Key to government’s monitoring power lies in war, technology

[xchrom]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/key-to-governments-monitoring-power-lies-in-war-technology/2013/06/07/21558cdc-cf99-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_story.html


Connie Zhou/AP - Companies and government agencies increasingly moved information to remote cloud servers, maintained in many cases by the same companies that documents showed were working with the NSA to gather information.

Expanded government surveillance was cast as a price of war in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Yet nearly a dozen years later, the war on terrorism is showing signs of ebbing while the surveillance systems created to fight it continue unabated.

If anything, they are becoming more powerful.

That’s because the nation went to a war footing at a time of profound technological change that fueled an explosion of personal data. Governments and businesses have developed the ability to mine, sort and analyze this information as never before — and show little inclination to relinquish that power.

Few adults can navigate the modern world without leaving behind massive trails of data: where we go, where we live, how we look, what we buy, what we eat, what Web sites we visit and — perhaps most powerfully for those seeking to monitor us — who is in our network of personal relationships.

[Thinkingabout]

1. Would we have been happy for someone to look at those training for pilots recognized this was a

possible problem and have averted events of 9 11 2001? I think we would have been happy for those killed to have returned home to their families that night. At one time in this world travel sure was not as fast as we have today so we can be more worried about how easy it is for those who want to harm us. After the Oklahoma City bombing there has been checks on how fertilize is sold to perhaps prevent another bombing and this was by an American citizen. Is the 4 Amendment allowing us to freely move about the country, to make choices to keep our nation safer in order to continue this movement or would we rather to allow anyone to make the decision to end lives just because they want to do so. There are mean people who wants to harm others and we need to do the responsible thing and provide as much protection as possible. I was not happy about the seat belt law and would be one not to use them but I do this now without question.

[Puzzledtraveller]

2. I had this thought about the so called "War on terror"

It really is like the "War on drugs" it follows the same rhetoric and serves the same interests and being fully in place will never end.

[xchrom]

3. both memes became a money proposition for the Establishment.

and like hamsters on a wheel -- they have keep 'spinning' in order to justify their existence.