I was pondering this thought on the way home from work today. We, as human beings, tend to believe that once things reach a certain scale, they can’t possibly fail. Case in point, the financial and auto industries in the USA. Here’s another one that was too big to fail that most people probably don’t even think about anymore; The Titanic. Largest ship ever built. Unsinkable. If you haven’t seen the movie, then I’m about to spoil it all for you. The ship broke in half and sank.
Lately, as I’ve seen more and more dissent in the news, I’ve sort of started to notice that our government might be heading in the same direction. Now, before you go on about how I’m overreacting to the NSA leaks, let me explain what I’m talking about, and how it’s actually been going on for a while now. You see it a lot more when you follow certain groups. Following people actively fighting for our personal liberties will undoubtably expose you to more of the abuses than following TMZ. Congress has being trying to pass bills to limit our internet rights for years now. Ever heard of SOPA, PIPA or CISPA? If you haven’t heard of them, you should go read the wiki links and get an idea of what they are. Basically, at face value, both PIPA and SOPA are about preventing piracy. The truth is, that when you read carefully between the lines, congress is all but stripping you of your internet rights for the benefit of large corporate conglomerates. CISPA is basically an attempt to make a law that says the government can do what the NSA is doing. Gee. How convenient is that? Wait… if they need to make a law to let them do it… how have they been doing it for years? Shit! Someone really screwed the pooch on this one. But on a serious note, yes I know that cispa is intended to prevent ‘cyber crime'(mostly illegal filesharing is what they’re after, cause that hurts everyone) as opposed to ‘terrorist attacks’ (or as I like to call them, crazy motherfuckers that want to hurt people in the name of *their cause*).
So, here’s the funny thing… they’re spying on all of americans, and they’re spying on all the middle easterners that might be harboring terrorists, and they’re probably spying on everyone else just so that they know what they’re doing, in case they need that information in a decade. They’re hoarding information, and building a huge network of data collectors and storage, and spending millions of dollars a year to manage and maintain all the information that they’re gathering… but we can’t afford to pay for fucking health care?
Oh, hey, here’s an idea. Since I’m sure that the data that’s being captured includes our shopping habits… why don’t they start analyzing the data and seeing if we can correlate what people are eating to who’s getting sick, and then fine everyone that has obesity related illnesses to help fund the health care system!
Somebody out there will think the previous paragraph was not only serious, but also a good idea. One day, they might be in the government too. What do you think of them archiving all our data now? Should we let them track every little thing about us, because we’re afraid of the big bad terrorists that are coming to destroy America? The only way the government can guarantee that they can stop an attack is by us letting them see every communication, every purchase, every place we’ve been… They’ll anonymize all of it, of course, for your personal privacy… but they still know everything about us, including where we live, work, and play. How about how much you pay for porn? Is that relevant to the terrorists? Maybe, or maybe that big tank of fertilizer you bought to make your golf-course-grade lawn will merit a visit by lawn enforcement?
I’m not saying it’s a slippery slope. I’m saying that it’s nobody’s business, and the argument that it helps to prevent attacks is not an argument at all. Using this data, we may be able to prevent another Boston massacre? HELLO?! Boston was months ago. They let the fucker go after questioning, and then stopped paying attention to him. This program didn’t stop that. Now, 12 years later mind you, they tell us (again, as a justification) that they could have prevented 9/11 with this information. Yea, of course you could have.
Stop trying to play with people’s emotions to gain the personal liberties that you want to take from them. Intelligence agencies have a right to secrets, but Americans don’t?
Actually, that part about healthcare was a bit of a tangent that I didn’t mean to go on, but there it is, and all the repercussions that go with it. Anyway, back to what I was saying. Too big to fail. So, let’s say there’s this massive network of data-centers, presumably with nodes all over the world, and they’re all gathering up all this data, information about everyone and everything that they do, right? That’s the general impression that I get… anyway, so they get all this info together and analyze the hell out of it, and then they build these pretty detailed sociological profiles of people. Then they can start following the people that are statistically most likely to commit crimes – the poor and the uneducated. They could harass them, and causing them to assault react poorly and then use that as a reason to arrest them. That’s just one of many potential abuses. But I’m not worried that I will see it get that bad in my lifetime. I certainly won’t be a victim. I’m going to speak up loudly and make my opinions known. I won’t stand for this kind of abuse of power by MY representatives. You shouldn’t either. I’m not going to hide, and cancel all my accounts either. I will be more leery of cloud computing though. I was never a really big fan of cloud computing anyway. But that’s another tangent I’ll save for another post.
But would you like to know what I AM worried about? While the government is doing all this data gathering and network building and analyzing… the crackers are searching for ways in. Crackers is more appropriate than hackers, but most people wouldn’t know what I meant if I didn’t explain. Hackers like to hack into their own computers. They look for vulnerabilities and flaws in the software that they can exploit. Some hackers even do the world favors, like jailbreak their iPhones for them. Crackers break into other peoples computers to steal information, often to sell or use for other personal gain. And Crackers are going to be drooling over the treasure trove of data that will be hidden behind a few firewalls. It’s not a matter of if they can get in, it’s a matter of how long it takes them. And the larger the network that they build out, the more possible vulnerabilities they expose. And honestly, the government isn’t exactly great at keeping their computers up to date… I certainly hope that the intelligence community is better than, say, California Dept. of Corrections, running Windows XP and IE7. In 2013. Anyway, the only way to guarantee security would be a data-center completely disconnected from the rest of the internet. No physical connections. And then, how would you gather all this data. So it’s connected. And people have probably been trying to get in to it for years. But no network is unbreakable. Everything runs on software, written by human beings. And we are fallible.
So, to conclude, I’m mad. Really fucking mad. You should be just as fucking mad. You should phone, call, write, or even go visit your representatives and tell them how fucking mad you are. Tell them this has to stop, and don’t let them talk you out of it. It won’t prevent attacks, it won’t stop crimes from happening. It will just make it easier for them to arrest you. “But,” you might say, “I am not doing anything illegal.” Right. You’re not doing anything illegal, yet. They haven’t made a law for that yet. But they will. And we already imprison over 2% (nearly 3%) of our population. (wikipedia) By the way, in this, the land of the free, and the home of the brave, we imprison more people than any other country in the world. (wikipedia)
My final though on this matter is simple. The amount of data that is being collected on us is not only unconstitutional, it’s just plain dangerous. Such an archive of information shouldn’t even exist.