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Total Information Awareness, Disguised And Alive
Posted by
timothy
on Sun Feb 22, 2004 08:47 PM
from the state-of-the-state dept.
from the state-of-the-state dept.
unassimilatible writes "According to the AP, aspects of the controversial Total Information Awareness DARPA program, officially shut down by the U.S. Congress in September 2003 after a public outcry, seem to have survived. The article reports, 'Some projects from retired Adm. John Poindexter's Total Information Awareness effort were transferred to U.S. intelligence offices, congressional, federal and research officials told The Associated Press. In addition, Congress left undisturbed a separate but similar $64 million research program run by a little-known office called the Advanced Research and Development Activity, or ARDA, that has used some of the same researchers as Poindexter's program.'"
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Total Information Awareness, Disguised And Alive
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Common practice (Score:5, Insightful)
Wack a mole... (Score:4, Insightful)
If it fails here, they'll wack it. Sure.
It will pop up there, and if uproar continues, they'll wack it there.
It will pop up over there, under security this time, and if it leaks and there's more uproar, they'll wack it again. With "feeling".
But, once told "no", only criminals will find another way. And the Feds have so very many options.
They'll move it into "private research" inside Lockheed.
Or, they'll bust it up into dozens of subject matter and time compartmentalized graduate projects in their Universities.
Or, or, or...
Seems real terrorists just won't allow themselves to be stopped.
Similar (Score:4, Interesting)
Getting across the wall (Score:5, Interesting)
I lived in West Berlin for over a year oh so long ago. I used to make kindof a study of the wall. Even brought back a piece of it, long before it came down and was sold in pieces in the US like pet rocks. (taking the piece home made kindof a funny story. I was taken off the subway by plainclothes policemen who thought I was going to use it to vandalize something. I switched to English and told them I was an American tourist who was bringing home a souvenir, so they let me go, rock and all)
From what I remember, there was "the wall" - that part that is famous in pictures, with the graffiti and all. Incidently, it was covered/topped with what looked like a continuous cylinder maybe 2 or 3 feet in diameter along the top. I imagine that would have been very hard to get past without special equipment. Behind the wall was the no man's land with a small access road for patrols and the antitank ditch in it. Behind that was a somewhat shorter inner wall as well.
Of course, "the wall" was different in different places. In some places it was partly made up of buildings. Additionally, the western subway went under parts of East Berlin. You could sometimes see guards in the stations in the Eastern part.
It was an interesting study in security. As the wall changed in form due to the changing geography, infrastructure, and so forth, you could see how one who wanted out would attempt to choose the weakest link. One guy built a flat car and drove under the checkpoint gates. Another tightrope walked over the wall (IIRC). And so forth.
Re:Getting across the wall (Score:5, Interesting)
I was at Brandenburger Tor late a Sunday night. I didn't realise it was closed. I sat in the empty bleachers and a West Berlin cop hailed me. 'You'd better get out of there', he said. 'Why?' I asked.
'Look up at that guard tower on the east side', he said. 'See that guard there? See what he's doing? He's got his gun trained on you.'
'Hold on, I'm coming back with you!' I yelped, and jumped down the bleachers and walked off with the West Berlin cop.
Re:Similar (Score:5, Interesting)
Friday? (Score:5, Funny)
Offtopic rant (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://jostein.kjonigsen.net/)
Sorry for this offtopic rant, but statements like these really piss me off:
Jeez. Do you know how ignorant that paragraph makes you seem? You need the basic rights like due process and a fair trial to actually establish for a fact that these people are "combatant terrorists".
They may be, but there is no fscking way of knowing, unless they are given the rights, which has been explicitly been taken away from them. How complicated is that to understand?!?
Ofcourse, G. W. Bush haven't understood this at all [unol.org], but this should be no surprise. I quote: "the only thing I know for certain is that these are bad people". How does he know?
But let's be consistent in our reasoning at least. Since murder is also a sever crime, I suggest we remove all security that the law provides for fair trials, if the poeple are accused for murder. After all they are murderers and don't deserve any legal protection, now do they?
Last I checked, some of these "combatant terrorists" held which were release after only 18 months, was found to be a taxi-driver and his ride [amnesty.org]. I think you should consider the possibility that the people giving out "terrorists", has aproximately the same credability as those informing the US about Iraqi WMD.
Get real (Score:5, Interesting)
It is in fact not at all like what the East German secret police (Stasi) did during the cold war. There was no legislative shell game to play because the legislature was a sham. The scope of individual liberty was so small that there was no comparable initiative from Stasi. There was no need to sift through large amounts of data about citizens to find out what they needed to know. Activities were all duly registered, and all records were available to them. Elaborate systems of informants kept tabs on any person of interest.
It's hard to believe that anyone old enough to remember the cold war would say something so ridiculous. American domestic intelligence activities take place in a society where individuals enjoy broad latitude of action outside of state control. Without that context, total information awareness or whatever it has become would not even be a dream in a spies mind.
Re:Get real (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree. I challenge you to name one area of our lives that is entirely outside of government control. I can't think of any.
Re:Get real (Score:4, Funny)
Also, the government limits your right to blow your nose on the sleeves of the following government representatives: The president, the Secretary of State, officers of the law, military servicemen of ranks above E-6 or O-3, senators from states with more than ten million citizens, visiting foreign dignitaries, and Condoleeza Rice.
Finally, depending on what you do with the tissue after your nose is blown, the government can hold you on charges ranging from littering to arson to attempting to assassinate a Supreme Court justice.
dissenting view on TIA (Score:4, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Tuesday January 20 2004, @02:13PM)
The irony is that this tool would be much more useful and effective if they knew which way to point it. Rather than blanketing every bit of data everywhere, why not send in spies, get a vague idea who may be involved and then focus on that group rather than wasting resources everywhere. Go from 6 billion targets to 1 million or so and your odds go way up. It may be old fashioned, but that method got us through the Cold War and I don't understand why it can't work for the 'War on Terror'(which is a misnomer but I won't get into that). We need decent human intelligence. Without decent human intelligence all of these fancy computers will be next to useless, which is our current predicament. Information is useless without knowledge.
