Big Brother not that Far Away

[catscradle]

Be afraid folks, be very afraid of the latest act of congress passed with they acceptance of the Homeland Security office. This was passed on to me by a good friend - I think his words echo my feelings better than I can at the moment, so I'll post his words here:

Here's just one article about the new database that will track consumer purchases and the like. If that's not frightening enough, the person leading the development of this is a convicted felon (I'm completely surprised that FOX News put that in their article).

FOX News - Pentagon to Track American Consumer Purchases



I did though, have the sudden realization this morning that I'd seen this somewhere else. In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, the story begins with women losing all their rights by having their purchasing power eliminated. There's a central system that controls all credit card purchases and her account is simply shut down. Although I don't know if this proposed system has the potential to do something like that, it is a sombering thought. I would assume it would. I mean, part of the anti-terrorist agenda is to cut off access to their cash flow. Who's to say, if someone overseeing this database decides they don't like what a particular group is doing, calls them a terrorist group, and sees to it that all financial resources are cut off.

I don't know all of the details yet of the Homeland Security coup pulled off the other day (and from what I have read, our senators and congresspersons don't know very many of the details either), but from what I've gathered so far, its making the PATRIOT Act look like a Sunday in the park with George.

Personally, I'm already planning on sending copies of everything I write to the Pentagon. May as well save them the trouble of investigating on their own. Do you think if enough of us did that, we could take down their servers?

N.

Nick and I talked about cutting out the middle man and just copying in all of our e-mail to the Pentagon at lunch yesterday. If we got everyone doing it - well it does make you wonder if the servers could handle the volume ;)

Comments

[darthneko.livejournal.com]

Nick and I talked about cutting out the middle man and just copying in all of our e-mail to the Pentagon at lunch yesterday. If we got everyone doing it - well it does make you wonder if the servers could handle the volume ;)

*snerk* And considering the usual rating and topics of discussion floating around my email box... that could be darn amusing. ^_^

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

Hee! Pentagon, FBI, hell, send it to Dubya!

Of course, some of the people I'm writing to might not appreciate being brought to their attention.

Mer

[catscradle.livejournal.com]

That would be true if they didn't have the power to monitor us already. Though to err on the side of caution, we could launch a campaign to just forward all of our spam mail over to them - that way they can track all that important consumer information ;)

[catscradle.livejournal.com]

Then we'll see what a *real* war against fan fiction is like ;)

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

It's still true. The power to monitor and being waved in their faces by me going out of my way to piss them off aren't the same thing.

Not that the power isn't creepy enough by itself, but they will always have to choose who to notice out of the great crowd of people they could technically track, because human attention is a scarce commodity even if they had infinite computing power.

I suppose most people assume they'll be part of the disregarded masses. I tend to assume there will be a file on me if there ain't already, but I don't feel entitled to actively drag my friends down with the ship without their consent.

[dusting off her old copy of PGP]

Mer

[wiebke.livejournal.com]

Read my latest post and yeah, Handmaiden's Tale is right...

[catscradle.livejournal.com]

Well, in the context of the joke, enough people would be rounded up to join in the prank that it would do this to crash the server. As a facetious comment between my friend and I, I wasn't actually advocating do it - just over the top sarcasm to fit today's frightening situation.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

Makes sense. But its the sort of prank that actually could catch on.

Mer