Another Mile to the End of Privacy—and Freedom

This is why the Unabomber was right (though he was terribly confused about why he was right, having glanced over his manifesto). The internet age started out a great hope of increased freedom, as do most other technological advances. But then the PTB eventually recover from the shock and find institutional ways (and the necessary ‘witches’ to rationalize what they are doing) to utilize the technology to impose even greater social control.

As long as our economic and political institutions require mass social control and unfreedom, any technology that comes around will be put to use to give them more of the same.

If only they changed at that rate. I mean at a rate of 3 days. Three days is way too long.

Civil libertarians and their ACLU henchmen are just a buncha commies. I know because a conservative evangelical told me so, and he’s on a mission from God.

I should note that smart phones can pretty much track you anywhere anytime and by monitoring your usage, contacts and searches can figure out what you are doing too. This is supposedly to tailor ads and such to you but it also makes for amazing surveillance. Add in personal assistants like Alexa, Siri, Cortana, etc. which background surveil you. Ditto the Internet of Things, digital cashless payments. The more you are connected the more you are surveilled.

DJIA down 1175 today. Trump blames Obama.

This is another strange/weird attempt to redefine ideas and words such as “we’, privacy and even freedom. The people targeted by ICE with this license plate information are illegal aliens who have no civil or privacy rights nor do they have the freedom to stay in this country. People who are tracked by this system, that could be called we, are human traffickers and we do need to honor their civil and privacy rights to be sure those who leave IA’s to die in the back of airless hot trucks spend the rest of their life without freedom or privacy.

The view that license plates are somehow related to privacy rights is a strange idea. They are government issued identification that must be displayed openly in public. A private company collecting public information for use by public safety agencies might be misused but I’ve seen no evidence of that presented.

Hugh,

And new cars have tracking devices in them. When I got my new ford, they told me how they can find it if it is stolen. Sort of creeped me out.

People don’t even need to hack your car nowadays. Drones are cheap and just a little work, it can be fitted with a thermite charge which destroys all the evidence of the Drone’s ownership as well and wreak real havoc. A number of small drones really fucked up Russia’s deployed aircraft in Syria a few weeks back and the Russians still can’t prove who did it.

Anyone looking to cause a mass causality incident can scope out an airport, attack jumbo jets on the Tarmac, and boom!

@V Arnold

Haven’t drunk kool-aide in 12 years.

Drones are here, they finally come into their own and they are rapidly changing warfare. Just about every armed group in Syria has dedicated drone units launching combat operations.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/who-is-attacking-russias-main-base-in-syria-a-new-mystery-emerges-in-the-war/2018/01/09/4fdaea70-f48d-11e7-9af7-a50bc3300042_story.html?utm_term=.dfbb064205f0

A joint Drone and Mortar attack put 7 planes out of action.

Just a thought: this, and Ian’s previous post, keeps reminding me of Ira Levin’s This Perfect Day (1970).

And, much of what’s happened over the past decade-plus, and continues happening, reminds me of Warren Wagar’s A Short History Of The Future (1989) — but of course, the United States would never elect a thin-skinned, narcissistic national leader who would use nuclear weapons just to prove they had ‘real power’.

Uh oh, looks like someone just committed a whataboutism. Consider this a friendly reminder to stay woke, comrade.

People worried about the details of omni dataveillance can certainly try to frustrate the gathering of correct data about themselves. Different people will offer suggestions on how to do that . . . no smart phones, no Ipod pads or Ipad pods or such things, super-reflecto-strips near your car license plates to defeat digital cameras or videos, facial makeup and hair styles designed to defeat and frustrate facial recognition, etc. Figuring out how to lie effectively and corrupt data. etc.

But ultimately, fear is pointless. Once one is doing all the data-disrupting and corrupting things one can, accept that the reason for gathering all this data is more than just predicting and analysing what you may do. It is also to collect a million dots on you so that if somebody in government wants to eliminate you later, they can merely invent fake connections between some of the million random dots to frame you with whatever they want to frame you with. It goes beyond “mores might change 50 years from now.” It is a matter of having the million dots so that any fake connections the government wishes to hallucinate into existence against you between certain cherry-picked random dots can be faked to government order.

One might as well just accept it and live one’s life. There is no predicting which “data dots” against which people might be fake-connected for fake reasons at some future time.

One wonders if reality checker has thought about issues of “jury nullificationism” and whether widespread dissemination of what that does or does not mean might allow millions of people to become stealth “sleeper citizens” ready to wake themselves up once they are on a jury and stick a nullification spoke into any governmental lawfare coperation playing out in any court of law battlespace. Since I don’t know “the law”, I don’t know if such things are worth thinking about or not.

@ dc

Jury nullification is a wonderful idea, if you really believe in juries and really believe citizens should have real power.

Unfortunately, as with so many other beautiful ideas, the system does what it can to limit such a practice, variations by state include lawyer sanctions, judge lectures and possibly mistrial declarations, etc. Probably more I’m not aware of, in some states.