And as for the people who are getting all freaked out by the government, especially on this geeky forum, it is the powermongers/wannabe dictators that should be afraid of us. Whenever I imagine a worst case scenario, where fascists take over, I imagine what I would do to fight back. Theoretically, I know how to shut the whole system down: communications, telephone, internet, power, transportation et cetera. Knowledge is power. But I believe that most of the people who run the national security apparatus are patriots who believe in liberty. I find it difficult to believe they would stoop to dictatorship. But if they do go too far, I'm not afraid of them, and they had better fear me. If anyone truly believs our liberty is being undermined, it is their duty to stand up and fight...anyone???
Damn (Score:4, Funny)
From the ARDA Page (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Thursday February 15 2007, @08:00PM)
High Risk as in 'Public Backlash'?
Re:From the ARDA Page (Score:5, Informative)
DARPA is only concerned with research. Not production or use.
On the couple of DARPA programs I worked on it goes like this.
1.) DARPA gets a crazy idea (like "I wonder if we can make an anti-gravity device".)
2.) DARPA puts together about 6 to 10 teams of researchers (from industry and academia) and gives them some money to study the problem.
3.) 6 months or so later the teams present their ideas to DARPA. DARPA then decides if it wants to stop the research or continue.
4.) If DARPA continues. It will pick the best 2 or 3 approaches and give those teams more money for more details on their approach.
5.) 6 months or so later the teams present their approaches to DARPA. If DARPA really likes an idea, it might have one of the teams build a small prototype.
If the prototype works out DARPA will ask congress to take the research to production (not under DARPA but under DOD).
Very, very rarely does a DARPA project make it to production.
Re:From the ARDA Page (Score:4, Informative)
(http://www.mindspring.com/~bstretch)
High Risk as in it's not likely they'll be able to make it work, but it'll be Really Cool (in their opinion) if they can.
Why ... (Score:5, Insightful)
am I not even remotely surprised by this announcement ?
Could anyone actually trust a government that passed the PATRIOT Act to actually can TIA ?
Re:Why ... (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.gh-sts.com/HOWTO | Last Journal: Tuesday November 01 2005, @09:39PM)
You should not be surprised - this is behavior that should be expected from any government no matter what benevolent face it puts on.
The only things that keep power hungry government officials in check is fear of retribution from the populace. When the country was small and the military little more than a couple boy scouts with prettier boots (a situation that persisted well into the 20th century to some degree), there was the potential for armed revolts. Even pockets could cause huge problems.
When the official forces were bulked up as a result of the world wars, there was still the ever hanging axe of the ballot box to keep politicians under control. When the media gained the power of radio and TV, any little foible could be broadcast within hours to a population that might actually care.
Now, armed revolt isn't a threat, the media is broadcasting sensationalist bullshit for ratings meaning people don't take it that seriously, and the typical voter turnout is so horribly anemic that I have a hard time believing people even realize that they have a vote sometimes.
Politicians are free to pursue whatever agenda they want now. Nobody is going to stop them. With a few exceptions like TIA, nobody speaks up against ridiculous, authoritarian programs coming out of D.C. anymore. When they do, you just see this - they get broken up and hidden in various budgets and departments in such a way that they look like harmless little pocket programs, but the same folks are still pulling the strings at the top.
I've got to wonder sometimes how much farther this can go. The technology will just keep evolving in favor of loss of privacy and big brother-esque data collection and monitoring. When will people step up to draw the line and, depending on how long it takes, what will it take to actually keep the government from crossing it?
Re:Why ... (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.gh-sts.com/HOWTO | Last Journal: Tuesday November 01 2005, @09:39PM)
The politicians are closely linked to commercial interests.
Commercial interests have a great deal to gain from knowing everything about everyone.
Both the politicians and the agencies are closely linked to the private sector. The agencies, as you stated, have a great deal to gain from knowing everything about everyone.
None of these three can exist in their current incarnation without the crucial link of the politician. Would you like a pencil to connect the dots? This is not just some paranoid goon bullshit either, it's the most likely series of connections in the event that anyone really is "out to get us". Whether anyone is actually out to get us, or this is simply massive incompetence, pork-barrel spending, or a vulgar display of power by some sniveling twit with a shriveled cock sitting in Congress somewhere is up for debate.
Re:Why ... (Score:5, Insightful)
We alread have some recent historical precedent you can draw from. What it took last time was:
- A lengthy, ugly, pointless, war in Vietnam that killed and maimed large numbers of American soldiers and millions of Vietnamese. Vietnam for the U.S. and Afghanistan for the U.S.S.R. created large numbers of returning veterans who were disillusioned with their government after being subjected to the senseless horrors they were producing in the name of their geopolitical and economic manuevering.
- A CIA that had essentially run amuck and was using covert operations, coups, assasinations and rigged elections to install despotic regimes around the world
- An FBI engaged in a massive domestic spying and social engineering campaign
- A President, Richard Nixon, who was caught using dirty tricks to destroy political oponents and insure his reelection.
- Economic upheaval thanks in part to the massive expenditures in Vietnam
America did manage to come back from the brink then for a time thanks to:
- The antiwar movement. We forget this now but a lot of people were politically very active in the late sixties and early seventies.
- Congressional investigations by the Church Commission which reined in the CIA and FBI for a time.
- Investigate journalists, Woodward and Berstein, who refused to accept the mush being spoon fed them by the government and actually did what journalists are supposed to do which was find the truth.
Today many of the same elements are coalescing though it took time for them to develop in the 60's and it wont happen overnight this time either:
- the war in Iraq has the same potential as Vietnam to incite an anti war movement unless the U.S. is successful in disengaging its occupation army and fostering a stable government soon. Both are unlikely. If the U.S. were to disengage its army Iraq would likely devolve in to a civil war. Any real attempt to actually turn sovereignty over to the the Iraqs, with a democratic vote, would lead almost immediately to a Shia dominated Islamic republic which the U.S. won't tolerate. As a result the U.S. has to manipulate the politics in Iraq and maintain an occupation army, indefinitely, or cut and run and let it collapse like South Vietnam eventually did. If things continue as they are the root of an antiwar movement will form each time a new wave of 100,000 soldiers return from Iraq with the permenent scars of the horrors they are subjected to there. Occupations with a creditable insurgent resistance are always very ugly for everyone involved. This disillusionment would be an instantaneous process though. It will take years as it did in Vietnam. There are some forces that work against another Vietnam too. The Army learned a lot of lessons about what caused the moral collapse of the Army and public opinion in Vietnam and they have remedied some but not all. The three obvious ones are:
- drug testing to prevent drug abuse
- maintaining unit cohesion
- suppressing media coverage of the ugly side of the war, in particular wounded soldiers screaming in pain and the unloading of the coffins in Delaware(the later insituted by non other than Dick Cheney when he was Secretary of Defense). The media today obsesses endless over the sensational murder/kidnapping of the day, but the nearly daily causalties in Iraq pass by with little more than "2 soldiers were killed today by an IED".
