Technological Fascism Debut
I am not pleased to introduce you to our immediate future, making a debut at the Olympics.
The ACLU also released a related memo today on the "Surveillance Industrial Complex."
On a related note, let me just say what a fine job the National Security Agency is doing protecting us from any plots to overthrow the United States.
On the positive side of technology, meaning as opposed to the unholy sucking out of our fundamental autonomy and dignity as human beings, in servile humility only before the Almighty, note the easy new post editing feature.
posted by JAB at 11:53 PM
2 Comments:
Like so many characteristics of "the new fascism", I find myself rolling my eyes in disbelief in their stupidity, and afraid of the potential mistakes, both horrifying and hilarious, that will occur when a law enforcement actually acts on information gathered using such a system.
Take, for example, Google's scanning of email to provide targeted ads for their Gmail service, which had people up in arms when it was introduced. I don't know for certain, but given that Blogger is run by Google, I have to assume that it uses the same technology that is used to scan this blog and provided the "targeted" ads at the top of the page.
Computers are notoriously bad at understanding context. For example, the Google's blog scanner can't quite make out if we're for or against Bush.
Computers are extremely easy to fool. If, for example, we used the name "J. Lo" when we meant "George W.", it would never be able to tell that we had an interest in politics.
And that's just English. Imagine how well this system evaluates, let alone reads the lips, of someone speaking Arabic or Farsi.
What is really shocking is that somebody paid $312 million for a surveillance system of this kind. No doubt, they touted the fact that it "includes components already used by U.S. and British government intelligence agencies," -- and we know how effective they are.
That this is both true and nearly our only hope brings a rather perverse combination of comfort and discomfiture, perfectly analgous to the new missle system at Delta Junction (and now a sea-based platform in the Aleutians), which will apparantly defend us from North Korean Missles and inconvienient laws of physics.
I am reminded of the scene in Brazil, with the typo from Mr. Tuttle to Mr. Buttle, and the replacement hole for the one drilled in the floor, which was metric instead of english. Brutal incompetence, rather than ruthless efficiency, is the way of real world police states.
Why spend money on police officers or Arabic translators to find, generously, 20,000 loopy religious fascists when we can monitor everyone, everywhere, incorrectly?
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