Watching orig Outer Limits. This one on machine that can spy on anyone, anywhere...

[Panich52]

Operator tells investigating senator: "If you've got nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear."

Makes me wonder if Orwell was 1st to posit such intrusion...?

[NYC_SKP]

1. I'll bet that "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" can be traced back to Roman Empire or earlier.

Off to Google this.

[General Zod]

2. OBIT

Or The Outer Band Individuated Teletracer. Awesome episode!

[stone space]

3. Omniscience and Religion

Shameless thread pimping:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1218165739

[Panich52]

8. Caught part of a report on that (your OP) on Al Jazeera this am.

Hope to catch it all in repeat today.

[nilram]

4. Similar concept with 18th cen. panopticon, which influences prison design today

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon

[Ichingcarpenter]

5. The episode can be seen for free and legally on internet archives

In this room, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, security personnel at the Defense Department's Cypress Hills Research Center keep constant watch on its scientists through O.B.I.T., a mysterious electronic device whose very existence was carefully kept from the public at large. And so it would have remained but for the facts you are about to witness…


After a missing administrator is found and reveals his knowledge of O.B.I.T., its sinister, unearthly origins and purpose become apparent; the device is, in actuality, an alien invention that was designed to demoralize and desensitize the human race in preparation for invasion.

Closing narration[edit]
“ Agents of the Justice Department are rounding up the machines now. But these machines, these inventions of another planet, have been cunningly conceived to prey on our most mortal weakness. In the last analysis, dear friends, whether O.B.I.T. lives up to its name or not will depend on you.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O.B.I.T.


talk about fiction and reality ............geez


watch it here

https://archive.org/details/TheOuterLimits-Tos-1x07-O.b.i.t.avi_90

[Spitfire of ATJ]

6. They used religion before machines....

There is a belief by the ruling class that the rest of us animals out here will go apeshit on our own.

It comes from their nihilistic notion that they are the ones who OWN civilization and the rest of us are along for the ride.

They used to claim The Gods were watching us and they would punish us if we were bad by striking us down with lightning. Then it became one God who still has that supernatural power to "see all and know all" and who likes to burn us for an eternity if we're naughty.

Now the technology exists to grant the ruling class that which they could only bluff about before.

Authoritarian States keep a file on EVERYONE and some of those files are bulging.

[2naSalit]

7. +1