I was kinda expecting Palantir to be on the list. In other words, they should have been.
I still find it amazing to see how much true 1984 is becoming. I am sure the next phase is thought control, because "crimes" start there and have to be prevented at all costs. Let's get inside the minds of people and put CCTVs and audio recording devices everywhere. In tables under restaurants, in cars, in buses, every possible place. Crime has to be prevented.
At the same time, Huxley's Brave New World also appears to be becoming more and more true.
"In regard to propaganda the early advocates of universal literacy and a free press envisaged only two possibilities: the propaganda might be true, or it might be false. They did not foresee what in fact has happened, above all in our Western capitalist democracies -- the development of a vast mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither with the true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more or less totally irrelevant.
In a word, they failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." [0]
Most people don't perceive these changes to affect them/their daily lives, so they are not concerned with it. They don't care.
During the Barrett Brown leaks, Palantir specifically gave a presentation diagramming the social network of Occupy, and suggesting which nodes the FBI should target to divide the movement as much as possible. They absolutely should have been in the article.
...oh, and let's not leave out the fact that these are private companies. This is not Socialism. This is not INGSOC.
Even without the totalitarianism, the very same oppression crops up. Instead of the single Big Brother brand name, it's a cottage industry private security firms acting as thought police.
It's like someone made an unholy bit of fan-fiction mashing together Robocop, 1984, and the bleak bits of Gibson, and it then was used as a policy document.
In the actual year 1984, everyone was reading the novel "1984" for fear that we had gotten there. Most regular folk concluded that we in fact were not even close.
However, keen observers knew then that this attitude was, well, uninformed. It was clear that 1984 was true well before 1984.
> Another program, made by Bright Planet and called BlueJay, is billed in a brochure to law enforcement as a "Twitter crime scanner." BlueJay allows cops to covertly monitor accounts and hashtags; three that Bright Planet touts in promotional material are #gunfire, #meth, and #protest. In another promotional document, the company says BlueJay can "monitor large public events, social unrest, gang communications, and criminally predicated individuals," as well as "track department mentions." Bright Planet did not respond to a request for comment.
The firehose, which BlueJay presumably collects from, doesn't capture geolocations that aren't already in the public data, right? So it looks like the end of the road for criminals who tweet about their #meth lab and have let Twitter geocode their tweets. Hopefully, that consists of the majority of villains the police have to deal with
I actually don't have a problem with private surveillance, regardless of purpose. As long as it's legal (!!!), it's probably more effective than what government agencies like the NSA could do with their more intrusive and illegal methods. I would love to see the NSA domestic surveillance done away with and then have some sort of transparent government incentive for companies that can effectively monitor terrorists, dissent groups, disruptive individuals, whatever, legally. Like private investigators looking into terrorist groups. That's fine, and if the public doesn't like what those dollars are being spent on, such as monitoring peaceful protests (and how are police supposed to know the protestors have peaceful intentions unless they look into them? I've seen some nasty things happen at some of the occupy events in Zugatti park...), they can vote the guys out of office who are in charge of designating targets. It's the complete lack of accountability that causes problems...
I once worked for a company that did pre-employment background checks. Before I left the CEO was talking about the next big thing in weeding out undesirables from the workforce: a system that would keep track of every time someone was placed behind bars/arrested, adding that to a database, and notifying potential/present employers that person A either working for them or applying to work for them had been arrested, either at one time or now.
Not charged with a crime, not falsely arrested, just simply placed behind bars. I left before really delving into the legality of it, but it apparently was.
Remember, the bill of rights only applies to the government. A private company doesn't have to care about WHY you were placed in a jail cell or whether you actually are a criminal, just that you were detained by the police at one time.
If every protester who'd been arrested (I'm thinking Occupy from a while ago) was now in a database that prevented them from ever getting a job again even though they've never committed a "real" crime, then being legal sure doesn't seem fine at all.
