dagblog - Comments for "Sweet nothings with the Farooks. "

Yes Government prosecution

Flavius — Mon, 14 Dec 2015 05:08:14 +0000

In reply to In your proposal to respond

Yes Government prosecution for appearing to think about crimes would be frightening.

But seems like there's some better response than just paring our fingernails while reading the plans of the next Farooks

Glad you got some chuckles.

Flavius — Mon, 14 Dec 2015 04:59:58 +0000

In reply to And thanks for that response,

Glad you got some chuckles.

I'll say this for Robotcops at least they're limited to the particular infraction they've discovered (or invented) and don't add on the ever popular failure to comply. Your daughter in law seems to have arrived home in one piece, thank Allah . Not so sure that would have been true if she had had to deal with flesh and blood kind.

And of course there are plenty of good cops. The majority almost certainly.

Hit the road , LL

In your proposal to respond

moat — Sun, 13 Dec 2015 23:06:39 +0000

In reply to Thanks for the link.

In your proposal to respond to the collection of information by some people intervening before crimes happen, the novel Minority Report by Philip K. Dick is a more applicable book than Orwell's 1984 as a model of the problem.
Dick's novel concerns itself with an agency that has found a means to reveal future crimes through the reports of people who can see future events as if they were happening now. It takes the idea of "crime prevention" to its ultimate limit as an idea. One of the reporter's disagreed with findings of the others, leading to a realization that the completely objective point of view the agency assumed it was operating within turns out to be yet another set of conditions of what it cannot control.
From that perspective, the problem is not just about central authority (but it certainly is also always about that) but the problem of verification of what actually happens. While I appreciate and embrace the Tolstoy smack down of Great Leaders who embrace the Great Leader's theory of history, I propose the emphasis on stopping specific crimes before they happen always becomes an internal narrative of the prosecutors without means of verification. The thread between Stalin show trials and McCarthy investigations is that they create this alternate universe where all this stuff would have happened if a certain group of watchers had not intervened. No way to prove that. Ever.
At that point, it is not only the problem of who will watch the watchers but the ability to have any kind of common experience.

And thanks for that response,

A Guy Called LULU — Sun, 13 Dec 2015 17:21:07 +0000

In reply to Thanks for the link.

And thanks for that response, I got a few smiles out of reading it. I think you are right that we will just live with the results of technology being applied to monitor and control our every inclination including those which incline towards or include actual lawbreaking. I have so far. My fifty plus year ongoing crime spree consists of driving nine miles per hour over the speed limit every chance I get. In the trip I just took I drove highway 287 north out of Texas through the very heart of the area worst affected by the dust bowl. It is now beautiful country [thanks government interference] and that beauty is not marred by roadside billboards that radar cops can hide behind to use their stealth technology . [Thanks, Ladybird]. Robot camera cops sent my daughter-in-law a $485. ticket in CA for rolling through a red light and making a right turn. Those cameras are actually being removed there and in many other places because they piss people off so much.

So far and probably forever the biggest affect monitoring of my communications has had directly on me is that of merchants and which is the immediate barrage of pop up ads whenever I check out a product online. I can live with that. Still though, the government snooping pisses me off and the government insults me with the excuses and justifications bolstered so often by lies, yet I think the first and most dangerous indirect affect of the government's ability to see all evil and hear all evil but selectively speak of evil only where and when it wants to [another serious thought coming] will be the ability to pressure to the point of outright blackmail politicians and other powerful persons. As you suggest, I'll say "nay" and the gov will hear me if they so choose and almost certainly ignore me as they do almost everybody and life will go on until it no longer does. Not much changed about that, at least so far in our own country. As far as I can see, that is.

Thanks for the link.

Flavius — Sun, 13 Dec 2015 04:41:10 +0000

In reply to My personal choice would be

Thanks for the link.

You are dealing with the sort of questions I raised seriously.. I'm not. Just after dinner lazy arm -waving.

I wonder about , no - I don't just wonder ,I completely disagree with- occasional references to the 60s and the supposed fearfulness of the period with the threats of imminent destruction, class room drills to hide under the desk, yatta, yatta , yatta .IMHO on scale of 1.-10 our fear of nuclear destruction at that time was about #87.

Our concern today , again IMHO , about the Surveillance State invading our privacy is in that same ballpark. Or maybe across the street next to the subway .. Of course the Government invades our privacy. Kind of thing Governments do. Keeps them out of trouble. Otherwise they'd really be worth overthrowing.

Governments mostly are not all that competent. Composed of people who failed to get a better paying job because they weren't attractive enough. Non governments are composed of people of the same intellectual level but better shaved. Or have better wardrobes. Or legs.

In both cases what actually get's done is what people want. I recall someone's illustration of this .(Tolstoy?)

Year after year Napolean issued an order: " Invade England".

"Oh yeah. We gotta get on to that. Someday....Where's lunch?" One June day, Poland, having once again been defeated, the Grande Army of the Republic was marching along the river by the border. The Commander , arriving at the bridge looked up to the hilltop where Nap squirmed in his saddle wondering whether enough was enough (commanding conquering legions did have its downside )and he could dismount and have another good lunch.When the Commander nodded towards the bridge either Nap didn't notice (the sun was in his eyes , and god was he hungry). Or he did , and agreed. Or disagreed but didn't care. And either pointed East or scratched his nose.. And the Russian Invasion began.

Arguably things were much the same under Adolph. Every order to cross the Channel was followed by another attack on ..Crete?

