we have to create them.
List of countries by incarceration rate - Wikipedia -See them incarceration rates? America’s #1…AGAIN! Suck it, world! Smell our freedom.
Not surprising really. It’s Eastern block style surveillance brought up to date: techno-despoticism. The concept of machines and software making lists of suspects autonomously and then presenting the human operator with lists of suspects; then facilitating his honing in on machine selected suspects, perhaps going on to annihilate the suspect with a drone - this process of subordinating decision making to machines; perhaps some human being with some ideology arriving at some arbitrary decision along the way in the process; a decision entirely contingent upon the ideology and metaphysical state of the individual; and then all other steps in the process completed by the software of machines and brought to fruition by military hardware, again entirely autonomously and uncoupled from human control. This is why the asymmetric wars of the 21st Century will be characterised by an incoherent, random, chaotic, irrational and arbitrary nature from the side of the Western democracies. This runaway process of autonomous irrationalism will be largely constrained by “public opinion” and the guardians of the Cathedral; the metaphysical system of Western postmodern demotists; radical egalitarianism, universal enfranchisement, nihilism in the form of destruction of traditional institutions and metaphysical systems, the feminine cults of Isis and Baal, the suicidal cult of Hegesias characterised by a declining birthrate and high suicide rate; the cult of materialism and consumerism; the cult of technology and techno-nihilism etc.
What really worries me at the moment is the ideology of the people and institutions tasked with carrying out this surveillance. The Department of Homeland Security from their public statements and behaviour are exclusively fixated on “domestic terrorists” in the form of “patriotic”, 2nd Amendment, militia movements and groups that have been given a thumbs down by a radical ideological oversight committee in form of frontgroups like the SPLC, ACLU and a host of special interest groups and ethnic front groups - the power structures of radical identity politics and Balkanisation. In this context, radical Islam is seen as a public relations problem; Islam needs to be defended and legitimised by the super structure. Obama has to say “that’s not the real Islam” and that the real Islam is something noble and virtuous and it’s on our side. But the patriots and the Constitution types and the traditionalists? They’re the real threat. They’re the enemy. Clinging to their guns and bibles; their metaphysical systems objective and therefore exclusionary. But because traditionalists are rule of law types and not prone to violent and irrational action they’re fictitious as a criminal entity. They’re a metaphysical threat that has to be given a form that can be criminalised and targeted. This is where they engage in entrapment; they “infiltrate” or sometimes even start political movements and draw the stupidest people they can gather around an ideology into a trap to incriminate themselves. Along with a fictitious terrorist threat you also need a fictitious national security threat; in this case “climate change” seeks to distract and misdirect the public mindset. Russian irredentism and proxy wars and the threat of Islamic fundamentalism and war in the Pacific - the fundamental geopolitical crises that confront us; all of them have to be suppressed from the public mindset. They’re esoteric concerns for liberal academics and masterminds who control the machinery of the state.
I’ve pointed out cases in Britain and elsewhere; like the British Member of Parliament who was arrested for quoting Churchill in a public speech - reading Churchill’s quote ran him afoul of “hate crimes” legislation.
The nightmare of technogical surveillance is that it will cross over into hard tyranny. Sweden has dozens of Islamic fundamentalist enclaves that are “no-go” areas for police. The Islamists completely control the streets. The government as such, is an alliance of “green left”, centre left and social democrat/Christian democrat and socialist forces with the Islamic fundamentalists. Whenever relations reach a tipping point the Islamic forces start rioting and setting cars on fire and attacking white Swedes. America doesn’t have that element of existential intimidation. But the forces of the left in America are still reacting from the left to the metaphysical forces of Islam. This reaction from the left is the same as in Europe: Islam is virtuous and noble and it’s on our side. Islam is legitimised and the superstructure engages in Islamic apologetics. Islam is exonerated from all of its vices and repackaged for us. Every time a group of them blow up or shoot civilians it’s hushed up and played down because in the end the West doesn’t stand for any metaphysical, objective truths and radical Islam is just an anomaly in the egalitarian, universalist worldview.
And so you get the same sort of reactive politics from the left. An Army Sergeant and psychiatrist starts to manifest signs of Islamic fundamentalist beliefs and behaviours; it’s hushed up. Colleagues report being too scared to report his behaviour and they report being silenced by the ideological super structure. The Sergeant comes to work and shoots a number of his fellow soldiers dead. It’s hushed up. Listed as “workplace violence”. The ideological super structure and the institutions of the state allowed this guy to become radicalised, to start acting out his radicalisation in the workplace, to massacre his colleagues and then to hide the guilt of of Islam and legitimise it and represent it to the public in a new package. In this sense the state is the facilitator of Islamic terrorism. How can you expect this same super structure not to use surveillance as a tool of radical Islam; cracking down on “Islamophobes” - ie, individuals who have been denounced by the Council on American-Islamic Relations and other frontgroups of Ummah; a metaphysical state fundamentally at war with egalitarianism and Judeo-Christian traditionalism. They’re a force on the left that evinces a reaction from the left by the left. This reaction is appeasement, conciliation and collaboration. This is the framework under which mass surveillance will operate. Islamic fundamentalist terrorism will be to an extent ignored/hushed up/facilitated/explained away/repackaged to the Ummah and worldwide Gentile Dhimmitude and the superstructure continues to hone in on “Islamophobes” and “hate criminals” and other ideological threats to the superstructure.
Edited
Eh, I brought some of this stuff up earlier when most of you were calling Snowden a traitor.
You all have a problem with government spying on us, but what has happened is that our Governments have created so many backdoors that it’s left some doors open for other nations to tap into our own military information.
Not sure anyone payed attention, but remember this? Mikko Hypponen: How the NSA betrayed the world's trust -- time to act | TED Talk
China took our Aegis tech a long time ago, and it’s new stealth fighter is visibly similar to our own F-22 and F-35. It’s rumored that they got schematics by hacking into one of the engineers emails. Had we not engineered so many security backdoors we could have avoided this.
The way I see it, China is up to the same things we are in terms of monitoring it’s own citizens. Also, it’s more cost effective to steal from us than to spend the R&D in creating their own weapons. Besides, what are we going to do about it? They’ve taken Aegis, Blackhawk, Patriot Missile and apparently the ideas that brought us the f22 and f35.
I may be missing some pieces, but it really looks like we sabotaged our ability to prevent this from happening so we could spy on ourselves.