I should also mention that I've worked for a few companies handling private information about people. The lack of security in the private area is astounding. I'm honestly surprised that massive SSN and other personal info don't leak out of private companies more often, most of the time it's not difficult to walk out with a million DOB/Name/Current Address/SSN/Duplicatable Signature on thumb drive, there's no internal tracking and no encryption most of the time. The private sector is the last place surveillance should be happening, it's really frightening to think what could happen should they mess up.
I have a problem with surveillance in general and I don't think that private surveillance is really any better. Because it still descends from government, I think you'd end up with most of the same problems in addition to problems resulting from trying to make profit.
I mean, what surveillance companies are going to get the most contracts and make the most money? The ones that 'discover' dissent groups, non-peaceful demonstrations, and terrorists. Given that these are relatively rare in our society, a business has incentive to forge evidence on groups and hand them over to law enforcement. Since we're just talking surveillance, no real crimes have to be committed. We can't expect the businesses to be transparent in their methods, because that's their competitive advantage. Whatever government agency signing the checks would be just as happy with this as with their own illegal spying, because they get to point to all these 'wins'.
I guess my point is that moving a controversial issue from the public sector to the private sector doesn't make it magically better. You can say you're fine with it "as long as it's legal", but that qualifier can be applied to government surveillance, too. The problem is that this kind of surveillance lends itself to corruption. I've seen nasty things happen at Thanksgiving parades. What percentage certainty do we need of a demonstration becoming disruptive before law enforcement comes down on the heads of the organizers? 90%? 50%? How often do you think a protest against the current establishment is going to cross that threshold?
So after reading that article, if I were a protestor or insurgent; I would be thinking about how to feed false information to these surveillance systems. For instance creating ghost marches; or faking mandatory response incidents in ways that are likely to get innocent bystanders beaten up or shot by the security services.
Anytime you have a fast feedback loop like this, you're going to be getting a lot of noise and a fair amount of disinformation.
Imagine a scenario in which Anonymous is sending out several hundred messages in multiple formats describing an incident in which "Just saw a guy in a suit shoot a cop at Xth and XXX" features prominently. Especially if police communications were being selectively disrupted at the same time...
I am a lot more bothered about private companies doing surveillance than I am about whatever NSA / GCHQ are doing.
For a long time my assumption has been that well funded government agencies can, and do, slurp everything I type. (Even though that breaks several laws.)
That has little to no effect on me. But private companies do - they lose the data; they're open to blackmail or corruption; they're insecure; they inaccurate; etc.
Many more people are caused harm by Equifax listing someone else's debt problems under their name than by the NSA doing whatever it is they do.
This post is not saying that government surveillance is acceptable, or that we shouldn't do stuff to stop it!
This is normal, expected and working as intended. Adam Smith said it back in 1776 in his book Wealth of Nations:
"“Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.”
Boycotting only works effectively in a free society. If someone taxes your by force, and hands some of that money to these companies, then short of becoming an elected member of government, you can't do anything about it.
[+] [-] thex86|12 years ago|reply
I still find it amazing to see how much true 1984 is becoming. I am sure the next phase is thought control, because "crimes" start there and have to be prevented at all costs. Let's get inside the minds of people and put CCTVs and audio recording devices everywhere. In tables under restaurants, in cars, in buses, every possible place. Crime has to be prevented.
The future is scary.
[+] [-] jliechti1|12 years ago|reply
"In regard to propaganda the early advocates of universal literacy and a free press envisaged only two possibilities: the propaganda might be true, or it might be false. They did not foresee what in fact has happened, above all in our Western capitalist democracies -- the development of a vast mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither with the true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more or less totally irrelevant.
In a word, they failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." [0]
Most people don't perceive these changes to affect them/their daily lives, so they are not concerned with it. They don't care.
[0]: http://www.huxley.net/bnw-revisited/
[+] [-] steveklabnik|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samstave|12 years ago|reply
Thankfully he did not, as he is an amazing engineer and he's more valuable to the world not being there.
[+] [-] negativity|12 years ago|reply
Even without the totalitarianism, the very same oppression crops up. Instead of the single Big Brother brand name, it's a cottage industry private security firms acting as thought police.