- As for reining in the intelligence establishment with a new Church commission, there is one force working towards that and one against. The force working for it is growing public awareness of the blatant and obvious deception used to justify Iraq which should be grounds to once again rein in the CIA and to launch impeachment proceeding against the President. The force working against it is the Republicans control the government. As long as they do the deceipt will be
Re:Why ... (Score:5, Informative)
(Last Journal: Sunday October 14, @10:49PM)
US CON says otherwise (Score:5, Informative)
(Last Journal: Sunday October 14, @10:49PM)
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
6th:
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.
Re:US CON says otherwise (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Sunday October 14, @10:49PM)
---------------------
July 1, 2002
Citizen Padilla: Dangerous Precedents
by Robert A. Levy
Robert A. Levy is senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute.
Jose Padilla, a.k.a. Abdullah al-Muhajir, supposedly plotted to build and detonate a radiological "dirty bomb." He is a U.S. citizen. Yet he's being detained by the military -- indefinitely, without seeing an attorney, even though he hasn't been charged with any crime. Yaser Esam Hamdi is also a U.S. citizen. He, too, is being detained by the military -- indefinitely, without seeing an attorney, even though he hasn't been charged with any crime. Meanwhile, Zacarias Moussaoui, purportedly the 20th hijacker, is not a U.S. citizen. Neither is Richard Reid, the alleged shoe bomber. Both have attorneys. Both have been charged before federal civilian courts.
What gives? Four men: two citizens and two non-citizens. Is it possible that constitutional rights -- like habeas corpus, which requires the government to justify continued detentions, and the Sixth Amendment, which assures a speedy and public jury trial with assistance of counsel -- can be denied to citizens yet extended to non-citizens? That's what the Bush administration would have us believe. Citizen Padilla's treatment is perfectly legitimate, insists Attorney General John Ashcroft, because Padilla is an "enemy combatant" and there is "clear Supreme Court precedent" to handle those persons differently, even if they are citizens.
Ashcroft's so-called clear precedent is a 1942 Supreme Court case, Ex Parte Quirin, which dealt with Nazi saboteurs, at least one of whom was a U.S. citizen. "Enemy combatants," said the Court, are either lawful -- for example, the regular army of a belligerent country -- or unlawful -- for example, terrorists. When lawful combatants are captured, they are POWs. As POWs, they cannot be tried (except for war crimes), they must be repatriated after hostilities are over, and they only have to provide their name, rank, and serial number if interrogated. Clearly, that's not what the Justice Department has in mind for Padilla.
Unlawful combatants are different. When unlawful combatants are captured, they can be tried by a military tribunal. That's what happened to the Nazi saboteurs in Quirin. But Padilla has not been charged much less tried. Indeed, the president's executive order of November 2001 excludes U.S. citizens from the purview of military tribunals. If the president were to modify his order, the Quirin decision might provide legal authority for the military to try Padilla. But the decision provides no legal authority for detaining a citizen without an attorney solely for purposes of aggressive interrogation.
Moreover, the Constitution does not distinguish between the protections extended to ordinary citizens on one hand and unlawful-combatant citizens on the other. Nor does the Constitution distinguish between the crimes covered by the Fifth and Sixth Amendments and the terrorist acts Padilla is suspected of planning. Still, the Quirin Court justified those distinctions -- noting that Congress had formally declared war and thereby invoked articles of war that expressly authorized the trial of unlawful combatants by military tribunal. Today, the situation is very different. We've had virtually no input from Congress: no declaration of war, no authorization of tribunals, and no suspension of habeas corpus.
Yet those functions are explicitly assigned to Congress by Article I of the Constitution. It is Congress, not the executive branch, which has the power "To declare War" and "To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court." Only Congress can suspend the "Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus
Re:US CON says otherwise (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://www.joe-bunting.com/club)
I think that if you can't declare war on it then it's probably not a good idea to fight a war with it either.
Re:Why ... (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.ferion.net/ | Last Journal: Monday May 06 2002, @02:16AM)
Bad example.
a.) The operative word here is 'one'.
b.) It's being fought, as opposed to it just happening without any checks and balances in place.
c.) Shit happens.
I'm not arguing that it's right or that it's harmless. Rather, I just want a more substantial reason to be afraid. I'm not a "whoah I better join the crowd" kind of person, I'm a "give me the info so I can judge" kind of person. So please, help me out so I can understand.
(P.s. Modding the guy down for asking "What harm has it caused" is ridiculous. Not everybody (including myself) stays on top of every little thing that happens. Questions like that are never harmful.)
Re:Why ... (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Sunday April 16 2006, @10:03PM)
Bad example.
a.) The operative word here is 'one'.
Well, you know, it always starts with one.
One Bolshevik, one kulak, one "Enemy of the People", one Jew, one Japanese-American, one Communist, one educated person, one literate person, one Arab.
(Roughly in chronological order; I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to connect each "Enemy" to the society that demonized them. Feel free to add other examples.)
That one is supposed to be our warning that it's time once again to fertilize the tree of liberty.
Because if we don't, suddenly it's not "just one" anymore; it's a thousand, a hundred thousand, six million, 20 million. And then everybody exclaims in surprise, "how could this happen in a civilized nation?!"
Re:Why ... (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.sabacctable.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday June 22 2004, @02:10PM)
Re:Why ... (Score:5, Insightful)
True, so why give them more power to do stupid things with?? This specific event may not have anything to do with the patriot act, but it shows that people can and will abuse their power. That in of itself is the main reason why the US was founded on giving away as little power as possible.
The real question is: (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://trypticon.org/)
Re:Why ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Blanket search warrents.
Re:Why ... (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.penny-arc...s/2002/20020722h.gif)
Blanket search warrents.
Nationwide roving wiretaps.
Re:Why ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I could ask about your address, bank account, relatives, or hint at hidden cameras in bathrooms and bedrooms and such. But, I'll just say this. If you have nothing to worry about, feel free to post your main email address or phone number on here.
