Drudge: Spy satellites watch Americans from space

Pat Flannery wrote:
wrote:

In any case, the military's growing control
of the global information environment following Vietnam has becomd
nearly total with the result that it seems quite reasonable to believe
the government might fake information to 'solve' crimes.


We know that the FBI crime lab did that on occasion.


Yes, and don't forget the famous 'family jewels' the CIA sought to
protect from public disclosure during the Ford Adminisration.


This concern can be addressed somewhat by technical cleverness. It
cannot be reversed however without some sort of organizing principle
that permeates all society and changes people's hearts. Sort of like
living in a town where no one locks their doors because the thought of
needing a lock on one's door doesn't even enter anyone's mind. The
moment that is lost, it is difficult or impossible to regain.



Around 1965 in Jamestown, North Dakota.


What happened? I googled that phrase and the only thing I got back
was that Frontier Village was founded there next to the world's largest
statue of a buffalo! lol.

So, we are very much on a slipperly slope with no easy way back.

Those who believe we never set foot on the moon would gleefully take
your idea a step further Pat. They'd say we could fake the launching
of a super-duper satellite network and convince everyone such a network
exists. Then, we could use the download center, and image processing
center to fabricate evidence as needed. That would have the same
effect without all the cost.



This reminds me of the movie "Wag The Dog" and their fake Albanian war.


Yes, the fact that a mainstream movie was made about this indicates how
widespread low-level distrust of government is. In some ways its a
healthy response to deteriorating conditions. In other ways its hard
to recover from.

In many ways we are a culture in decline. Otherwise your suggestion
wouldn't be understandable to most. But it IS EASILY understandable to
all, and that's the point, even if no one buys it.



Oh, I think trumped-up evidence has probably been with most cultures
from day one of their existence; remember the Federalists and their
Alien And Sedition Acts?

Yes, but as I said, there's a difference between a town that locks its
doors at night and is suspicious of a stranger walking through town,
and a culture that does not lock its doors at night, and welcomes a
stranger. Both are rational responses to external conditions - but one
is an indicator of a culture in decline, another is an indicator of a
culture on the rise.

We're seeing take two on that nowadays.
What amazes me is that we learn that all those conspiracy theorists on
late night radio were right, that the NSA was indeed keeping track of
everyone's phone calls...and hardly anybody seems to care.

Because there was no apparent harm. If there were apparent harm that
everyone could point to, then there'd be more outrage. That goes back
to how the information is used ultimately. This goes by degrees.
Recall that the information gathered by the German census bureau and
proudly put on Hollerith cards at the start of the 20th century in
Germany, was used 30 years later to exterminate an entire class of
people. Few were worried about the census bureau doing its job more
efficiently. Everyone worries today about the misuse of such
information. We haven't misused it - yet, and God willing, will never
misuse the information gathering powers offered by the internet. But
someday someone will surprise us, and like a latter day Pol Pot, kill a
large segment of people needlessly. I'm pointing out the fact that the
belief that this information makes us more secure is at core, derived
from faulty thinking.

Of course this isn't the worst of it. Sci-fi writers have alluded to
technologies that if developed would make internet enabled intelligence
gathering seem like a kindergartner's problem. Arthur Clarke in one of
his later books postulated a society where everyone has brain implants
at birth. I imagine these things being body friendly, flexible polymer
based semiconductor sheet with a few trillion signal processing chips
formed on it along with sensors. Anyway, at birth, before the skull
has knitted together, an ultra thin, very powerful, computing layer is
inserted as a cap over the brain. It has the capacity to produce
controlled hallucinations, and monitor the brain at a very detailed
level. This information is communicated out of the brain live via
wireless data transfer, and is powered by organic chemicals found
naturally in the bloodstream. This gives the psychological, medical,
communications, entertainment and education industries unprecedented
abilities. This is the commercial aspect. It also gives new powers to
governments, police, judiciary, prisons. Combined with detailed
computer models of brain function the thought processes involved in
every person's behavior can be extracted, analyzed, and if warranted,
acted upon. Talk about a mental prison! lol.

The excesses and abuses of information in the 20th century have likely
moderated the misuses of far greater intelligence gathering in the 21st
century. If such abuses ever arise in the 21st, those abuses will
inform and enlighten those in later times who will have far greater
powers at their command.

Ideally, an emergent system may be possible. That is, one without top
down control, but one that allows for maximal individual liberty and
range of action, without referring to central command. This is the
genius of free markets, and freedom generally, and the power of a fully
functioning society. A society that limits freedom and constricts the
range of human action out of fear, is one that is throwing away major
creative abilities of its people to make a far better life for all.
These hidden costs must always be kept in mind.

You'd think
that they would be marching on NSA headquarters with torches to burn the
place to the ground, but most people just take it in stride.

You'd think that people undergoing major oral surgery would scream in
pain as the dental surgeon did his work, but they do not. That's
because the dentist knows how to deaden the pain. The first thing
anyone must look at who is in this position is the sources of pain in
the body politic, and seek ways to deaden them. That's what it means
to control the global information environment. Just as a dentist sees
pain in his patient as failure of his craft, so too, do these folks see
such marches not as informative - for they already know far more than
we the attitudes and opinions of everyone - they see it as a failure of
the innervation processes available to them through the operation
connections and controls they have of the global information
environment.


Democracy? Individual rights? Apparently a nice, but obsolete, concept.

These are all outdated terms. Read B.F. Skinner's ground breaking book
Beyond Fredom and Dignity, to see why. Unlike Skinner however, I do
believe these have important referents to reality that he missed,
especially since the development of emergent systems, which I think is
what we're getting at with these terms.


Pat