US "Fusion Centers" For Intelligence Sharing 116
Wired has an article on the national fusion centers in the US, which were created to aid intelligence-sharing in the fight against terrorism but are increasingly being used to look at other sorts of crimes. The keynote of these centers is "all hazards, all threats" — the LA police chief is quoted: "Information that might seem innocuous may have some connection to terrorism." The ACLU has up an interactive US map to help you become acquainted with your local fusion center.
Idaho? (Score:1)
Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues (Score:1)
I was feeling sick down and blue,
Didn't know what in the world I was gonna do.
Them communist they were comin' around,
They were in the air
They were on the ground.
They wouldn't give me no peace.
So I run down most hurriedly
And joined the John Birch Society.
Got me a secret membership card,
Started walking off down the road.
Yoohoo, I'm a real John Bircher now.
Look out you commies.
Well we all agree with Hitler's views,
Although he killed six millions Jews.
It don't matter too much if he was a fascist,
At l
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"...15 reps from private sector groups to work on how to structure relationship between center and private entities; Finance and transportation sectors have been strong in getting and sharing info. Transportation partners include Amtrak, CSX, some airlines, metro, light rail. "
The UK just announced these as well (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/19/gordon_brown_jack_bauer_ctu_counter_terror_plan/ [theregister.co.uk]
Re:The UK just announced these as well (Score:5, Insightful)
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They are part of Total Information Awareness. (Score:1, Informative)
The original term for this "Homeland Defense" monstrosity was "Total Information Awareness" and it was well underway before 9/11. It's so repulsive and unAmerican that the US Congress overwhelmingly ordered it shut down. Bush moved it to the NSA instead [stallman.org], so it is doing just fine.
Be advised that the terrorists who run this program think they have the right to detain and torture people without charge. When they are finished beating you they dump you in a foreign country where you might be murdered or star
Read: data mining (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Read: data mining (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, your question is apparently completely appropriate today, because it seems that government at any level is allowed to do anything they want, unless it's explicity forbidden in the Bill of Rights (and sometimes even that doesn't matter). It appears that nowadays if you can't muster the cash to pay for a squad of lawyers to prove to another squad of lawyers that the government is explicitly not allowed to do something, then it can just happen freely by default.
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See, it wasn't supposed to work like that, at least on paper. The federal government was only *supposed* to have a small list of powers given in the Constitution, and it was supposed to be up to the people wanting to implement new stuff to justify it based on the list of things the feds were allowed to do.
Of course, your question is apparently completely appropriate today, because it seems that government at any level is allowed to do anything they want, unless it's explicity forbidden in the Bill of Rights (and sometimes even that doesn't matter). It appears that nowadays if you can't muster the cash to pay for a squad of lawyers to prove to another squad of lawyers that the government is explicitly not allowed to do something, then it can just happen freely by default.
Except the US Constitution give the legislative branch pretty broad powers, IMHO:
Section 8. The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
(SNIP)
To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution
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See, it wasn't supposed to work like that, at least on paper.
---
Actually our "founding fathers," tended to trust people more than pieces of paper. Their famous bad mouthing of democracy, at least in it's pure form, doesn't change the fact that the citizen jury, not the Supreme court, was the primary defense against government tyranny.
This is how it worked in England, and the English replacement of jury trials with admiralty courts was a prime reason for the colonies decla
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This is hardly reasonable.
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The Constitution can't protect us against people who are willing to give away OUR privacy.
There, I fixeded it for you. After all, it is OUR information they're giving away.
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Oh, Amerika, you are becoming what you fought so hard against...
Re:Read: data mining (Score:5, Insightful)
Not really, the FBI is subject to the oversight of a freely and fairly elected congress. That's incredibly different than the precedents you offer. Collecting and analyzing data is something that law enforcement has legitimately done for centuries, data mining is just automation.
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BFD.
What about the FISA extension that Congress left unvoted on for weeks? What about looking into the junk mortgage market?
No, we found out Roger Clemens is a lying sack of shit.
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Oh, you mean the bill that President Bush promised to veto if it did not reach his desk without retroactive immunity for AT&T and other telecom companies that broke the law?
You mean this pointless bill [informationweek.com]?
FISA allows for warrantless wiretaps already. Nothing changed by making the FBI seek a judge's approval in 3 days after the wiretap rather than never.
Who modded you up? You obviously don't read
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Remember that the next time you're watching an episode of Cops and laughing your ass off.
Bwahaha. That guy is such a f*cking idio...OMG I hope he doesn't vote.