Oh, wait: from your slashdot page
"tealover (187148)
tealover
* (email not shown publicly)"
Got something to hide do we?
And sorry, just because someone works for the government doesn't make automatically give them integrity. As for laws, you mean those things that stop regular people from exploiting such information as well?
Re:Why ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why ... (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://ymgve.net/)
I am not afraid of the government abusing that information. A big difference.
The government is made of people.
Re:Why ... (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.weddingtime.org/gallery2/main.php)
Exactly right, you do have something to hide, and most people here would fully understand your reasons for hiding it.
Now what happens if a few years down the road a new Law passes saying that it is illegal to post anonymously to the internet, and that all users must be registered and traceable.
Are you the type who would just say, "Ah well, posting to the internet is a privilege not a right," and accept it? Will you go underground and post in places where you can be anonymous and thus be (technically) a criminal?
Seriously, just because you are known here as tealover, you are still essentially anonymous and you probably prefer it that way, and yet, you do not feel that you are entitled to that privacy? Enlighten me as I cannot understand that.
Re:Why ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why ... (Score:5, Insightful)
This just keeps happening (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://longc.at/ | Last Journal: Sunday February 22 2004, @09:46PM)
Why do we keep electing these people who keep misrepresenting us to represent us?
Re:This just keeps happening (Score:5, Insightful)
Because you can only elect from those people on the list that is essentially chosen for you. And you don't get much of a say in who goes on that list.
Those with Power (those who own and/or control this country's largest corporations) choose who get on that list and "sell" it to you via their mass media outlets.
And the end result is that the only people you can realistically choose from are people who will not represent you, but who will represent Those with Power. It's why the "democracy" part of the "democratic republic" title for the U.S. is a lie.
Re:This just keeps happening (Score:5, Interesting)
Now how do Those with Power "sell" to the public? By voicing the standard fare benefit programs that lead to better healthcare, better education, defense, lowered taxes, creation of new jobs, consumer protections, etc.
After your post, I can't help but view these things as being dangling fishing lures baited with carrots.
Re:This just keeps happening (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry, what were you saying? I was distracted by my enjoyment of this fine carrot.
-The average voter
Re:This just keeps happening (Score:5, Insightful)
And you don't get much of a say in who goes on that list.
Sure you can choose. In MN your chance in March 2nd, also called super tuesday where people in 10 different states all at once get a chance go choose who goes on the ballot.
Of course you have to belong to a political party in order to have a choice, but if you don't want to belong to a party why would the party want you to have a say in who they put on the ballot. Get your own party, or just go out and get on the ballot yourself. (If you can't get enough signatures to get on the ballot in an afternoon in a local city you aren't trying)
The greatest tradgity is that people have been convinced that a vote for a third party is a wasted vote. Don't fall for it.
Re:This just keeps happening (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.penny-arc...s/2002/20020722h.gif)
You know what I find odd though, is that when there is a choice (like, say, the Green Party), people complain about it and claim they're taking votes from an electable party. It's sad that America is completely dominated by two parties, both very similar (race to the middle, anyone?), and any apparent deviation from that is met with great hostility ("Nader cost us the election!"). It would be nice to be able to vote for something, instead of a reflex vote against what you don't want. I see people as voting for Nader because they believe in his policies, rather than because they don't want Bush to get elected.
But who knows? The voter turnout for 18- to 24-year-olds in the 2000 election was 9 percent. Nobody cares anyway.
Nothing stopping it now. (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Thursday February 15 2007, @08:00PM)
Re:Nothing stopping it now. (Score:5, Informative)
NSA's not in the business of making people disappear. The program is public. Do you think they make every concerned citizen disappear? Please. Don't take movies as documentaries.
In fact, NSA tends to be one of the more non-threatening agencies when it comes to dealing with protestors. Remember the infamous tea party, when they just met the protestors at the fence, gave them some tea, and asked them about any specific issues they had? They're not quite that loose anymore, but I'd really be more concerned with Homeland Security than NSA.
-Erwos
send your thanks to these people (Score:4, Informative)
(http://www.infiltrated.net/ | Last Journal: Monday February 16 2004, @01:07AM)
Mark Maybury, MITRE (Chair), maybury@mitre.org
Karen Sparck Jones, University of Cambridge, sparckjones@cl.cam.ac.uk
Ellen Voorhees, NIST, ellen.voorhees@nist.gov
Sanda Harabagiu, University of Texas at Austin, sanda@cs.utexas.edu
Liz Liddy, University of Syracuse, liddy@syr.edu
John Prange, ARDA, jprange@nsa.gov
ARDA workshops [google.com]. And for your non Americans, if you think it's limited to us... Have I got news for you [unctad.org]! They'll be snooping around the mountains when you come... They'll be snooping around the mountains... they'll be snooping around the mountains...
No surprise (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://shamir.karkal.net/)
So most of the projects continue, but under a different name. And this time I am sure they will be much better hidden from the public eye. 1984 anybody?
Re:No surprise (Score:5, Funny)
So most of the projects continue, but under a different name.
Except for the Adm. John Poindexter project. From Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:
However, in spite of being a convicted criminal, he hasn't changed his name. Duh -- what a fucking amateur!
Government (Score:3, Funny)
(http://www.dailywheel.com/thegame/ | Last Journal: Monday January 15 2007, @12:34PM)
On a lighter note, I find it endlessly humerous that this psuedo-top secret department, causing all this controversy, that "sponsors high risk, high payoff research designed to produce new technology to address some of the most important and challenging IT problems faced by the intelligence community" has an Upcoming ARDA Calendar of Events!! [ic-arda.org] that it so gleefully links to on its target="_blank">home page [ic-arda.org].
lessons learnt (Score:4, Insightful)
now that they knew public doesn't like the idea of such thing, why bother asking in the future? just go ahead and do it.
Not smart... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think treating americans diffrently based on where they are in the world is a good precident to set....
Civil War (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://www.johnkramlich.com/)
Mass protests have done nothing to stop the war in Iraq...what would it take?
You'll see it starting in 2005, (Score:5, Interesting)
I think not (Score:5, Funny)
So, the bastards think they can keep track of my porn collection, do they?
not suprised at all (Score:3, Funny)
i'm definately not voting for bush (not like i did) because the terror color code thing has my little cousin scared of clifford the big red dog because he thinks he's a severe terror threat.
