Goodbye Patriot Act

Not really, just the bits about recording phone data. So that's all over with, except it isn't. There's all these nice secret Presidential orders that allow pretty much the same thing. Don't worry, it's all being overseen by committees and secret courts . . . and Superman, Santa Claus, and the Easter Bunny.

We have nothing worry about. Never mind that it all happens in the shadows. What? It's not like we have a functioning democracy, or even a representative republic. Openness and transparency were never the hallmarks of those in power, but things have gotten out of hand. It doesn't matter which party is in office. Being at the controls of a surveillance state is too much power to willingly give up.

It doesn't make us safer, but those in power hope it makes them safer. The problem, however, is that by listening in to our whispers they know we don't like them very much. Of course, a goodly part of the reason we don't like them is that they are a bunch of creepy peeping Toms. Not much trust all around.

In the United States it's easy to see when a new law or government program is going to be bad. They give it a good sounding name. “Patriot Act.” In post 911 America who did not want to be a Patriot? Any law with the word “Freedom” in it is especially bad. That's what they want to take away. It's all so George Orwell 1984 doublespeak.

At least in Belarus they still call the KGB the KGB. I guess that's the difference between a western democracy and the last dictatorship in Europe. Dictators don't have to pretend and so they call something what it really is.

We have the classic philosophical problem of who watches the watchers. Whistle blowers? Yes, they help. How else would we know anything about what goes on? The spies know they have little to worry about from their official overseers. They are all part of the same club and no one is going to do anything to hamper “National Security.”

Now imagine there really is a group of people who could shut everything down, but are hesitant to act. Surveillance is so interwoven into our communication systems that abruptly shutting it down could also shut down the whole system -phones, the Internet, everything. They wield a blunt instrument indeed. As long as the NSA types don't actually do much damage with their information they gather, the watchers remain quiet.

Do these guys even exist? How would I know? I've only heard rumors, just as some folks in the intelligence community have heard rumors. There are some strange things going on in deep dark computer land.

Letting parts of the Patriot Act expire is a good thing. Call it a step in the right direction. The US is wasting an awful lot of treasure and talent spying on normal people to the point where its normal to not trust the government. Time to break the circle. The truth will set us all free.

-Sixbears

Making the innocent look guilty

In a surveillance society, it's extremely easy to make innocent people look guilty. Take a guy going about his daily routine. Given enough camera footage, it can be made to look like he associates with very unsavory characters.

Say Joe Average is walking down the street and some random guy happens to walk next to him. Later, that random guy commits a crime or a terrorist act. The authorities can pull up footage of that chance encounter and suddenly Joe Average is associating with criminals.

Add in some other unflattering footage, phone conversations taken out of context, and before you know it Joe Average is a menace to public safety.

How long before the witch test is used? If we dunk them in water and they drown, then they are innocent. If they float, they are witches. Apparently it worked back in the day when witches were considered a problem.

The man who sinks and quietly drowns under the flood of tyranny is fine. Those who struggle for air and freedom obviously are “terrorists.”

-Sixbears

Disappointed in the Mayan Apocalypse?

Are you one of those people that might be even a tiny bit disappointed that we didn't have a Mayan Apocalypse? Did you have your hopes up for some zombie shooting? Fancy yourself a survivor type?

What is it about your current life that makes an apocalypse look like an improvement?

There's good news. You don't have to wait for a total systems failure to radically change your life. All you have to do is to change your life.

What's the matter? Can't do that?

Why not?

Afraid that maybe you aren't the survivor type you think you are? Now would be the time to find out for sure, when we are not in a total collapse. It's easier to recover from any mistakes.

Can't run away and hide in the National Forest because you'd get arrested? Did you think it would be easier dealing with the biker gang warlords that would control the area in a real collapse? Maybe you have to reconsider the whole run away to the forest daydream.

It's easy for life to slip into a rut. Your life might not be all you wanted, but it's not too terrible. TV and a few beers numb you just enough to get by. Positive change will just sneak up and happen to you one day. Maybe an apocalypse is more likely after all.

Do you really need that drastic of an excuse to change your life? Bothered by the potential criticism of friends and family? Don't let that stop you. Most people hate to see someone escape the life of the mundane. It's funny how often middle aged adults make major life changes after their parents die. They might be 50 years old, but are still afraid of doing something to disappoint their parents. Two things happen when the parents pass on. That potential disappoint is gone, and it's a reminder that you aren't going to live forever.

What if you set out on a new life adventure and it fails? I've news for you. At least part, and maybe all of your new plans will fail. Doing anything new has a steep learning curve. However, you will learn something. Maybe that's better than never doing anything new?

