"Ghost of 'Total Information Awareness'" by Coleen Rowley (4-15-10 Consortium News)

[bobthedrummer]

"Since we all tend to reflexively cringe whenever someone mentions the ideological 'F' topic, I'm going to try and minimize some of the natural revulsion and denial by writing the full word that we fear to name only once: fascism."

http://consortiumnews.com/2010/041510a.html

[Octafish]

1. Spying on Citizens Is Un-American

Says so in that piece of paper thing, the Constitution.

From the article:

Similarly, it is perhaps one of the most effective ways of demonstrating the absolute power of the state over an individual. Forcing individuals to remove their shoes is one thing, but forcing them to essentially become totally naked on a regular basis will not only destroy self-esteem but immediately create feelings of helplessness and powerlessness.

What's Coleen Rowley know, anyway?

[HereSince1628]

3. You can be secure in your person and your papers...

just not your electronic communications.

Makes perfect sense, the constitution is completely blank with regard to digital communication.

:sarcasm:

[Echo In Light]

2. .

K/R

[enlightenment]

4. And, not surprisingly, this OP sinks like a rock.

K&R - and thank you for posting the link!

[Nikki Stone1]

5. Probably because the OP didn't post enough material, so it looks like a ploy to get traffic

to the site or a game of pull my finger.

Post some info and THEN see if people care.

[Echo In Light]

6. I disagree. People can follow links. I chalk it up to the public mind being acclimated...

... to overt police state tactics (the lack of thread activity, that is)

[Nikki Stone1]

7. I think you're wrong. Put a little more info and see if that changes things.

.

[Echo In Light]

11. Are DUers actually *unaware* of illegal spying?

[Nikki Stone1]

13. They might want to see what else is new on it.

So post, why dontcha.

[Echo In Light]

15. I have in recent days/weeks, and my thread(s) sank like a stone as well

[Nikki Stone1]

17. Well, I'm doing my best to keep it kicked

When I am online. :)

[walldude]

8. K&R ... down the rabbit hole. n/t

[Liberation Angel]

9. Fascism, Here it is: a Juicy excerpt

The NSA, for example, is reportedly building a new computer system the size of the National Capitol Building which will require more electricity than what Salt Lake City uses for everything just for the NSA to store its records.

Much of the data probably emanate from the NSA’s warrantless monitoring program that Congress recently legalized after the monitoring was illegally commenced by Bush.

Previous Attorney General Guidelines, which were enacted in the early 1980s after the Church Committee exposed abuses (such as J. Edgar Hoover’s COINTELPRO), have largely been unceremoniously discarded to open the doors further. Although it’s well known that the task of finding a needle in a haystack or “connecting the dots” is not made easier, but instead much harder, by adding more hay to the haystack, it has not stopped the newly burgeoning “Security-Surveillance Industrial Complex,” which is as privatized as the military-industrial complex.

In 2007, the FBI temporarily raised some eyebrows when it proposed quadrupling its Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) database to ultimately collect 6 billion records, or 20 for each man, woman, and child in the U.S.

While a National Academies of Science study had refuted Total Information Awareness’s ability to achieve its stated objective to “proactively” mine the data to find terrorists using “predictive” analysis, nothing seems to stop such collections from proceeding. Private security and surveillance corporations have huge profit incentives to push to expand such programs, as they benefit from contracts with the government.

The average citizen does not suspect, however, that the government would waste such vast sums of his/her tax money on useless surveillance and data collection-mining systems to profit private companies. So the U.S. government intelligence agencies’ massive “intelligence” collection serves to fuel and reinforce people’s fears of “terrorism,” as well as intimidate and scare the average citizen away from such basic good citizenship activities as marching, writing letters to the editor, blogging, joining activist or social networking groups (such as Facebook), or otherwise exercising their First Amendment rights.

[Echo In Light]

12. Especially that last paragraph:

"The average citizen does not suspect, however, that the government would waste such vast sums of his/her tax money on useless surveillance and data collection-mining systems to profit private companies."

Silent Weapons For Quiet Wars

[Nikki Stone1]

14. +1 (Thanks for posting)

And fucking scary.

[Matariki]

10. Sometimes I fear that program was renamed 'Google'

:P

[Nikki Stone1]

18. I think that's right actually.

Scary shit.

[conscious evolution]

19. another alias is

facebook.

[Liberation Angel]

20. Myspace, facebook, gmail, aol, and remember IBM was used by the Nazis to collect data on Jews...

and political ideaology and religion and sexual orientation etc.

You can see the IBM data collecting machine at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Punch cards with all your data to classify and organize you for transport, special rtreatment etc.

Oh wait, i use a PC (IBM). Oh wait, I use aol and gmail. I use facebook and myspace and netflix (they know what you watch).

They know all about every facet of our lives and they can access our hard drives remotely to with file sharing, snooping software.

Every search.

every email we get

or write

or send

Every keystroke.

Wouldn't be so bad if fascist weren't in charge of what is done with that data.

Those motherfuckers will kill you for even talking about it.

Maybe

one day

oh jeez....

[Overseas]

16. K&R. //nt

[bobthedrummer]

21. For Memorial Day Weekend, a kick and a plethora of related links

in the related archived thread below
CIA Domestic Operations Division: DU thread #3
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6225784

[Liberation Angel]

22. Thanks mucho

:loveya: :tinfoilhat: :fistbump: