Thursday, December 13, 2007

Someone to Watch Over Me

The Pentagon is about to embark on a stunningly ambitious research project designed to gather every conceivable bit of information about a person's life, index all the information and make it searchable.

What national security experts and civil libertarians want to know is, why would the Defense Department want to do such a thing?

What kind of mind would want to have such control over other minds?

And what kind of mind could read about this and conclude the Second Amendment is no longer relevant, and government really should have monopoly of power, that is, complete control over us?

As an aside, this reminds me of nothing so much as the opening paragraph in "The War of the Worlds."

[Via Jeffrey H]

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, sounds just like the old 'Total Information Awareness' program which was quietly dropped a few years back. I might still have the old graphic which is pretty scary.

Anonymous said...

Wikipedia has an entry on this, with the graphic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Awareness_Office

Anonymous said...

No one really believed that this concept was "dropped," and as usual, time has proven that the worst-case scenario is still on track, still being funded, and still growing.

Where am I going, and why am sitting in this little red wagon?

Dustin said...

Sounds a lot like 1984.

Anonymous said...

Sounds more like the inevitable outcome of the philosophies of some of our "friends?" and pro-gun leaders(?)(uh huh) who keep talking about reasonable restrictions being acceptable to keep guns out of the wrong hands.

Although this sounds like a one issue response, it is not. When agreement is reached by the citizen to compromise any right, he has lost them all. Realization may be a little later in coming, but the deed has already been agreed to,and in many cases, actively promoted by those being shorn of their rights.

Think Project Exile, Gun Free Schools, Project Safe Neighborhood, and many other voluntary surrender of rights by some of us. Admittedly, I only gave examples of NRA misdeeds,but they are by no means alone in this failure to aspire to liberty or courage. I only used these examples because most everybody knows of them and many of our pro-gun leaders(?) support them.

Well, fuck that, I can give up my rights on my own if I so desire, which I do not. I don't follow self-anointed leaders because I need to be led. I may go in the same direction as they, if they are going the right way, but when i reach my turn to stay on the path of liberty and individual unalienable rights I am turning if I do so alone.

So, some of the pro-gun leaders(?) might want to figure out where I am headed and run around in front if the want to keep their fantasies of being leaders.

You'll find me marching right beside David Codrea and Kurt Hoffman and a few others, but damn few.

If you can see the guidon, close ranks. If you cannot, shame on you, and I will pity, though not respect you.

chris horton said...

I see it,and I'm right there as well. Hell with pity.........

Anonymous said...

From the linked article:
"But DARPA is currently asking businesses and universities for research proposals to begin moving LifeLog forward."

Perhaps companies like this one (already working with the DOD and DARPA):
Sentient world: war games on the grandest scale
The article is about Simulex - a company that markets a program called "Synthetic Environment for Analysis and Simulations, or SEAS".

The article refers to other efforts within DOD and DARPA that dovetail readily into the LifeLog program mentioned in the article David linked.

Anonymous said...

Makes me realize how bad it's going to get for freedom-loving folks in our lifetimes. Also makes me realize I need to quit using credit cards and easily trackable tools.