In Government... (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://stores.ebay.com/ABS-Titonka | Last Journal: Sunday November 18, @10:32AM)
America... (Score:2, Insightful)
(http://www.houseofthedead.org/ | Last Journal: Thursday November 11 2004, @08:30PM)
From the article:
"to help the nation avoid strategic surprise
This kind of reasoning to destroy rights is sick. What does that mean, "such as those"? Where are all these 'terrorists' (sick of THAT word) who wait to waylay me and bugger me bloody?
Ooooh, that's right! The New & Imroved ARDA is protecting me from them. Thanks for that.
BTW. Not believing privacy is my right
MEANS NOTHING TO ME. I'll still claim I have that right, and fight for every inch of it.
Big government (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Big government (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Big government (Score:4, Informative)
Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
[wikipedia.org]
Re:Big government (Score:4, Informative)
(Last Journal: Thursday August 12 2004, @10:56PM)
Many Americans choose to be ignorant this historical record because of the Republicans talk of lowering taxes, in spite of the obvious connection between increased government spending and a need for increased revenues.
Many Americans are aware of the historical record, are aware of the continuing illegal activities of our intelligence agencies (both abroad and at home), yet they choose to act as if blind to these things, will argue in favor of these actions, and will contrive to make life difficult of anyone who dare speak of them (if you do not produce documentation you are "crazy", if you do produce documentation then you are "dangerous").
TIA and ARDA are little more than our intelligence agencies and the current Republican administration conspiring to behave a bit more like the dictators they have traditionally backed. The intelligence agencies and the industries that are supported by them would like to see a return to the more lucrative days of the Cold War. They feel they are under threat as more and more people are scrutinizing their history using collections of documents released by the Freedom of Information Act, like those at the National Security Archive [nsarchive.org], EPIC.org [epic.org], the Federation of American Scientists [fas.org], the EFF [eff.org], and probably more that I am unaware of.
Read this stuff, it is an amazing way to gain insight into the hidden workings of our government. Read about "the Church Commission [google.com] to learn how the CIA breaks the law, hires the mob, and manipulates the media while harassing and murdering US citizens that they beleive hold "un-American beleifs". Read about the Iran-Contra [gwu.edu] affair to learn how little respect for the law our current Administration's Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Poindexter (among others) really have, and read about the cocaine importing [gwu.edu] that they participated in [webcom.com] to fund their pet terrorists.
The current mood seems to support giving our Federal Law Enforcement and Intelligence agencies increased freedoms to invade our privacy while reducing oversight of their actions in hopes that this will increase national security and make our lives a little safer. The problem is that when you look at the record of their history, it appears that the opposite is much more likely to result, and that allowing the FBI and CIA increased freedom and power, might just end the
Is this a surprise? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.angrypeoplerule.com/)
The tools are only going to get better, and the more laws and policies that allow the "leakage" of personal information will only make "privacy" a state of mind as opposed to something you actually have. If congress was so concerned about privacy perhaps they would rethink the Patriot Act, or other invasive police policies that have been en vogue for the last decade.
I like this (Score:3, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Thursday November 04 2004, @10:16AM)
The government isn't really spying on you, per se. They are taking all the public information out there, and data mining it to potentially flag and catch criminals and terrorists.
The crowd here turn into luddites as soon as technology is used by the government, but I think this is a great use for it. The 9/11 hijackers were in plain view, but because of the different agencies and bureaucracies, they fell through. This could be a tool to find the next 9/11 and I am all for it.
Re:I like this (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://cgranade.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Friday December 05 2003, @12:52AM)
'Ya know, that's wonderful, but let's be rational about this. 3,000 deaths... a staggering number, right? However, it is hardly the most tragic thing ever to happen: "In 2002, an estimated 17,419 people died in alcohol-related traffic crashes--an average of one every 30 minutes. These deaths constitute 41 percent of the 42,815 total traffic fatalities. (NHTSA, 2003)" [from MADD [madd.org].] Don't get me wrong... 9/11 was no doubt a significant event. I just mean to say that the threat posed by it pales in comparison to so many of the threats that surround us every day and which go largely unnoticed.
Even if we assume that 9/11 represented such a grave threat as to cause us to consider the radical restructuring of the very nature of our rights, then we must ask if that is a productive course of action. Remember when TIME magazine ran the cover article [time.com] claiming that not enough was done to prevent 9/11, even with the Phoenix memo and other warnings? So, please, remind me again how TIA will prevent a "second 9/11?"
While you may be ready to give up your rights in response to a vauge threat (color scale of doom, anyone?) and to passively take hook, line and sinker, there remain those of us who still value the lives lost back in the late 1700s... the lives which won us this freedom in the first place.
Re:I like this (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.demaagd.com/ | Last Journal: Sunday October 27 2002, @06:53PM)
Given that the details are super secret, so it could have been just a confidence improving spoof. I don't remember any evidence being produced to the public that there was a threat on any of the planes that were grounded.
I don't see how TIA or PATRIOT are needed. The events of 9/11 happened because of broad agency incompetence at handling the power they already had at the time, not because of a supposed lack of power. I fear giving more power to the incompetent.
Re:I like this (Score:4, Informative)
(Last Journal: Friday July 16 2004, @01:49PM)
The US government was informed immediately by the Indian government but didn't care to listen to the details of how he also skipped the Dehli-Paris leg already, was a regular, legitimate traveler, and most important, had a name that simply is as common in that part of the world as "John Smith" is in the US, and which to an ignorant desk-jockey in Washington thought sounded like a name used by a terrorist.
In others words: the whole Christmas "terrorist alert" was a crock caused by moronic goverment incompetence, at best.
Re:I like this (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://cgranade.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Friday December 05 2003, @12:52AM)
unreasonable search (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://mathaddicts.org/ | Last Journal: Friday December 27 2002, @04:50AM)
Furthermore, the government's paranoia about terrorists will make it illegal to look like a terrorist to this list. If you refuse to give your SS#, you look bad to the list. If you refuse to show ID, you look bad to the list. It doesn't matter that your SS# is supposed to be privately used only for purposes of social security, and it doesn't matter that you can't be forced to show ID unless you are suspected of a crime. What looks bad to the list will become a crime.
I hate this idea because it will imiplicate and punish innocent people for matching the trends of guilty ones. Furthermore, the people said "NO!" to this once, and it's disgusting that our government forces its will over that of the people.