Or closer to home, look at your neighbors. They vote too. The a**hole who constantly walks his dog over to my yard so it can take a dump--he votes. And the dude across the street who is ALWAYS in his bathrobe drinking a beer 24/7 votes.
Now I'm not sayin
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No body votes so you have nothing to be worried about.
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Under previous regimes and in precedent times such organizations where named "Stasi" and "KGB". Oh, Amerika, you are becoming what you fought so hard against...
Not really, the FBI is subject to the oversight of a freely and fairly elected congress. That's incredibly different than the precedents you offer. Collecting and analyzing data is something that law enforcement has legitimately done for centuries, data mining is just automation.
Really? Exactly who had oversight over the FBI agents and the [Republican] Justice Department agents who data mined [Democrat] Eliot Spitzer's bank deposits? Or [Democratic] Governor Don Siegelman? http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/21/nyregion/21justice.html [nytimes.com] http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/03/10/spitzer/index.html [salon.com]
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You are naive to believe that politics is involved. There is no shortage of republicans that have been burned by law enforcement including the feds. Hell, Spitzer himself authorized/requested plenty of investigations including those involving prostitution, that is part of the press frenzy of this case. Also, a
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Really? Exactly who had oversight over the FBI agents and the [Republican] Justice Department agents who data mined [Democrat] Eliot Spitzer's bank deposits? Or [Democratic] Governor Don Siegelman?
:-)
You are naive to believe that politics is involved. There is no shortage of republicans that have been burned by law enforcement including the feds. Hell, Spitzer himself authorized/requested plenty of investigations including those involving prostitution, that is part of the press frenzy of this case. Also, analysis of banking activity has been going on since the 1970s, maybe even the 1960s. Banks, auto dealers, etc have been required to report sufficiently large cash transactions for many decades. Your tinfoil had may be a little too tight, try loosening it up one rivet hole.
My question, which you haven't answered because you don't have an answer, is, exactly who had oversight in those two cases. If you don't know the answer, then you can't hold an opinion on the basis of facts, only on the basis of blind faith. As Glenn Greenwald pointed out in the article on Salon that I linked to, the Justice Department under G.W. Bush has prosecuted 5 times as many Democrats as Republicans, and during legal process they have uncovered written instructions from the White House to prosecuto
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Nothing wrong with data mining pizza delivery (Score:5, Insightful)
The point of data mining is that some connections are not obvious at all, pizza and books are legitimate pieces of data from a scientific/statistical point of view.
We know that the enemy favors couriers, a routine delivery person like a pizza delivery boy makes a good courier. Especially since it is an easily acquired job.
Common books have been used for ciphers for centuries.
The FBI has successfully mapped out organized crime networks through data mining of the most inconsequential and trivial looking information. It is likely that this technique will be successful against other groups as well. You may rightfully question the legality of acquisition methods and raise privacy concerns, but mocking the technique only demonstrates an ignorance of the topic.
Re:Nothing wrong with data mining pizza delivery (Score:5, Insightful)
Torture is also great way to find criminals. As one of the Pol Pot interrogators in Cambodia once stated (in that History Channel documentary which I'm paraphrasing), "After a while, I was surprised how much anti-government activity was going on in our nation and reported this to my superior! We were ordered to double the amount of persons we tortured and through their confession we found that the anti-government conspiracy was even larger than we ever imagined!"
The point being is that using these techniques used in a certain way can make criminals out of otherwise innocent people through circumstance or confessions. If you throw an innocent person in jail and then interrogate him for a few hours (non-tortured mind you) and then show him that his pizza boy was a carrier for organized crime and then showed him enough material he might actually start believing it too and sign a confession at a certain point.
Its why many distraught family members often confess to murder of a loved one when they are questioned long enough and accused of the crime.
Yes, of course it can find real criminals, but used in the wrong way you can find a lot more than you expected.
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Torture is also great way to find criminals.
Wrong. Torture generates a lot of bad leads, interrogators are told what they want to hear.
The point being is that using these techniques used in a certain way can make criminals out of otherwise innocent people through circumstance or confessions.
Wrong, data mining generates connections,
Re:Nothing wrong with data mining pizza delivery (Score:4, Insightful)
If a court determines who is a criminal and who is not, then by default a confession of a crime makes the person a criminal regardless of if its true. I think I may have missed a sarcasm tag about torture though. That was the point of the Pol Pot interrogator who was truly shocked on how many criminals he was finding among the populace which just what the interrogator wanted to hear.
No criminality is determined by data mining. It is statistically generating a list of people to check out.
But isn't there a bias towards the investigators that these persons are indeed criminals? If an investigator believes this person is the most likley candidate according to their dataset, regardless of it really was that person who committed the crime, would they not naturally treat the person as the criminal until they find some other information that said otherwise.