Bottom line–all courts actively frown on and discourage the practice of jury nullification, afaik.

@Harihead:

“Vancouver, BC, is considering, as “traffic management” requiring a transponder on every vehicle registered in the city, tracking mileage, then charging for it. And to speed up the payment/collections, it will be done automatically, through a bank account. No presenting of a bill, or arguing about the price, or waiting for payment. ”

Do you have a source on this? Google turns up nothing.

@Oz

I was offering a reality/fact check not a what-about diversion to counter the snowflake translations of what Trump has said or might do. Trump’s responses to Kim’s Nuke and other direct threats to his neighbors and the US were blunt promises of total destruction of his kingdom. This was not a threat of a first strike and Nukes were never mentioned.

@Not From Vancouver:

Thanks for the link. I didn’t see anything there about transponders in cars though.

Bezos is one sign we have gone off the rails. Trump is another. Our panopticon police state is another. It doesn’t have to be this way, but we continue to sit by and watch it happen.

Yeah, Peter, maybe the Martians will buy more Teslas and make Tesla profitable again, if it was really ever profitable. As a former CPA, I’d say Tesla was never truly profitable and never will be. The severe majority of the population cannot afford the technology so Tesla is not scalable and hence Economy of Scale is not possible. Hence Tesla is looking to Mars & The Martians. When he gets there, no doubt he’ll say “take me to your leader” and guess what, that leader will be Donald Trump because Donald Trump, like Savoir Faire, is EVERYWHERE. Yes, this is a Nightmare form which you cannot wake up. Embrace it. It’s the New Normal.

Peter, will you do us the service and defend the poor cowardly wife beater Rob Porter? You defend the defenseless so well. Like no other. If you’re not a Defense Attorney, you should be and you missed your calling. Abbe Lowell has nothing on you. He’s a mere amateur standing in your prodigious shadow.

SpaceX has just made a giant step towards their being Martians in the future who will need someone’s electric cars to drive. Win or lose Musk has used his wealth and skills to begin building the future while the bean counters can only comment on the past.

I’m certain that the young Martians will have to study the dark Earth era of snowflakes and TDS when the commies were finally reduced to zombie like creatures easily seperated from loyal citizens. They may even modify their giant face to resemble the great leader who championed the serious conquest of the solar system.

Not sure who wrote Elon Musk’s Wikipedia entry, but it was said that he overcame severe childhood bullying to maintain a view that ones actions should advance civilization, and not be calculated to merely profit from it (unlike so many other American corporate chiefs). I may be wrong, but I’m unaware that he uses strongman tactics in his companies. He does appear to have received government subsidies though.

Trump has Narcissistic Personality Disorder, which is almost the opposite of (until I’m corrected) Elon Musk’s temperament. One type can hardly begin to feel superior until they’ve achieved difficult things, while the other always feels superior regardless of anything they do or anything anybody else says.

Personally, I’d rather have more of Musk’s kind around.

Personally, I’d rather have more of Musk’s kind around.

Willy, I’ll take None of the Above, than you very much.

Elon Musk is hardly bettering Civilization. His Technological Toys are for the Uber Wealthy Elite .01%. Every bit as much as Trump, he’s completely out of touch with most people’s REALITY.

He’s buying up Bel Air and turning it into his his own Personal Compound.

He may be a kinder, gentler Oligarch, but he’s an Oligarch nonetheless.

No mercy.

For any of them.

Quite the opposite.

Soon enough, they’ll be selling shares in The Moon.

Unless we, if there even is a we, STOP THEM.

Check Out Tesla Mogul Elon Musk’s Massive Bel Air Compound!

Elon Musk Picks Up Fifth Multi-Million Dollar Property in Bel Air

Personally, I’d rather have more of Musk’s kind around.

Ugh. The limitations of the typed word, with so little time available. I don’t specifically want more of Musk’s kind around. What I meant was, if I had to choose, I’d rather have his kind than any NPD. Big step in the right direction. Musk seems the naturally-capable-everything-comes-easy type who loses the ability to empathize, then understand, the situation of those less fortunate. Been discussed here before.

There was Henry Ford, who chose to pay his people fairly. Maybe the coldly run numbers fell out that way. But Henry was also said to be an anti-Semite. It’s always something. Maybe he was beat up by a Jew once. If anybody can explain why otherwise rational, empathic (or rationally empathic) individuals have such bizarre quirks in contrast, I’d be interested in hearing it.

That was an EXCELLENT article, subgenius. Thanks for sharing it.

It’s sad how depressed so many people are today unable to even enjoy a little exciting futuristic news. The response is reporting on petty union antagonism and how rich people have too many expensive houses. Fortunately there are enough people who will work to drive humanity into the future even though many will try to drag them back to wait for catastrophe and suffering.

The BI history of Tesla was great showing how Musk took a unique idea and used his vision and practical knowledge to drive that idea into reality. He is now channeling PT Barnum to promote both his enterprises and it’s great.