A fast collapse forces people out of ruts. The slow grinding collapse we are in sneaks up on people and they slowly adapt to feeling miserable. Breaking out of that takes work. Most people won't admit that anything really major is wrong. I'm old enough to remember when every building and street corner did not have a surveillance camera. A blue collar job paid as well as a college professor. Your boss didn't live in a high priced gated community but across the street from you. The collapse takes decades, not days.

If you do break free, much of what you do will be on your own. However, you will meet other adventurers along the way. They will be your tribe. These are the people you can trade knowledge, goods, skills, tools, and party with.

You've been shackled with debt, responsibilities, expectations, laws and shame. Look at your chains. Will it take an apocalypse to break them or can you slowly file them off yourself?
Freedom might require any number of disguises. You aren't a wandering vagabond; you are hiking the Appalachian Trail. You aren't living in a tent -it's an extended vacation. You are not an unemployed bum, but an artist, musician or a writer. You aren't a trash picker but a radical recycling environmentalist.

You are fighting your oppressor, not with a gun, but with something that really hurts. You are living free and easy on the land, outside of normal controls. Leaders need followers to survive, and you can be your own leader, no apocalypse required.

-Sixbears

Welcome to the Panopticon

The Panopticon is a prison design where a handful of watchers can keep an eye on many prisoners. The psychology behind the design is that the prisoners cannot tell when they are being watched. They then behave like they are always being watched. One person can control the behavior of many.

Our surveillance society, with cameras in more and more places, has turned our world into a giant Panopticon.

The watchers want us to believe they see us at all times. They don’t. Think about it. Lot’s of those cameras are getting old. How long does your electronic devices stay in top shape? Many of these cameras are mounted in harsh environments. Quite a few no longer work, but we are supposed to assume they do.

Sometimes the cameras aren’t even real -just cheap fake dummies. Remember, the idea is not to actually watch people, but to change people’s behavior by making them believe they are watched.

Remember your first digital camera? Piece of crap, wasn’t it? Many of the older cameras have very low resolution. Combine that with security tapes that have been reused and reused, and everything becomes a blurry mess.

Let’s, however, assume that the equipment is top notch, the recordings are the best in high end digital, and actual human beings are watching on monitors. Assume that these cameras are being focused on potential criminals instead of hot women. Can the camera prevent crime? No. They can only record things that may or may not get used to prosecute after the fact. There is no SWAT team hiding in a closet ready to apprehend a mugger.

In a massive public action, the cameras can only watch. Later analysis can be used to pick faces out of the crowd, but what happens when the camera records 3000 people wearing Guy Fawkes masks? Ski masks? Large brimmed hats? Heavy makeup? Powerful infrared lasers that blind the cameras?

The surveillance state only works when the threat of punishment is real. If the state can only look but cannot act, it is only a sad joke. Usually punishing a few high profile cases keeps everyone in line. What if a lot of people have little to lose? When thousands break the law, only a few get punished and the odds of getting away with it go way up.

Another thing the surveillance state did not count on was people’s changing attitude towards privacy. Us old farts remember privacy, but the young ones don’t. In fact, through social media, they broadcast their every move. What are cameras to them? Coupled with little sense of shame, the Panopticon loses its psychological hold. Things once kept secret are now speedily posted on YouTube. They don’t care. Blackmail has no handle on them.

As government resources become more and more constrained, gaps will grow in the surveillance net. Faulty equipment will not get replaced. Maintenance becomes spotty. Screen watchers are laid off, requiring the remaining staff to monitor too many screens. Power failures can make the whole system go dark.

The modern Panopticon state is getting larger and larger, but ironically, it’s real power is getting weaker. Plenty of cracks for naughty little folk to play in.

-Sixbears

Information does not equal intelligence

I’ve been giving some thought to the surveillance state recently. State operators have more and more information at their finger tips, but often they don’t know what to do with it. Domestic or foreign, it doesn’t seem to matter. They get a lot of stuff wrong.

For decades the US and Soviet Union struggled against each other in the cold war. The spying that went on was epic. We’ll never know how much money was spent on it as much of it was “black budget” -invisible to the average person. In spite of the massive effort, the collapse of the USSR was totally missed. That was huge and nobody saw it coming.

Take our involvement with Afghanistan. To get the Russians out, suitcases of money were given to people who turned out to not be our friends. Sure, the Russians were forced to leave, but then the some of the same guns were turned against the US. Pretty short sighted.

Domestic spying has access to huge volumes of computer data. Our whole lives are tracked. Everything we buy. Every e-mail we send. Every blog post I write. There are records of everything -even when not strictly legal.

How is it whenever a “domestic terror cell” is uncovered, they turn out to be a bunch of wanna be losers? None of them would have done much of anything at all if not for their secret government informer. He’s the who supplies them with stuff like arms and bomb materials. Embarrassingly often, these cases are thrown out of court.