Now a more calm and collected investigator would keep all options on the table, but wouldn't a more zealous one haul the person in for questioning and then accuse them of the crime and attempt to gather information with hopes they can make them break?
Human nature cannot be taken out of the equation and information will be abused to acheive their goals. This can never be denied.
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If a court determines who is a criminal and who is not, then by default a confession of a crime makes the person a criminal regardless of if its true.
That is a red herring, coerced confessions are not admissible in court.
But isn't there a bias towards the investigators that these persons are indeed criminals?
Not "indeed", *possibly*, that's what a suspect inherently is. Data mining is automation of
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How do you prove that your signature was given under coercion ? Besides, if you're accused of terrorism, you won't go to court, you go to Guantanamo Bay.
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I think the previous poster was refering to confessions given during torture. If the guy zapping your nuts with a cattle prod keeps telling you, "We know you are guilty. We have proof. I'll stop doing thi
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I believe that was the grandparent's point.
It does, however, raise a question: even if we disregard morality completely, should the use of torture in military interrogation be nonetheless prohibited, because it is very likely to give false data ? I've often heard people debate the use of torture like it was an effective tool for intelligence gathering and the only reasons not to use it would be moral ones, but it seems
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Yes. So is religion, race, age, gender, political affiliation, sexual preference, skin color, voting history, if you've ever been to a protest rally, if you've ever voiced opposition to a government initiative, and your medical history.
Persecuting someone on those grounds is abhorrent to a free society. People should be examined based on what w
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In the world we live in, we all have secrets that we may want to keep, even though we may lead blameless, productive lives today. Homosexuality, abortions, pornography, a history of sexual or drug experimentation, being HIV positive, on and on. In the right circumstances, you don't even have to have participated. Downloaded the Anarchist's Cookbook because of curiosity? Gotcha!
There are many ways to pressure good people, if a bad person h
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Bull, we hand over far more data than the government is collecting. Google search, google mail, grocery store discount cards, credit/check cards, myspace, etc. Hell, Google probably has a more comprehensive file on you than homeland security.
Re:Read: data mining (Score:5, Insightful)
Thats the problem with crimes of theory rather than actual crimes that took place. If you documented every single action of any citizen, you could eventually cherry pick enough activities that are statistically related to being a terrorist and then haul the person in front of a court and say "This person was planning on committing a terrorist act! Our database shows the following activities that give a 95% probability of a plan to commit terrorist related activities."
Since they aren't accusing you of an actual crime that you carried out, you can only dispute whether or not you actually did the things in the list. Since you cannot say they you didn't do those things in the list, then you must be a terrorist according to their logic unless you somehow prove that those actives are not related to terrorism.
That is a harder to defend against since the crime in question was whether or not you were going to do something and not if you actually did it. Sadly, you cannot have someone crack open your brain and discern what you were really thinking for the past year and even if you take a polygraph the cards are stacked against you due to interrogation techniques.
Eventually, if such a scenario did occur, there will be a chilling effect and many people will be guessing what those activities are... Attending anti-war rallies... Writing anti-government blog posts... Or generally belonging to the wrong political party and then simply stop doing them out of fear of showing up as a probable terrorist.
if such a scenario did occur? (Score:2)
Diary of Anne Frank (Score:4, Interesting)
6 June 1944
I see the world gradually being turned into a wasteland. I hear the ever approaching thunder which will destroy us too. I feel the suffering of millions of people and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I somehow feel that all this will come right again, that also this savagery will stop, that there will be peace and tranquillity in the world once again.
Until that time, I must hold onto my ideals. Perhaps the day will come when I'll still be able to realise them.
Comments(468) Trackback(11)
July 1, 1944
If I'm watched to that extent, I start by getting snappy, then unhappy and finally I twist my heart round again, so that the bad is on the outside and the good is on the inside, and keep on trying to find a way of becoming what I so would like to be, and what I could be, if, there weren't any other people living in the world.
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NOTE: THIS BLOG HAS BEEN ARCHIVED OR SUSPENDED FOR A VIOLATION OF OUR TERMS OF SERVICE
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It's coming. These Fusion centers are just one more step. It's already too late to stop the horrific future we are headed straight for. Nobody's fighting back, nobody is doing anything but shrugging their shoulders and saying "oh look, more fascism". We are resigned to the fact that is is surely coming.
