An Angry Blog of Peace Descends on San Francisco

You’re on your way to work in the morning and place a call on your wireless phone. As your call is relayed by the wireless tower, it is also relayed by another series of towers to a microwave antenna on top of Mount Weather between Leesburg and Winchester, Virginia and then beamed to another antenna on top of an office building in Arlington where it is recorded on a computer hard drive.

The computer also records you phone digital serial number, which is used to identify you through your wireless company phone bill that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency already has on record as part of your permanent file.

A series of sophisticated computer programs listens to your phone conversation and looks for “keywords” that suggest suspicious activity. If it picks up those words, an investigative file is opened and sent to the Department of Homeland Security.

Congratulations. Big Brother has just identified you as a potential threat to the security of the United States because you might have used words like “take out” (as in taking someone out when you were in fact talking about ordering takeout for lunch) or “D-Day” (as in deadline for some nefarious activity when you were talking about going to the new World War II Memorial to recognize the 60th anniversary of D-Day).

If you are lucky, an investigator at DHS will look at the entire conversation in context and delete the file. Or he or she may keep the file open even if they realize the use of words was innocent. Or they may decide you are, indeed, a threat and set up more investigation, including a wiretap on your home and office phones, around-the-clock surveillance and much closer looks at your life.

Welcome to America, 2004, where the actions of more than 150 million citizens are monitored 24/7 by the TIA, the Terrorist Information Awareness (originally called Total Information Awareness) program of DARPA, DHS and the Department of Justice.

Although Congress cut off funding for TIA last year, the Bush Administration ordered the program moved into the Pentagon’s “black bag” budget, which is neither authorized nor reviewed by the Hill. DARPA also increased the use of private contractors to get around privacy laws that would restrict activities by federal employees.

Six months of interviews with security consultants, former DARPA employees, privacy experts and contractors who worked on the TIA facility at 3701 Fairfax Drive in Arlington reveal a massive snooping operation that is capable of gathering – in real time – vast amounts of information on the day to day activities of ordinary Americans.

Going on a trip? TIA knows where you are going because your train, plane or hotel reservations are forwarded automatically to the DARPA computers. Driving? Every time you use a credit card to purchase gas, a record of that transaction is sent to TIA which can track your movements across town or across the country.

Use a computerized transmitter to pay tolls? TIA is notified every time that transmitter passes through a toll booth. Likewise, that lunch you paid for with your VISA becomes part of your permanent file, along with your credit report, medical records, driving record and even your TV viewing habits.

Subscribers to the DirecTV satellite TV service should know – but probably don’t – that every pay-per-view movie they order is reported to TIA as is any program they record using a TIVO recording system. If they order an adult film from any of DirecTV’s three SpiceTV channels, that information goes to TIA and is, as a matter of policy, forwarded to the Department of Justice’s special task force on pornography.

“We have a police state far beyond anything George Orwell imagined in his book 1984,” says privacy expert Susan Morrissey. “The everyday lives of virtually every American are under scrutiny 24-hours-a-day by the government.”

Paul Hawken, owner of the data information mining company Groxis, agrees, saying the government is spending more time watching ordinary Americans than chasing terrorists and the bad news is that they aren’t very good at it.

“It’s the Three Stooges go to data mining school,” says Hawken. “Even worse, DARPA is depending on second-rate companies to provide them with the technology, which only increases the chances for errors.”

full text of article:  http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_4656.shtml

 

Another Random Prediction

Iraq will be the shining light of the Middle East within seven years.  Iraqis have made the decision to take their country.  I'll take bets on this.  We can even decide what qualifies as 'shining light of the Middle East.'  The bar in that region is low, but it's going up, pard.  In a couple years, I'll be on a plane to Baghdad to hookah-toast the locals.  And no, I'm not saying that the Bush Administration is totally vindicated.  I'm saying that the Iraqi people are rising to the occasion...and at this point, who really gives a shit either way?  Does anyone seek terrorist anarchy?  I mean what's Osama's environmental policy?  I must of have missed that speech.

selah - k

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3june04

Back in the SFC and still shaking off Memorial Day weekend...processed meats, the family get-togethers and remembering, remembering, remem--

But seriously, we're going to see more war-deaths coming up pretty soon, unless the mindset of multitudes shifts in ways that'd turn me quick into a blind idealist again...and that would make me want to shuffle on back to school to hang out at the food co-op with the granola kids and relive those halcyon days when I was an ignorant ass but of course thought quite the opposite.  Well, I don't plan any campus nostalgia tours, nor can I see the sting of organized conflict ebbing any time soon.  But it will, at some point.  Things are way better now than they were a thousand years ago, and they will be better a thousand years from now.  Some folks freak out about the undulations and forget about the larger picture.  Is it bad education or bad brain chemistry or both?  Who knows, who cares.  It is what it is. 

Again, read some of the Middle East blogs listed up on this page, and search them out on the outernet in general.  I've said it before and I'll say it million times, don't put much stock into what mass media tells you.  The best in the business, The Washington Post, still misses a lot of minutae regarding the Iraq thing that native bloggers are living by the day.

Pistons v Lakers

Does Phil Jackson really need a tenth ring?  Does the Mailman need his first?

Rooting for the Lakers is like rooting for the Yankees.  Talking heads are blabbing on about their adversity from many angles, and gosh it must be tough to be one of a crew of multimillionaire athletes working on your jumper in the harsh climes of LA.  Please.

I hope the Pistons smoke the Lakers, physically beat their whining criminal asses.  Seriously, who ever thought that Rasheed would have a better rep than Kobe? Rasheed ain't changed a bit.  Well, maybe he's cut back on the bluntage a little, but who knows.  Rip Hamilton has turned into a top-15 talent, and Ben Wallace is learning to score.  And, as ESPN's Ralph Wiley has observed, "You think Ben Wallace is going to be scared of Shaq?  Ben Wallace is the son of sharecroppers and the tenth of eleven children."

True.  Shaq's a lot bigger, but Ben's a goddamned beast on the court.  He hurts people.  Folks who are much larger often lose the huevos to drive on Ben after seeing their shot smacked up into the stands and their asses driven into the hardwood.

Screw the Lakers, seriously.  They may win this series because they are freakin loaded with talent.  But I'm taking my Pistons in seven...ready to shock the world like Ali. 

selah - k

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