posted on November 13, 2002 10:04:47 PM new
I doubt that more than 20% of the adult population has carefully read and understood 1984. Seeing the movie or reading about the novel is not the same experience, though they have some value I suppose.
Yes, our society is rapidly moving in that direction. The more vividly that you remember details from the novel, the more frightening details of government and the attitudes of society in the present become.
For many reasons I think that totalitarianism is eventually inevitable, but I had always thought more as in Brave New World which is set centuries into the future. But Orwell may not have missed the mark by much.
added a phrase for clarity
[ edited by antiquary on Nov 13, 2002 10:11 PM ]
posted on November 14, 2002 04:17:27 AM new
The commercial realm in this country has developed the mechanisms and perfected it's system already, and Poindexter seeks only to expand the knowledge to the government.
In the purchase of this new place I received quite a few eye-openers when I realized just how quickly full financial info can be available to even relatively low level people in the process. The key is the social security number, and you obtain nothing if you try to withhold it. By simply mentioning the bank which holds my accounts they had all that they needed to proceed, and the people involved seemed amused by my reluctance to freely give them what I thought should be protected information.
Only yesterday I got another awakening. I've bought another truck, and the second one was in ebay. I used buy it now, and decided to try out online borrowing mostly to see if their claims could be real. To keep it short I made the bid tuesday, used a link in the auction itself, applied (this time divulging my ss # with little qualm, and received a blank check for any amount I cared to borrow yesterday (wed.) morning by fedex; my own fedex left one hour later and I have paid for the truck and await it's arrival. It's now 4:00 am thursday.
This is not to say that I approve of any of it but it seems to me that for anyone alive now all hope of privacy in any aspect of life is gone. Perhaps it would be possible to protect a newborn by an Amish-like sequestation, but I doubt it and because of the day to day requirements of living in this period or future ones the infant very likely will not appreciate the effort for long.
As the CEO of Cisco said and I posted some years ago in another discussion of these issues here: "Privacy? You have no privacy - Get over it!".
posted on November 14, 2002 05:48:27 AM new
And to think that I have been concerned about writing my social security number on Internal Revenue checks!!!
According to the Washington Post, "The office already has several substantial contracts in the works with technology vendors. They include Hicks & Associates Inc., a national security consultant in McLean; Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., a management and technology consultant in McLean; and Ratheon Corp., a technology company that will provide search and data-mining tools. "Poindexter made the argument to the right players, so they asked him back into the government," said Mike McConnell, a vice president at Booz Allen and former director of the NSA."
posted on November 14, 2002 06:51:14 AM new
Ever notice how often you're asked for your zipcode when making online purchases, or even talking to a vendor about a purchase? I'm pretty sure now that with a surname and a zipcode the range of ss#s can be narrowed down to the point that they are able to assume yours and be correct. Either that or the number is tied to your addressing at all times. I think that is why these people acted as though my reticence was ridiculous. Although they still need me to verbalize or write down the number for them because of so called privacy protective enactments they have it anyway without my doing so.
One ray of hope that I did find was during an insurance arrangement. To write a policy the company rep insisted that he needed a ss#. I could not see any sense to that as I had already said that I'd pay for the policy in question with cash so I finally gave him a false one after researching the ranges of used numbers and giving one that is assignable but probably not yet assigned. That satisfied his requirement and the policy was written. So evidently not all enterprises need to actually research your information even though they do need the box on their form to be filled before proceeding to do business.
posted on November 14, 2002 11:56:41 AM new
The logical extension of this ability to gather such a sweeping body of information will be that you will eventually be considered criminal if you drop off the scope. Someone will be coming by your door and saying "We have not seen any data entering the system from you for a month. What sort of mischief are you up to?" Where have you been and what have you been doing? Using CASH like a criminal?
posted on November 15, 2002 11:21:37 AM new
It gets worse-----
Hackings, viruses and unwanted intrusions into your PC are illegal, right? Well, yes--and no.
A last-minute addition to a proposal for a Department of Homeland Security would punish malicious hackers with life in prison. The U.S. House of Representatives approved the bill, which would reshape large portions of the federal bureaucracy into a new department. Inserted into the Homeland Security bill, the 16-page Cyber Security Enhancement Act (CSEA) expands the ability of police to conduct Internet or telephone eavesdropping without first obtaining a court order, and offers Internet providers more latitude to disclose information to police.
Citing privacy concerns, civil liberties groups objected to portions of CSEA. "There are a lot of different things to be concerned about, but preserving Fourth Amendment and wiretap standards continues to be a critical test of Congress' commitment of civil liberties," said Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
Speaking of the Fourth Amendment, a federal judge has ruled that law enforcement officials went too far when they tried to use evidence gathered by a known hacker to convict someone of possessing child pornography. The decision is believed to be the first to say that hacking into an Internet-connected home PC without a warrant violates the amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.
The decision came out of a case in which a hacker uploaded a file to a child porn newsgroup that made it possible to track who downloaded files from the service. The uploaded file contained the SubSeven virus, which the hacker used to remotely search people's computers for porn.
On the other side of the spectrum is an electronic greeting card has all the hallmarks of a mass-mailing computer virus. The FriendGreetings e-mail misleads a victim into downloading an application--ostensibly to view a Web card--and then sends itself to every e-mail address in the victim's Outlook contacts file. A few systems administrators already blame the mass-mailing e-card for swamping their network.
Yet the company that created the card will be hard to prosecute: The viral card is protected by a license agreement that tricks unsuspecting users into clicking "Yes" and consenting to have the program send itself to all their e-mail contacts. Without the license agreement, the program would be considered a virus, but with the code wrapped in what could be a prosecution-proof vest.
posted on November 15, 2002 12:04:26 PM new
"Yet the company that created the card will be hard to prosecute: The viral card is protected by a license agreement that tricks unsuspecting users into clicking "Yes" and consenting to have the program send itself to all their e-mail contacts. Without the license agreement, the program would be considered a virus, but with the code wrapped in what could be a prosecution-proof vest."
How ironic, in a morbid sort of way. That's essentially the strategy that the Bush administration is using to subvert freedom. Deception without accountability.
posted on November 16, 2002 02:21:59 PM new
The excerpt below from the newstory was interesting.
More than the information in the story itself, I thought that the presentation of the information was an apt analogy for the use of information in the present. The significance to me isn't that information is used to manipulate the perception of reality or create an illusion, that has always been true, but rather the degree to which it has become a commonplace practice, to the degree that it is personified in a news article. And rather like someone who is burned, the degree can make all the difference in the world.
Not exactly an Orwellian use of language, but an attitude in society, which through technological application, could quite plausibly be used to replicate the Thought Police in 1984.
The world's largest chip maker Intel is introducing technology that tricks a computer into thinking it has two chips instead of one.