In the US elections this isn't ev
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Amateur radio fulfilled clandestine commo functions when Anne was alive. Monitoring consisted of crews waiting to DX your transmitter if you went "online". "Liveblogging" back then was rather hazardous...
finally (Score:5, Funny)
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People are worried about big brother scenarios. If this was the UK maybe, but no this is the land of pork barrel projects galore. As such I am not worried. they will spend billions and achieve a semi working prototype that needs to be rebooted every 6 hours.
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People are worried about big brother scenarios. If this was the UK maybe, but no this is the land of pork barrel projects galore. As such I am not worried. they will spend billions and achieve a semi working prototype that needs to be rebooted every 6 hours.
Yeah, it might work about as well as that piecemeal fence will work keeping out illegals....
I'm torn whether the general inefficiency and ineptitude of our federal government is a good or a bad thing in this case. On one hand, it could lead to the wh
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The fusion is out of control (Score:1)
Oh wait, wrong article.
No link to wired article? (Score:5, Informative)
However, if you'd like to read the article, I think this is it:
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/03/feds-tout-new-d.html [wired.com]
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Its like the holy grail of data analysis; transcending the bording bits of storage and indexing to the complex fun bits of trying to organise data and explore interfaces for making easy for humans to tag related 'facts' and associate them with others.
Not a fan of big brother - but I've love to be writing the tech that does it!!!
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Not a fan of big brother - but I've love to be writing the tech that does it!!!
So that you could write a backdoor into the program, and later be able to find out anything you want about anyone? >=)
Of course, writing a backdoor into the NSA's fusion software would probably be the sort of thing that'd get you put on A List of Bad People... But they'd have to catch you first. Given the myriad of stories we see on slashdot about government incomptence with all things technological, I don't think it's beyond imagination that you could slip a bit of code past them. Hell, they'd b
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It's called Facebook
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And just like the holy grail, it doesn't exist. Ever heard the expression "garbage in, garbage out"? Now imagine how that applies to a huge database of information compiled from diverse sources (including unverified, anonymous tips [aclu.org]), where nothing is ever thrown away, and where nobody's quite sure what they're looking for [wsj.com].
The human brain is amazingly good at finding patterns - so good that it often finds patterns that aren't really there. Even with years of exper
how to catalog all this information? (Score:1, Interesting)
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Burying ourselves in mountains of information, a majority of it innocuous, might actually work against us.
It all depends on who you include in "us." If "us" is all of the people who might like to maintain our privacy just because it's not really the government's business what time we order pizza or what books we're reading today, having this overload of information might be helpful since the fusion centers could be so busy trying to organize it all that they'd never be able to interfere with our legal activities. On the other hand, if "us" is the general populace who would like to prevent terrorism, the ma
Scope Creep (Score:5, Informative)
"I was frustrated when I met with the [ACLU] report authors and they could not point to a single instance of a fusion center violating someone's civil rights or liberties," Harman said. "In fact, state and local laws and protections in place at many fusion centers are more rigorous than their federal counterparts."
Ahem: California's Anti-Terrorism Information Center admitted to spying on anti-war groups in 2003. And Denver's police department built their own secret spy files on Quakers and 200 other organizations.
It looks like there's already some scope creep. Does anyone else hear a voice in their head saying, "Slippery slope! What's happening to America!"
Mental note: Jane Harman D-CA. Must tell CA relatives about this when her seat is up for reelection.
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If the public doesn't know about it, it didn't happen.
/America does not torture
//Even if we have to redefine torture
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Why didn't you quote the ACLU response -- its very telling:
Tim Sparapani, the ACLU's top legislative lawyer in D.C., bristled at Harman's remakrs. "Our prognosticating track record in identifying programs ripe for abuse of privacy and civil liberties is pretty solid," Sparapani wrote in an e-mail that listed several other programs
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Of course there's been no 'single instance of a fusion center violating someone's civil rights or liberties' because they're not named 'fusion centers' yet. If there are no Siberian tigers livi
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I wonder how many lists i'm on as a outspoken us citizen ( that for the record does still love/support his country, just not where its heading ), and how the data links up. Not that it would make a difference of course, just curious.
Smothered Hope... (Score:4, Insightful)
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No one living is that old.
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The lesson is, you don't get freedom from the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. You have to fight for it.
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Power expands to fill all available space (Score:3, Interesting)
Just some things to ponder...
Are we all under suspicion? (Score:2)
Well, at least Manhattan hasn't been been turned into a maximum security prison...yet.
Quakers are terrorists now?!? (Score:1)
Its almost like we are all under suspicion of being criminals.
Quakers! Have I missed some news item of Quakers becoming militant? What next, are the cops going to watch the Salvation Army now?!? Or members of the KISS Army?!?