The Surveillance State continues because 90% of the population couldn't care less.Or sort of like it. Maybe they're wrong. Or maybe what difference does it make?

I read " 1984" in 1948 I think.(Clever of Orwell to just flip the numbers) And waited for 36 years. Turned out (to quote Beyond the Fringe) it was "Not the Conflagration we were banking on".In what I think was a better book "Homage to Catalonia" Orwell described the fascists pounding on the door of his(and his wife's) hotel room and searching it. Not under the bed of course because you didn't search under a married woman's bed.

In Long- clearly I can't say "in Short"- I suspect it will make little difference whether the USA adopts a " policy of Electronic Eaves Dropping". It will go on doing what it feels like and its nay sayers will go on nay saying, What else is new?. .

Have a good weekend,And maybe

Flavius — Sat, 12 Dec 2015 13:38:54 +0000

In reply to The Farooks have sent us a

deleted by author

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PeraclesPlease — Sat, 12 Dec 2015 06:35:15 +0000

In reply to Have a good weekend,And maybe

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The Farooks have sent us a

PeraclesPlease — Fri, 11 Dec 2015 19:26:36 +0000

In reply to You are certainly right we

The Farooks have sent us a message.Us meaning both the Government and the voters.Who might excuse it for this first disaster but not if it doesn't learn from it.

And fuck them and the medieval horse they rode in on. Yes, it's always been amazingly easy to walk into a crowd in the US (or anywhere) and kill a bunch of people. Through hundreds of years, we've brought most of civilization up to where that doesn't happen much.

I live in Europe, which doesn't have the stupid self-destructive gun permissiveness of the US, and while letting in a million people might let a few stupid murderous ones in, but mostly the normal laws and interpol/police operations as-is will handle problems, and as we see things not working, we can adjust as needed - typically A LITTLE BIT. If we had listened to Al Gore, we would have treated 9/11 as mostly a police matter that needed to be bolstered by a bit of military action, not regime change and nation building that's radicalized much more of the Mideast.

128 died in Paris - only 14 in San Bernardino. Sure, more can happen. Presumably we can have police spend less time gathering 20 strong to shoot rather harmless knife-holding minorities in the middle of the street and actually doing their job with fewer people and focused on harmful activity. "I was too busy tasering speeders and breaking suspects' spines in the back of my van or making women give me blowjobs to look for dangerous terrorists" - my heart goes out to these poor overworked servants of the law, but maybe they could just fucking do their jobs for once rather than whine about the need for more invasion of privacy? I don't think it will take away the risk of lone wolf attacks, but it would lower the overall level of fear in the US and let people get on with their lives without exaggerating the chance of a nutcase opening fire.

(the actual "invasion of privacy" I do want is shutting down all the crazy gun owners who don't stand a chance in hell of defending our democracy, but do have a great chance of killing innocent people in the course of thinking they're Batman or Charles Bronson).

Update:Comey bullshits again - the man has no shame: https://www.emptywheel.net/2015/12/10/jim-comey-makes-bogus-claims-about...
Update 2: more good law enforcement bullshit- http://www.gq.com/story/untold-story-texas-biker-gang-shoot-out

My personal choice would be

A Guy Called LULU — Fri, 11 Dec 2015 18:03:14 +0000

In reply to Sweet nothings with the Farooks.

My personal choice would be to chance erring far in the direction of "no". Actually, I do not believe that we would be taking a 'chance' by restricting invasive programs of surviellance but would actually be guaranteeing that some preventable attacks inspired by various ideological clashes would occur. Some, but how many and how destructive is the question which the answer turns upon and a major factor to consider is how much risk for how much benefit we are willing to take.

I just returned home from a 3000 mile round trip which entailed approximately 48 hours [according to google] of driving time which were done in spans of 15 and then 5 and then 7 and then 7 and then 17 hours behind the wheel. I survived a much greater risk than that of being a victim of any crime that invasive surveillance might likely protect me from. It was a good trip and I very much value the opportunity to take it which entails my own choice to take the risk involved and also my own choice to add to the risk to others created by my 70 mph presence in their near vicinity. If I had made that trip over holiday weekends my risk, and theirs, would have gone up appreciably and yet holidays have largely been set so as to make for three-day weekends despite the statistical proof that doing so results in more accidents which means more [preventable] carnage and death. I would not vote to either eliminate or move such holidays to Wednesday every year and I doubt many others would either.

All that said, I tend ro agree with Assange that the question of whether we should support or oppose more surveillance is pointless because more intrusive surveillance will happen regardless anything the electorate might choose. We live in a scary and somewhat cowardly new world

http://russia-insider.com/en/society/assange-says-fight-privacy-lost-mas...

US spends $59 billion a year

PeraclesPlease — Fri, 11 Dec 2015 15:56:58 +0000

In reply to You are certainly right we

US spends $53 billion a year on its intelligence budget, which is probably doubled in secret spending. Why can't we move fast now? Why with that kind of money does moving fast have to equal moving stupidly?

More importantly, giving them more access isn't a guarantee they'll move any faster except to screw up faster - put the wrong people in jail, add more wrong suspects to no-fly lists that never get off, pressure more people with their tawdry bottom-drawer secrets that aren't a threat - the pressure of "fast" will be "show us results", which will lead to the same shitty false positive quotas we're already dealing with.

Take a breath, do it right. Don't panic. Slowly slowly, catch a monkey.