Invisible hand of The Market, indeed.
[+] [-] rodgerd|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wglb|12 years ago|reply
However, keen observers knew then that this attitude was, well, uninformed. It was clear that 1984 was true well before 1984.
So I find that much of this alarm is overwrought.
[+] [-] krylonkid|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danso|12 years ago|reply
The firehose, which BlueJay presumably collects from, doesn't capture geolocations that aren't already in the public data, right? So it looks like the end of the road for criminals who tweet about their #meth lab and have let Twitter geocode their tweets. Hopefully, that consists of the majority of villains the police have to deal with
[+] [-] DanBC|12 years ago|reply
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/aug/08/london-riots-fa...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/blackberry/8688651/Lon...
Blackberry claims to help police.
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/aug/09/london-rio...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2011/08/09/blackberry...
[+] [-] thex86|12 years ago|reply
And what makes me even more sad about this is that #meth and #protest are considered as dangerous.
[+] [-] pvnick|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KeliNorth|12 years ago|reply
Not charged with a crime, not falsely arrested, just simply placed behind bars. I left before really delving into the legality of it, but it apparently was.
Remember, the bill of rights only applies to the government. A private company doesn't have to care about WHY you were placed in a jail cell or whether you actually are a criminal, just that you were detained by the police at one time.
If every protester who'd been arrested (I'm thinking Occupy from a while ago) was now in a database that prevented them from ever getting a job again even though they've never committed a "real" crime, then being legal sure doesn't seem fine at all.
I should also mention that I've worked for a few companies handling private information about people. The lack of security in the private area is astounding. I'm honestly surprised that massive SSN and other personal info don't leak out of private companies more often, most of the time it's not difficult to walk out with a million DOB/Name/Current Address/SSN/Duplicatable Signature on thumb drive, there's no internal tracking and no encryption most of the time. The private sector is the last place surveillance should be happening, it's really frightening to think what could happen should they mess up.
[+] [-] gamerdonkey|12 years ago|reply
I mean, what surveillance companies are going to get the most contracts and make the most money? The ones that 'discover' dissent groups, non-peaceful demonstrations, and terrorists. Given that these are relatively rare in our society, a business has incentive to forge evidence on groups and hand them over to law enforcement. Since we're just talking surveillance, no real crimes have to be committed. We can't expect the businesses to be transparent in their methods, because that's their competitive advantage. Whatever government agency signing the checks would be just as happy with this as with their own illegal spying, because they get to point to all these 'wins'.
I guess my point is that moving a controversial issue from the public sector to the private sector doesn't make it magically better. You can say you're fine with it "as long as it's legal", but that qualifier can be applied to government surveillance, too. The problem is that this kind of surveillance lends itself to corruption. I've seen nasty things happen at Thanksgiving parades. What percentage certainty do we need of a demonstration becoming disruptive before law enforcement comes down on the heads of the organizers? 90%? 50%? How often do you think a protest against the current establishment is going to cross that threshold?
Gah, </ramble>
[+] [-] olefoo|12 years ago|reply
Anytime you have a fast feedback loop like this, you're going to be getting a lot of noise and a fair amount of disinformation.
Imagine a scenario in which Anonymous is sending out several hundred messages in multiple formats describing an incident in which "Just saw a guy in a suit shoot a cop at Xth and XXX" features prominently. Especially if police communications were being selectively disrupted at the same time...
[+] [-] DanBC|12 years ago|reply
For a long time my assumption has been that well funded government agencies can, and do, slurp everything I type. (Even though that breaks several laws.)
That has little to no effect on me. But private companies do - they lose the data; they're open to blackmail or corruption; they're insecure; they inaccurate; etc.
Many more people are caused harm by Equifax listing someone else's debt problems under their name than by the NSA doing whatever it is they do.
This post is not saying that government surveillance is acceptable, or that we shouldn't do stuff to stop it!
[+] [-] enraged_camel|12 years ago|reply
"“Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.”
[+] [-] spiritplumber|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tokenizer|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aray|12 years ago|reply
Be a good steward of your private data.