If government surveillience of the internet is as big a factor as it is made out
- Thread starter Lark
- Start date
Yeah, but they are building new supercomputers all the time like the NSA one out in Utah
The local government of Utah has discussed the possiblity of cutting off the water supply to the cooling system of the complex as the super computer needs large amounts of water to cool itself
Some of the commentators who are a little bit further down the rabbit hole believe that artificial intelligence is already online...but perhaps that is a subject for another discussion!
Going back to the collection and storing of data some people might say: ''well so what? Why should i care? I'm not doing anything the government would be annoyed about''
But that is a very short sighted view because circumstances change
So for example we are seeing massive marches by the trade unions in the UK at the moment protesting the enforced government policy of 'austerity'
More and more people are protesting all over the place because of the changing economic and legal circumstances (peopels civil liberties are being gradually stripped away)
So lets say that the government changes the circumastances again and raises tax's for the lower half of society and that it squeezes many people too much so that they can no longer pay their bills
They begin to lose their home, their vehicle, their diet, their lifestyle, their health and so on.
Suddenly that person who said ''why should i care'' suddenly finds themselves losing everything and decides to pick up a placard and join the protest marches
the government is recording all the protestors with facial recognition software and is compiling a file on every citizen in the country; the protestor suddenly gets a visit from the government who come to their door and say: ''we know you were at the protest and we dug out all the information we have been saving on our computer about you. We have all your emails, phone calls, texts, twitters and facebook information, tax, banking information, shopping information and far far more.
If you think this sounds far fetched then know that the ukrainian government sent every person in the demonstratiopn in the square in kiev a text warning them that they knew they were there
Kill switches have been built into smart phones so that in situations like say the ferguson protests phones can be switched off by the government so that people cannot record police brutality
So picking up our story again.....the government agents then say to the protestor: ''we have this sensitive information about you and if you do not want us to act on this information then you'd better stop protesting''
So what information does, is it gives the government leverage against any opponents. A common weapon they use is the tax department and indeed the IRS has been embroiled in a scandal recently where they have been attacking conservative elements
this whole process has civil rights implications for everyone and particularly those who try to stand up for the less fortunate
This government and corporate knowing of everyones business is exactly the underpinning of Orwell's vision of a totalitarian 'big brother' government who takes dissidents into a place called 'room 101' where they use all their knowledge about you to wage psychological warefare against you
The local government of Utah has discussed the possiblity of cutting off the water supply to the cooling system of the complex as the super computer needs large amounts of water to cool itself
Some of the commentators who are a little bit further down the rabbit hole believe that artificial intelligence is already online...but perhaps that is a subject for another discussion!
Going back to the collection and storing of data some people might say: ''well so what? Why should i care? I'm not doing anything the government would be annoyed about''
But that is a very short sighted view because circumstances change
So for example we are seeing massive marches by the trade unions in the UK at the moment protesting the enforced government policy of 'austerity'
More and more people are protesting all over the place because of the changing economic and legal circumstances (peopels civil liberties are being gradually stripped away)
So lets say that the government changes the circumastances again and raises tax's for the lower half of society and that it squeezes many people too much so that they can no longer pay their bills
They begin to lose their home, their vehicle, their diet, their lifestyle, their health and so on.
Suddenly that person who said ''why should i care'' suddenly finds themselves losing everything and decides to pick up a placard and join the protest marches
the government is recording all the protestors with facial recognition software and is compiling a file on every citizen in the country; the protestor suddenly gets a visit from the government who come to their door and say: ''we know you were at the protest and we dug out all the information we have been saving on our computer about you. We have all your emails, phone calls, texts, twitters and facebook information, tax, banking information, shopping information and far far more.
If you think this sounds far fetched then know that the ukrainian government sent every person in the demonstratiopn in the square in kiev a text warning them that they knew they were there
Kill switches have been built into smart phones so that in situations like say the ferguson protests phones can be switched off by the government so that people cannot record police brutality
So picking up our story again.....the government agents then say to the protestor: ''we have this sensitive information about you and if you do not want us to act on this information then you'd better stop protesting''
So what information does, is it gives the government leverage against any opponents. A common weapon they use is the tax department and indeed the IRS has been embroiled in a scandal recently where they have been attacking conservative elements
this whole process has civil rights implications for everyone and particularly those who try to stand up for the less fortunate
This government and corporate knowing of everyones business is exactly the underpinning of Orwell's vision of a totalitarian 'big brother' government who takes dissidents into a place called 'room 101' where they use all their knowledge about you to wage psychological warefare against you
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No because surveillance doesn't change the point to point bandwidth or increase the load.
It's like Wire Shark. I can sniff all the packets on my local network because they're already outbound and being handled. Every single packet already has to be looked at to be sent where it belongs. All they need to do is set up a heuristic which fires relevant packets off down another pipe without plugging up the main lines.
Or at worst if they need to reuse the backbones to route redundant packets (copy for destination and copy for surveillance) they'd only double the load for each redundant packet, and only in the parts of the network which lie between the snooping point and where the snooper calls home to.
Edit:
Or think of it this way. Somebody who is covertly listening to a conversation does not slow down or impede the conversation itself. The listener is receiving, not adding any new noise. It's of course processed away from the main line as well.
Yes it is computationally expensive to listen but it doesn't necessarily have to cut into the computational budget of the existing network - not significantly anyway.
It's like Wire Shark. I can sniff all the packets on my local network because they're already outbound and being handled. Every single packet already has to be looked at to be sent where it belongs. All they need to do is set up a heuristic which fires relevant packets off down another pipe without plugging up the main lines.
Or at worst if they need to reuse the backbones to route redundant packets (copy for destination and copy for surveillance) they'd only double the load for each redundant packet, and only in the parts of the network which lie between the snooping point and where the snooper calls home to.
Edit:
Or think of it this way. Somebody who is covertly listening to a conversation does not slow down or impede the conversation itself. The listener is receiving, not adding any new noise. It's of course processed away from the main line as well.
Yes it is computationally expensive to listen but it doesn't necessarily have to cut into the computational budget of the existing network - not significantly anyway.
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