The Trump election is the second rudest awakening I have experienced politically in my lifetime. The danger of the election of this man and his body of declarations and intents is all the more magnified by the most startling realization: The Snowden Leak.
I had heard of "Carnivore" and several other full spectrum surveillance and data collection programs in the late 90s, and remember them being discussed on arstechnica.com. Almost all people dismissed those people talking about them as Unabomber crackpots, declaring that there was no way democratic governments would be doing such things, or they were being blown out of proportion. Even the more shadowy aspects of the Patriot Act and the "War on Terror" such as declaring Americans "enemy combatants" (Jose Padilla) seemed dangerous, but still nominally checked and restrained.
Oh were we wrong.
The Snowden leaks showed the massive scale of cross-governmental worldwide internet surveillance and monitoring. It also showed low-level abuses in female stalking by employees, which can be viewed as relatively innocuous, until you realize that means that it can be fully abused without the FISA courts. And the FISA courts, set up to allegedly oversee the use of these programs, was shown to be a rubber stamp machine that had no idea what was going on and was viewed as window dressing.
But how were these programs getting and associating the data?
We did it for them.
With the rise of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Amazon, Gmail, smartphones, Skype, and many other messaging platforms, the US Government knows everything about us. How do we know they do so utterly and completely? Because the corporations do as well.
How?
All those sites are "free". In that they record and analyze everything you click, navigate, read, post, search, download, and upload. From that they know what you like, eat, watch, drink, think, love, hate... who your best friends are, who you associate with, who you go out with. Your phone listens through its microphone, reports your movements and location, can be activated remotely. Your photos are geotagged, and your friends are auto-recognized.
The sites make money with ads. But not by spraying ads and hoping they are relevant, like television does. No... they know your: Likes, Dislilkes, Friends, Searches, Websites Visited, Age, Job, Education, Places Lives, etc. You entered it for them, tagged it, liked it, commented on it.
Ask an advertiser what they can sell to someone if you know all that: As an example, Target can guess when you're having a baby before you've told anyone.
Now, ask someone from the CIA what they can do with that information if they needed to, uh, "influence" you.
This consumer information is in dozens of firms' databases, shared and bought and repurchased. It's everywhere. It can't be removed, rolled back, purged, or hidden.
And if these massive consumer information databases have that information... so does the government. While some of those databases may have some of your information, the government has ALL OF IT.
Now, this is all somewhat innocuous in a civic, functional democracy. But should a man with no respect for the system, with ambitions and desires and hatred and contempt and demagoguery take power of that apparatus....
Imagine Stalin being able to identify how intelligent you are, how much money you have, what party you vote for, where you live, who your friends are that agree with you.
Imagine Hitler knowing who is a Jew when he came to power with a simple database search.
Imagine Hitler could identify Aryan children through image crawling, and take those children for indoctrination and training.
Imagine Hitler being able to use software to identify what ethnic group you belong to (doesn't have to be that accurate, dictators aren't that picky about tossing the baby with the bathwater).
For a secret police or totalitarian states, it is then a tragically simple task to identify and purge political opposition. You know where they live, what they do, what they drive, where you would hide. They have drones, cameras, automatic facial recognition software, credit monitoring, ability to freeze accounts, satellites, and all can be done with little legal opposition, all within normal law enforcement procedures.
Here's the thing. Think shutting up now will matter? Nope. The NSA has 10-20 years of internet activity on you already. Full spectrum knowledge of you already.
They don't have to kill or jail you. They know who you find dear, who you care about. They can threaten and control you in any number of ways. Family, friends, lovers, idols.
I've spent 20 years enjoying the internet as a free, vibrant source of information. I've learned more from it than all my schooling. It was once my friend... but overnight it has become my enemy.
Oh, you think the freedom and flow of information on the Internet will raise awareness?
Have you not been paying attention? The internet is no longer the tool of the Information Age. It is now the tool of the Propaganda Age. Where targeted propaganda can be tailored to your prejudices, fears, hatreds, distrust, and party. Boogeymen and outrage created through repetition, photoshopping, memes, outtakes, and a whole lot of screaming. It can be slapped on porn star breasts, delivered on the news with beautiful breast-implanted blondes, and ruggedly handsome men on steroids and testosterone, scroll by subliminally.
You think the advertising industry is as big and prolific as it is? That they haven't learned something in the 60-70 years they've been at it? You didn't see Mad Men, which was the infancy of advertising?
The internet now has personalized echo chambers, and custom filters to keep the unprocessed truth out. What is truth anyway? What is good? What is evil? Who are the bad guys? You think this hasn't been done before?
If Trump turns totalitarian, I am effectively dead. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Or maybe I'll be locked in a virtual world, and not even know the difference. Put me in a jail cell with an XBox.