Re:I like this (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Sunday March 21 2004, @11:14PM)
If there were going to be another terrorist attack, don't you think *something* would already have happened, even if it was just a Hammas-style bus bombing?
When even the normally insane Pat Buchanan writes a lengthy, thoughtful, and accurate essay on why the "war on terror" is a sham - and it gets the cover of a conservative magazine [amconmag.com], that should set off alarm bells in everyones' heads.
Al Qaeda already got what they wanted - they blew up some Americans, sent the US on its way to becoming a totalitarian state, isolated it from its allies (particularly in the Middle East), *and* as a bonus Iraq will soon be converted into a hardline Islamic nation. They didn't even lose their leader in the process.
What could they possibly gain by sticking their necks out again?
Re:I like this (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Wednesday January 31 2007, @02:25AM)
Of course not.
They are taking all the public information out there, and data mining it to potentially flag and catch criminals and terrorists.
And it won't flag and catch me by mistake. They'd never make an error like that. This technology only affects bad guys.
This actually should be wonderful news for me. I made $92 off of Poindexter's stupid Total Information Awareness program last year by selling this T-shirt [zazzle.com] protesting it: "I gave up my essential liberties to obtain a little temporary security, and all I got was this lousy T-shirt!" [Disclaimer: I might make money off you if you click that link and buy one, but I have a job, honestly don't need your money, would forward it to no worthy cause, and am just showing off my shirt design and bragging about the fact that I made $92 off of Total Information Awareness.]
The crowd here turn into luddites as soon as technology is used by the government, but I think this is a great use for it. The 9/11 hijackers were in plain view, but because of the different agencies and bureaucracies, they fell through. This could be a tool to find the next 9/11 and I am all for it.
Well, let's not get too presumptive about 9/11. It hasn't been demonstrated at all that the only way to prevent this attack would have been to implement a massively connected database with an extensive electronic dossier on each one of us. In fact, it hasn't been demonstrated at all that the attack could not have been prevented simply by people doing their jobs like they were supposed to.
Once the 9/11 commission finishes its report, maybe we will see what improvements can be made short of creating an unAmerican police state.
btw imho lol (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.infiltrated.net/ | Last Journal: Monday February 16 2004, @01:07AM)
See what acronyms can do to you. MWEAC [google.com], OSIS [army.mil], MISSI [google.com], hell some of their own [kuro5hin.org] don't even know what exists or even what they do. Again, I thank John Asscroft and his Patriot Act [eff.org], all under the gimmick of the pork barrel Department of Homeland Insignificance. Now, obviously this sound trollish but it is not, most people here click by things without looking into things. Sort of like the way stories are read here, a quick glimpse, and that's that.
For those interested in what is going on in government behind the scenes, don't always think people who post the kinds of things I post are all conspiratorial stories aimed at bringing down government through chaos. Hell look at sites like FAS [fas.org], Cryptome [cryptome.org], Arms Control [armscontrol.org], and the multitude of others. Many people point things out but too many are concerned with menial things such as Janet's boobs, Sex and the Shitty, etc., to notice the rug being pulled from under them. Hell most Americans think CNN and Fox are the holy grail of news. Get out there and read, know what's happening in your country. Check out BBC, Observer, Greg Palast, AntiWar [antiwar.com], Chomsky. These people aren't being controlled via advertisers, not political pressure. I write sometimes too kooky assed documents [politrix.org], that some might say aren't worth a pot to piss in [politrix.org]. Maybe so, but there is a reason for me rambling on like a madman sometimes. I care about my privacy and liberty. I don't want my friends or family growing up in something out of "Escape from Alcatraz"
My recent experience (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Sunday September 09, @05:43PM)
I asked the loan guy what he would do if the report said I was a terrorist... He said "I'd excuse myself to the restroom, get in my car, drive at least five miles away, then call my boss!"
Re:My recent experience (Score:4, Funny)
(http://www.graduatedtaste.com/)
Futile Waste of Money? (Score:5, Insightful)
Use these 100,000 measurements of 10 known varibles and outcomes to build a model to predict unkown outcomes for new variables.
DARPA and ARDA's goal of predicting terrorist behavior, or will fail due to a paucity of observed terrorist behavior, an inability to precisely define the objective and an enormous amount of poorly collected, noisy and irrelevant data.
I think data mining is scary (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Sunday October 03 2004, @04:03AM)
US gov TLAs with access to certain types of data alone have phenomenally clean and good data to use for data mining. For starters:
* Phone calls. Forget *contents* of phone calls -- a cop doesn't even need a warrant to get a list of phone calls. Plug all phone calls into a nice big database, and you have an excellent association network -- I can build up a list of all the people you know.
Now, suppose I want to detect flow of causuality. I look for some degree of correlation between a phone call from entity A to entity B and entity B to entity C. If a phone call of the second type follows a phone call of the first type within a day or two more than, say, 25% of the time, there's an interesting link to explore. Maybe entity B is passing on instructions to entity C. I'm not sure what the status of past location data is -- whether a warrant is required for telcos to turn over the data they've logged on your movements. Given a couple of years of accurate movement data, it's probably really interesting when a phone call from entity A to entity B is frequently followed by a physical visit from entity B to entity C.
* Purchasing-related data. Movements can be tracked via ATM withdrawals, credit-card use, phone card use, store purchasing card use. You ever let a friend use your store grocery card? That's a great source of determining who knows who -- a store card associated with two credit cards.
When you get a driver's license, most states fingerprint you (or at least thumbprint). I didn't even know that I *could* opt out of the thumbprint until afterwards.
I agree that mining is probably less useful to find terrorists (frankly, unless a terrorist is just incredibly stupid, he's going to avoid the above), but it *is* useful to track all kinds of other people.
Any person with a cell phone should have no expectation of privacy. They're carrying around a portable tracking device with a microphone that can be turned on remotely. End of story.
Re:I think data mining is scary (Score:4, Informative)
Consider that there are approximately 300 million people in the united states. At 10 phone calls a day for 365 days you get 1 trillion phone calls per year. Suppose I have 100 known terrorists telephone activity for 6 months, and I want to find similar patterns in the remainder of my data to identify other terrorist rings. That means I have 100*10*365/2 = 182,500 training examples. I.e., 200k / 1,000,000,000k ~= two millionths of a percent of my data for training a predictive model is labeled as positive for terrorist activity. Even with an amazingly accurate algorithm, this will lead to hundreds of thousands of false positives and a few true positives, for no net gain of actionable information. Certainly you can narrow these results by orders of magnitude through very intensive effort, but the margin will not be overcome.
