[freehaven-dev] (FWD) Big Brother by John Keller

[Roger Dingledine <arma@mit.edu>]

if any of you need some good rhetoric to help motivate people...
--roger

----- Forwarded message from Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com> -----

From: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com>
Date: Sat, 4 Aug 2001 17:02:06 -0400
To: nym@vorlon.mit.edu
Subject: Big Brother by John Keller
http: //www.lewrockwell.com/orig/keller8.html

Big Brother by John Keller

The socialist's dream of constant observation as a means of people 
control is arriving, albeit 17 years behind Orwellian schedule. Like 
Will Smith, in "Enemy of the State," the g-men know where we are, and 
what we are doing at all times. Well, not at all times, just when 
we're in "public". So far Tampa and Virginia Beach are the only two 
cities stupid enough to announce what they're actually doing. No 
doubt some cities with "traffic cameras" propped up all over the 
place have designs or have already linked similar software to track 
specific vehicle or personal movements from camera to camera. All to 
more safely design highways, and understand traffic patterns, you 
see. We're Government, and we want to serve you, our customer!

Finally, people are starting to wake up. The apologists' argument for 
this system usually goes along the lines of "If you haven't done 
anything wrong, you don't have any reason to object to it." Sure. Why 
don't we let stalkers and Peeping Toms use the same argument in 
court? Because it's an invasion of privacy. The folks in the streets, 
the ones who know Soviet-style thought control when they see it, 
understand that this changes the dynamic completely. You aren't 
considered innocent until proven guilty under this system. You have 
no right to privacy, not in public at least, and the government is a 
master of making the steepest slippery slope arguments look prophetic 
in hindsight. They put radio bracelets on half-way house prisoners to 
track where they go. If pending cell-phone and car GPS legislation 
makes it through, what will be the difference between you and a 
collared criminal? At least the criminal knows he's not free. And the 
legislation will make it through. Incremental control is the name of 
the game. The lying scumbag politicos who voted for the Tampa system 
now claim they didn't know what they were voting for and would have 
voted differently if only they had understood, but the system is 
still in place. Ditto for the Georgia Driver's License fingerprint 
program.

An editorial in the Tampa Tribune is quoted as: "It is all done for 
the purpose of crime prevention, crime solving and law enforcement - 
not to create a Stalinist police state." Stalin didn't promise a 
Stalinist police state either. Stalin promised crime prevention, law 
enforcement, and a worker's paradise. So it always goes: government 
needs just a little more control. In the USSR, after the revolution, 
control was used to "reform" the last monarchists and capitalists 
into true comrades. As that failed, it was used to crush political 
dissent. Can't have the peasants telling each other the Emperor has 
no clothes. In the USA, under the Nanny state, control is used to 
make sure we're all safe from each other and ourselves. For now. As 
the welfare state inevitably heads toward collapse, the last decent 
(?) politicos will be voted out of office, and replaced with more 
ruthless ones. Stalin's predecessors laid the infrastructure of 
tyranny for him. Would Lenin have been worse, had Stalin come first 
and given him the political and police state foundations for the 
purges and gulags?

Soften the Russians up by degree and they won't complain when they 
can't criticize their leaders. Put cameras on every street corner of 
America, and pretty soon the police can get a warrant to watch you 
over the very x10 web cameras you've been so busy installing all over 
the house. Then again, why bother with a warrant, since your house is 
within 300 yards of public property. We'll just spy through the walls.

Just to make it easy, here are a few ideas for the bricklayers of despotism:

Take all those digital driver's license photos you've got stored at 
the DMV and run them through the recognition software. This will save 
some time when you finally get around to watching everyone, instead 
of just "known felons".

Be sure to keep the matching Social Security Number as the unique 
serf identifier.

Add DMV license plate numbers in to the mix, so you can track us 
while we're walking or driving.

Subpoena the credit agencies for our credit records, matched against 
SSN. You've already done it for banking, so the "know your customer" 
precedent is set.

Subpoena all our credit cards, airline, hotel, rental car, insurance 
and grocery store records.

All this subpoenaing is getting mighty inconvenient. Just get a 
blanket writ to connect to the appropriate private industry databases 
in real time. Make them pay for the cost of the connectivity, of 
course. Aren't relational databases connected via the Internet 
wonderful?

Match-up the records for all GPS enabled devices with the appropriate 
SSN. On second thought, why do all that work? Just require a SSN at 
time of purchase for any GPS enabled device.

Match up the medical records with the SSN. We need this since all 
those graying baby boomers are straining Medicare with $Billions in 
potentially fraudulent or unnecessary claims.

Now that we've got all this wonderful technology in place, think of 
the good we can do.

Create criminal profiles based on behavior studies of felons. With a 
database of who is buying what, where, and when, how they pay, where 
they go, and who they do it with, a sociologist can get it right 
about 70% of the time. We'll add in genetic profiling as that becomes 
available.

Just like DNA testing allowed forensic scientists to go back in the 
vault and re-examine evidence, psychological profiling will allow us 
to run all that video we've been archiving through our new behavior 
profiling routines. We can round up potential trouble makers for 
questioning, and prosecute or fine people we don't like for crimes 
committed years ago. Statute of Limitation, buh bye.

Heck, why wait until some criminal commits a crime. Better lock them 
up in advance, just to be safe. When we get genetics, maybe we can 
eliminate potential future felons in the womb! We'll use the remains 
for stem cell research.

Since the welfare state is involved in every aspect of the serfs' 
lives, why stop with criminal behavior. Let's develop profiles for 
the following and take preventative measures to curb behavior 
potentially expensive to the strained finances of the socialist 
state: Reckless drivers, overeaters, drug abusers, and school 
shooters. That way we can instantly block purchases of certain items 
known to facilitate these behaviors. Speeders get only a $10 per week 
gas allowance. Overeaters, you're on a diet; can't have you clogging 
up the government medical centers, now can we. And on and on.

Government has a special treat for the aging baby boomers. As 
Medicare and Medicaid strain the socialist economy for ever more 
resources, we'll have to follow the Dutch example and just start 
weeding out you oldies. Not sure you want to go yet? Stop being such 
a resource using pig, you greedy old fart.

This is the great ongoing political struggle of our time. The 
struggle between a vision of government as the benevolent 
all-providing nanny, and the reality of such experiments always 
descending into liberty devouring despotism. The United States' 
experiment with collectivism has been underway full-scale since 1913, 
the year the awful 16th (income tax) and 17th (direct election of 
Senators) amendments were ratified. Perhaps the cracks are starting 
to show. The fact is that millions of dollars were spent to catch a 
few deadbeat dads and any felon stupid enough to walk through a 
posted "Smart CCTV" area. They did it by violating everyone's basic 
right to privacy. The people in the streets know that surveillance 
and tracking make them more akin to prisoners than free people. Even 
some police are leery of the idea of unlimited power to spy. 
Gentlemen, I applaud you. Let's turn back from the socialist policies 
and all the police state tracking, numbering, surveillance, and 
control that are used to enforce them. In the end, it's not for our 
own good.


August 2, 2001

John Keller lives in Atlanta, Georgia, and is married to a legal immigrant.

Copyright © 2001 LewRockwell.com

----- End forwarded message -----