Might be better than reality anyway.
I had heard of "Carnivore" and several other full spectrum surveillance and data collection programs in the late 90s, and remember them being discussed on arstechnica.com. Almost all people dismissed those people talking about them as Unabomber crackpots, declaring that there was no way democratic governments would be doing such things, or they were being blown out of proportion. Even the more shadowy aspects of the Patriot Act and the "War on Terror" such as declaring Americans "enemy combatants" (Jose Padilla) seemed dangerous, but still nominally checked and restrained.
Oh were we wrong.
The Snowden leaks showed the massive scale of cross-governmental worldwide internet surveillance and monitoring. It also showed low-level abuses in female stalking by employees, which can be viewed as relatively innocuous, until you realize that means that it can be fully abused without the FISA courts. And the FISA courts, set up to allegedly oversee the use of these programs, was shown to be a rubber stamp machine that had no idea what was going on and was viewed as window dressing.
But how were these programs getting and associating the data?
We did it for them.
With the rise of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Amazon, Gmail, smartphones, Skype, and many other messaging platforms, the US Government knows everything about us. How do we know they do so utterly and completely? Because the corporations do as well.
How?
All those sites are "free". In that they record and analyze everything you click, navigate, read, post, search, download, and upload. From that they know what you like, eat, watch, drink, think, love, hate... who your best friends are, who you associate with, who you go out with. Your phone listens through its microphone, reports your movements and location, can be activated remotely. Your photos are geotagged, and your friends are auto-recognized.
The sites make money with ads. But not by spraying ads and hoping they are relevant, like television does. No... they know your: Likes, Dislilkes, Friends, Searches, Websites Visited, Age, Job, Education, Places Lives, etc. You entered it for them, tagged it, liked it, commented on it.
Ask an advertiser what they can sell to someone if you know all that: As an example, Target can guess when you're having a baby before you've told anyone.
Now, ask someone from the CIA what they can do with that information if they needed to, uh, "influence" you.
This consumer information is in dozens of firms' databases, shared and bought and repurchased. It's everywhere. It can't be removed, rolled back, purged, or hidden.
And if these massive consumer information databases have that information... so does the government. While some of those databases may have some of your information, the government has ALL OF IT.
Now, this is all somewhat innocuous in a civic, functional democracy. But should a man with no respect for the system, with ambitions and desires and hatred and contempt and demagoguery take power of that apparatus....
Imagine Stalin being able to identify how intelligent you are, how much money you have, what party you vote for, where you live, who your friends are that agree with you.
Imagine Hitler knowing who is a Jew when he came to power with a simple database search.
Imagine Hitler could identify Aryan children through image crawling, and take those children for indoctrination and training.
Imagine Hitler being able to use software to identify what ethnic group you belong to (doesn't have to be that accurate, dictators aren't that picky about tossing the baby with the bathwater).
For a secret police or totalitarian states, it is then a tragically simple task to identify and purge political opposition. You know where they live, what they do, what they drive, where you would hide. They have drones, cameras, automatic facial recognition software, credit monitoring, ability to freeze accounts, satellites, and all can be done with little legal opposition, all within normal law enforcement procedures.
Here's the thing. Think shutting up now will matter? Nope. The NSA has 10-20 years of internet activity on you already. Full spectrum knowledge of you already.
They don't have to kill or jail you. They know who you find dear, who you care about. They can threaten and control you in any number of ways. Family, friends, lovers, idols.
I've spent 20 years enjoying the internet as a free, vibrant source of information. I've learned more from it than all my schooling. It was once my friend... but overnight it has become my enemy.
Oh, you think the freedom and flow of information on the Internet will raise awareness?
Have you not been paying attention? The internet is no longer the tool of the Information Age. It is now the tool of the Propaganda Age. Where targeted propaganda can be tailored to your prejudices, fears, hatreds, distrust, and party. Boogeymen and outrage created through repetition, photoshopping, memes, outtakes, and a whole lot of screaming. It can be slapped on porn star breasts, delivered on the news with beautiful breast-implanted blondes, and ruggedly handsome men on steroids and testosterone, scroll by subliminally.
You think the advertising industry is as big and prolific as it is? That they haven't learned something in the 60-70 years they've been at it? You didn't see Mad Men, which was the infancy of advertising?
The internet now has personalized echo chambers, and custom filters to keep the unprocessed truth out. What is truth anyway? What is good? What is evil? Who are the bad guys? You think this hasn't been done before?
If Trump turns totalitarian, I am effectively dead. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Or maybe I'll be locked in a virtual world, and not even know the difference. Put me in a jail cell with an XBox.
Might be better than reality anyway.
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