To track down known terrorists can't the data be requested on an as-needed basis through the courts?
Very telling quote (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://johan.hoshichan.com/ | Last Journal: Monday December 22 2003, @12:07PM)
[quote]
Ted Senator, who managed that research for Poindexter, told government contractors that mining data to identify terrorists "is much harder than simply finding needles in a haystack."
"Our task is akin to finding dangerous groups of needles hidden in stacks of needle pieces," he said. "We must track all the needle pieces all of the time."
[/quote]
This would be where the "Total" part of "Toal Information Awareness" comes in.
there is also MATRIX (Score:2)
The man with a presidential pardon on his resume (Score:2, Insightful)
Obligatory Tolkien reference (Score:5, Interesting)
"In the language of the Elder Days, 'Arda' signified the World and all that is in it." -- from The Encyclopedia of Arda [glyphweb.com]
I guess it's a suitably ambitious acronym for the project.
I predicted this one already... (Score:3, Insightful)
This IS surprising (Score:5, Funny)
Turns out, they just go get similar jobs in a similar field. Wow.
The usual AI suspects (Score:4, Informative)
Interesting who the research money was going to. Lenat's Cycorp is well-known in the AI community as a black hole into which vast sums of money are poured with no useful results.
On the other hand, Craig Knoblock, whose name was horribly misspelled in the article, is a first class AI researcher. His current work looks like it would be useful outside the context of TIA.
All in all, it looks like the usual story: well-known names in the AI community being supported by money from wherever in the convoluted entrails of the US Federal Govt money comes from. If TIA is defunded, they need new grants to keep working. Don't know that it all means much.
No shocker there (Score:5, Informative)
(http://platinumdragon.ca/ | Last Journal: Monday May 23 2005, @01:59AM)
Basically, the funding bill that supposedly "killed" TIA only banned funding for the program called "Terrorism Information Awareness." It's a gaping legal loophole that seems to have been written in a piss-poor attempt at reassuring Joe and Jane CNN Viewer that the good government really had no intention to spy on them for subversive activities, no-siree.
I'm not surprised the obvious result is taking place. I am surprised that someone in a newsroom somewhere thought to follow up on the fate of TIA-related research.
Remember: It's not paranoia if they're really watching you.
ARDA project's logo (Score:3, Funny)
(http://elgoog.rb-hosting.de/)
i used to work for TIA (Score:5, Interesting)
I ended up in the job, as is always the way, by drifting from one task to another inside the contractor until I ended up doing anti-terrorist work - a classic "slippery slope".
I did the only honest thing I felt I could - I quit. Of course, I'm not going to claim I was any sort of hero. Because I didn't like why I was working, I didn't like my job, and as a software programmer, it wasn't too hard to find another job. But, I did quit a good job for essentially political reasons.
I mention this for 2 reasons: 1) If people refused to do the work, refused to take the jobs, the program would never succeed (I know it's easy to say - I have no kids to feed - but still, it's true). Hell, people fled the country to avoid fighting in Vietnam. 2) It was common knowledge that there was little risk in having TIA go away - everything would stay the same (and has, at my old company). 3) What we were doing was not secret - never was. But nobody knew anyway, and the people running the show liked it that way. Security through obscurity.
Alternatives? (Score:3, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Sunday January 11 2004, @03:55AM)
Or does the fact that the intelligence agencies aren't able to even analyze the massive flow of info they have not bother anyone?
Certainly we don't need a repeat of past events. What's the point of saying, "no don't look, no don't look, no don't look, no don't look", and then when the attack comes, scream, "why weren't you looking???"
whoa (Score:4, Funny)
(http://freebsdwiki.net/)
...well, fucking, DUH.
Look may they bought BOXCUTTERS, oh no! (Score:3, Interesting)
fear and terror makes money --it funds the military industrial complex and helps slow growth of other countries by allowing us to continue destabilizing them economically and politically. Cuba anyone? This is a control mechanism that will be used to reduce citizens rights and dissent in the US, not just to hunt terrorists. and it will perpetuate the OH NO the TERROR ALERT WENT UP! paranoia because all it will find is false positives anyway. it's about as useless as stoping cars at an airport to make sure they dont have explosives. hello, we'd hit a school, tyvm.
They won't be stopped... (Score:3, Insightful)
Too much at once (Patriot II) is also scary. So they implement all the little bits of Patriot II over time, until it is eventually all done. Once it's done it'll be much harder to roll it back.
The story of boiling a frog once again comes to mind: stick the frog in boiling water and he jumps out; you lose your dinner. Put the frog in warm water and gradually heat it to boiling -- he stays in and eventually gets cooked.
We are the frogs.
Dear Washington, (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.theschmoejoes.com/ | Last Journal: Saturday June 19 2004, @02:56PM)
I really don't appreciate this.
Although September 11th was scary, and a wake-up call (to whom, I'll let you decide), you certainly have taken the ball and run with it.
From control of the media, to your obvious relationships with big business, you're feeling pretty good right now, I'll bet. Hell, you barely try and hide controversial projects now; really who's going to stop you? Voter turnout is a joke, and even if people showed up, there's not really a guarrantee that the results haven't been tampered with.
The 'war on terror' is just amazing. So much can be rationalized for 'safety's sake'. Who's un-american this week? Who's a potential threat? Who stands against freedom?
I'm sure you will provide the answers to these questions from your bully pulpit, from newspapers and television that run whatever is put in front of them.
Frankly, terrorists don't scare me. You do.
That's right, my very own government. You've declared war. Not on terror, but on privacy, civil and human rights, and freedom.
Washington? Are you listening? When did rampant wiretapping, invading library records and putting gag orders on librarians, installing keyloggers on our computers, and treating every citizen like a criminal become the definition of freedom?
I'd sure like an answer, Washington, because it sounds like you have it in for me, as well as everyone else who lives here - in the most free nation on earth. For now.