Now consider the government can infinitely detain someone on allegations of terrorist connections. That’s pretty scary. Now consider how often they get people’s intentions out and out wrong. Then it get’s really scary.

Governments use a lot of the same data mining that companies use for marketing. I don’t know about anyone else, but a lot of stuff is marketed to me for stuff that I don’t want. For example, at one time I was researching marine diesel fuel tanks and fuel transfer systems. My project was converting a car to run on waste vegetable oil. I was looking at marine fuel tanks because they come in may different sizes and shapes, and I was looking for one to fit in the available space in the vehicle. The fuel transfer equipment wasn’t for diesel but for veggie oil. From that information, marketers were under the impression I owned a large diesel powered boat. My mailbox was flooded with advertising for power boat related goods and services.

That’s only one example. In one day’s mail I got stuff asking me to join the NRA and a membership offer from a group pledged against the NRA. Since I’m a writer, I often research stuff that other people might be interested in, or sometimes I’m researching for a negative blog post. If I criticize a product, there will most likely be ads for it on my blog. Hope you are as amused by this as I am.

It’s funny when it’s marketing. It’s deadly serious when it’s national security or personal freedom.

Government agencies are agenda driven. They will only see what they are looking for. Nobody gets promoted finding evidence that goes against the boss’s pet project. With so much information available, it’s easy to cherry pick the “facts” needed to “prove” any viewpoint. Information is not intelligence.

-Sixbears

Smile you’re in a police state

The FBI is spending a billion dollars on face recognition software. The police state marches forward. Remember how the Nazis were terrible for having files on everyone? When the Soviets watched every move of its citizens? I don’t think the FBI is on the side of the angels here.

Constant surveillance, TSA shake downs, drones, enemy combatant status, police and border patrol checkpoints, welcome to the land of the free. Machiavelli said that one of the ways to take over a country is to keep all the old institutions and forms, but then change the way it really works. We still have a constitution and a legal framework, but they don’t really mean much any more. RIP USA.

We know that the TSA scanners main purpose is to enrich scanner makers, along with their investors -many of which were the same politicians that created the TSA. The face recognition software is making some tech companies very very wealthy. Wars and the police state have been good for the military industrial complex.

But hey, that’s no reason to be gloomy, right? Sure the populace has been dumbed down to accept this crap. Real criminals go unpunished. Freedom erodes daily. In spite of that we have reason to believe this is only temporary.

What happens to a police state when the state can no longer pay its police? In Greece there are fights breaking out between regular cops and riot police. Your average cop isn’t a bad guy. He wants to do the right thing. He loves his family and his country. Many in the service today still believe in Protecting and Serving. Then there are those who are bullies. They tend to end up in SWAT and riot squads. Joe good cop sees his wages and pension going away. They see the break down of a free society. Joe is as disturbed about the direction of the country as the rest of us. The bullies on the other hand, just love to play soldier and push people around. I’m betting this country has a lot more Joes than bullies. Of course, stop paying the bullies and not too many of those guys will stick around either.

Then there’s the whole electronic surveillance system. That whole wiz bang sci-fi system is sitting on top of a decaying and increasing shaky electric grid system. No electric power, no surveillance. Freedom is only a blackout away. Sure there are some backup systems, but not a lot and few if any are set up for long term outages. Backup systems aren’t sexy so they don’t get the budget they need.

Did you every have computer problems from electrical issues? Power spikes, brown outs, black outs? Ever lose information? Hardware? Does it take a while for your system to reboot and get running again? Now imagine that with systems 1000 times more complex than your home computer.

The police state is fragile. Why do you think they try so hard to keep the lid on? If more than a handful of people resist, the whole facade falls apart. People in fear and ignorant people are easier to control, so we are kept dumb and threatened by the boogie man.

Here’s the thing. We still believe we are the home of the free. People can only ignore evidence to the contrary for so long. The stress from believing one thing and observing something else takes its toll. One day people decide they aren’t going to take it anymore. A long tradition of freedom doesn’t mesh well with a police state.

So smile, you’re on police state camera, but so is everyone else. Absolutely everyone is now a potential threat to them. No wonder they are nervous.

-Sixbears

They are afraid

Prince Charles and Camilla got caught up in student protests.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/off-with-their-heads-shouted-the-crowd-as-charles-and-camilla-met-rage-in-regent-street-2157412.html

This is what the powers that be are afraid of. In spite of Britain having an almost complete surveillance society, the rulers can't even keep themselves safe.

Now imagine if all the crimes of the power elite became public knowledge. How much rioting in the streets would we have then? No wonder they are afraid of Wikileaks. The politicians are calling for blood over leaked information that's actually relatively mild. It's embarrassing, but not earth shattering.

Perhaps those in power have much darker secrets? Why do they fear the truth so much? How evil have they been?

Maybe, just maybe, we will find out.

-Sixbears