Please start tracking me .... (Score:3, Interesting)
Abandon all hope ye who..... (Score:1, Troll)
In the 2000 election, 175,000 uncounted ballots paved the way for the Bush coup.
In the 2004 election, there was an 8 million vote variance: the exit polls indicated Kerry led Bush by 5 million votes, while Bush supposedly won by 3 million votes.
With the concentration of the counting of over 100 million votes by four, I repeat, four voting machines companies (Hart InterCivic, ES
WARNING: Contains references to BOGEY MAN (Score:3, Insightful)
I thought most people kept up with the Jones. The rest of the real world doesn't give a fuck about America and their bogey man lies about terrorism. They cried wolf too many times. When I hear this rhetoric I switch off.
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Predicting the future... (Score:2)
all in the name of '9-11' (Score:2, Insightful)
until americans wake up, this country is going to hell. we are on a path that will make the ussr & east germany look like pussies. don't forget, torture is an american value now too. can't just use it on the really bad guys, or that would be discriminatory. gotta use it on everyone equally, because that's the new american way.
have a great day
Re:all in the name of '9-11' (Score:4, Interesting)
AFAIK he never said that.
Here's what I had to say about it in Oct of 2006 [slashdot.org]
Here's what factcheck.org has to say about it [factcheck.org]
The guy writing capitolhillblue has a history of bullshit, retracted the story, then put it back online even though no one else could substantiate his story and every other blogger on the internet apologized for repeating it.
Stop repeating one man's lie.
MOD PARENT UP (Score:2)
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That "quote" keeps getting brought up, probably because it jives with your perceptions of President Bush.
Doesn't matter if he really said them or not. The DC pre-crime unit has confirmed, based on his file, that there is a 95% probability he will say it in the near future.
And that is the problem (Score:3, Insightful)
I have said it before, and I will say it here again. Take us back to where the NSA was quietly listening in, but only shared info when it pertained to an outside threat. For starters, all of their listening is done via computers. The DOJ should go back to requiring warrants, and the DOD should be bared from listening in within the USA (which, patriot act and several of W's orders gave permission to do). Then have the NSA back to being staffed ONLY by professionals and not the politicians that W installed. IOW, it is time that we return to a professional approach to intel, rather than the bunch of NAZI thugs that we have allowed to set up camp due to so many ppl being afraid.
Wrong impression (Score:2, Informative)
Despite what the article states about the focus of these fusion centers on anti-terrorism, they do a lot of things which focus on domestic crimes. This can be anything from serial killers, drug trafficking, to serial robberies. This data is being aggregated at the fusion centers and the OneDOJ [washingtonpost.com] (among others) program is going to aggregate it again to make better sense of it so that inter-state crimes can be better investigated and solved by sharing the information. These fusion centers receive a lot of flak
Stasi Police (Score:4, Informative)
May I recommend... (Score:3, Interesting)
While I can't comment on the accuracy of the film's portrayal of the GDR in 1985 (it looked convincing, but I wasn't there), I can say its portrayal of a subtle, businesslike surveillance state, quite unlike the obviously super-evil third reich half a century earlier, seemed a lot more efficient in eliminating
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It's too late (Score:4, Insightful)
In 5 years when this information is used to imprison people they'll stand there and say "Well you knew it was happening and you didn't stop it". One of the things I love about America is that they're so convinced they don't put up with any shit that when shit happens they either claim they want it to happen or ignore it. Stop waiting for them to announce that they're profiling you to object, you know it's happening, act now, FORCE CHANGE.
I honestly don't care though, why would I care about a country who has allowed a million innocent iraqis die, torture people, attempt to bully the rest of the world, and then have people like Ann Coulter on their television channels saying that all camel jockies should be killed becuase they killed 3 thousand americans in Iraq.
You gave up the rights of others to live, no one should ever do that.
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So that is what they are. (Score:2)
Saw the nice pretty lit up logo on the internal wall one day someone was exiting the area. Was thinking 'that nice, wonder how much that cost when no one gets to even see it'.
(Posting anonymously for obvious reasons )
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Oops.
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I need the technology (Score:2)
I have countless applications that could benefit from this research. I've got old school islands of data in "stovepiped" isolated products. I *might* be able to slap a semantic web layer around them but I really REALLY do not want to reinvent the wheel if my tax dollars paid for a good solution.
Annoying (Score:1)
We have been raped. THIS IS NOT THE COUNTRY WE SIGNED UP FOR. They are not holding their end of the Social Contract. This is just like the Red Scare 1 and Red Scare 2. Remember Sacco and Vanzetti? Remember Joseph McCarthy and all of his victims in the name of Communism? T
Terror and it's definition (Score:1)
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