Sincerely,
teamhasnoi
Standard Procedure for Political Hot-Potatoes (Score:1, Interesting)
SDI was handled the same way in the late 1980s. Funding was essential terminated but a plan was long in place deal with a loss of funding by breaking up the project and placing the key technology development in the hands of "foster parent" projects and agencies, with the explicit intention of keeping development apace and of reuniting the project if funding returned. Much of the BSTS program was to be rolled into the DSP follow-on project, for example. The Army BMD got the kinetic interceptors charters which looked a lot like Patriot-2 (the missle, not the law). The computing got rolled into other systems that had similar mission environment needs like computers for Mars rovers. The original Air Force owners just kept the lights on as project managers.
The whole program absolutely never died. This is why Bush was able to "magically" decide to begin full deployment missile defense recently: with only a minor pause in the late 80s for the sake of appearances, it has be moving ahead as originally planned despite Congress and the American public thinking it was in the past and dead.
voting like slashdot (Score:1)
rather than everyone being able to vote every time, only random groups would be able to vote at any single election. the only way to stay in power would be to do a good job and get the most people to know that. if you don't know ahead of time whose arse to kiss, you have to actually try to please the most people possible.
there's more, but it would take a longer post, noone wants that.
Don't let Legislators watch CSI... (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Tuesday September 07 2004, @08:25PM)
Talk to the leadership in the Intelligence Technology, and they'll tell you, finding bad guys is hard enough. Trying to sift though mountains of pepper hoping to find the one fly speck, is just insane. One "Intelligence Researcher" refered to the idea of watching every single American for signs of terrorist affiliation is like "Looking for a needle in a haystack of haystacks..." This will ultimately make it much harder to find the real bad guys, waste precious human and financial resources on fantasy tech that does not exist (and won't for some time to come), and in the end... innocent lives continue to hang in the balance.
I have a close friend who during Pappa Bush's administration, worked at Lockheed. He worked on debunking "Brilliant Pebbles" the next incarnation of "Smart Rocks", intelligent projectiles in space designed to hunt down and elliminate the threat of ICBMs to America (all part of the Star Wars Initiative.) He explained that the hardware to make this possible wouldn't exist until some time after 2010, and that even when that hurdle was cleared, there was no way to control the pebbles or have them communicate, that couldn't be jammed by EMP or radiation. In short, it was a doomed idea, and no amount of sexy or comic book fantasizing by Pentagon hawks was going to make this dog hunt. It took years and millions of dollars to finally convince these guys.. this was a bad idea. God only knows what we'll have to do, to get the Dexterites to wise up in a sane timeframe.
This is of course above and beyond the simple gutting of the entire philosophy of our particular form of government. That being;
Government should be transparent, and citizens should have operational privacy.
Somehow, our executive seems to believe the opposite, and it's all too clear that an opaque executive can simple be equated to one who is interested in paving his agenda all over the citizenry and the landscape, rule of law be damned.
Genda
-- Thems that trade a bit of liberty for a bit of security...
US Government are not stupid (Score:3, Informative)
(http://www.skilful.com/)
They want to keep an eye on you all.
This is NOT about terrorism.
I have posted on this topic many times.
Extract:
Ask Security Services in the US, UK, Indonesia (Bali) or anywhere for that matter, to deny this:
Internet surveillance, using Echelon, Carnivore or back doors in encryption, will not stop terrorists communicating by other means - most especially face to face or personal courier.
Terrorists will have to do that, or they will be caught.
The authorities try make everything they say sound perfectly reasonable.
e.g. Officials from US Defence Department agency have said that they want, "the same level of accountability in cyberspace that we now have in the physical world".
Do government currently keep records of everything that you touch in the physical world to analyse?
No they do not - So then, is that the same level of accountability?
More at previous post [slashdot.org].
Poindexter (Score:2, Funny)
(Last Journal: Thursday May 22 2003, @06:59AM)
Hey, DARPA. . . (Score:4, Funny)
That's right. Two.
One on each hand.
-FL
The kid next door. (Score:3, Interesting)
It's pretty much a given, I'd say. When they finally crawl out and start taking people away for muttering seditious 'thought-crime' anti-government stuff, I'll probably be hauled off and killed or humiliated or whatever along with the rest of them.
Fine, and to hell with 'em.
What's a painful, miserable death anyway? You have to go somehow. A red-hot fire-poker shoved somewhere indecent can't be any worse than extended bowl cancer or getting hit by a truck.
I might even be reduced to fear and groveling and begging and all that other stuff which is almost a certainty when torture is involved. Doesn't mean they win, though.
Anybody working on the Dark Side is beneath contempt. You are losers and you will fade forgotten from the eye of the Universe. Nothing but a speed bump; a challenge. --That and I'll fight you every last step of the way. I'll point out your spineless, dark-side, un-loveable qualities until you finally rip my tongue out in pathetic rage. And then my eyes will follow you with disdain until you jab those out as well.
And when I come back, I'll be the clear-eyed kid next door who you secretly both love and despise and wish would validate your existence by letting you tag along. And on our ever diverging paths we will go until you are nothing but a dream in the past.
Souls develop, and the decisions you make today are who you become tomorrow. In which direction are you working?
-FL "The biggest crime was convincing everybody that this life is all there is."
The Party never ends (Score:1, Insightful)
Now Poindexter is back, pardoned for his treasonous crimes under President VP Bush by the judge who cleared the Whitewater investigation's transformation into the Lewinsky investigation, now whitewashing for Bush Jr's Intelligence failure commission. Just like Star Wars came back with the Bush remission, as a "missile defense shield", so essential to fighting a war on suicide bombers. He never left. And this TIA will never leave. Our government has got herpes - just look at all the pockmarks shaped miraculously like their original outbreak during the wild party for rightwingers while Bush Jr was DJ'ing.
Re:Thank You, Slashdot (Score:1)
(http://www.tuekistan.com/)
History (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.vems.co.nz/)
Having democratic elections creates the illusion of that process, but unless the organisations that operate under the government get shuffled as well, then nothing much actually changes. Something tells me that overthrowing the CIA, NSA, FBI, Army, Navy, Airforce, etc, etc isn't going to be easy...
Re:Intelligence !? (Score:1)
(http://longc.at/ | Last Journal: Sunday February 22 2004, @09:46PM)
It must be pointed out that one of our most hated enemies (The NSA, well, a precursor to them) provided this intel, through cracking the "purple" cypher.
Re:2025.. not too unlike 1984 (Score:1, Offtopic)
Oh, Baby, now you're such a drag