> MC 900ft Jesus – But If You Go
> Keoki – Crash
> theSTART – Dirty Lion
> Tricky – Abaddon Fat Track
Maybe it’s because I have nothing better to do then surf the Internet for hours, but I have been noticing a scary trend in American politics: this country is becoming a police state. Now that may seem an extreme position, but everything I read is just making it more paranoid.
Example one.
Last night I stumbled across the Wikipedia page on automatic number plate recognition.
There is this area in London where every single car’s plate is automatically logged…
And then I made the mistake of reading the article on mass surveillance.
“Amongst the western democracies, the United Kingdom is perhaps the country subject to the most surveillance. [...] In 2004, it was estimated that the United Kingdom was monitored by some four million CCTV cameras, some with a facial recognition capacity, with practically all town centres under surveillance.”
Apparently Holland and Germany have the highest levels of mobile phone tapping (over 10,000 numbers tapped between them).
And in America, the government is resurrecting the TIA (total information awareness) program with a new moniker, MATRIX (Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange). This database will do exactly the same thing, combining thousands of databases of anything from credit card purchases to phone records in some vain hope of identifying terrorist activity. I’m probably on their list, since I bought 1984 and checked out Mein Kampf from the library.
And then today I read this article that said that the FBI basically told Internet telephone companies (like Skype or Vonage) that they will be able to shut down their service unless they build the FBI backdoor into their system to enable wiretapping.
What kind of country is this?
You know, I used to think that technology was going to liberate the people from the rich, but it turns out it’s just the opposite.
I always used to think that China was this repressive hellhole where no one was able to do anything, but after talking to Phoenix, I know that’s not true. It’s just like in America you can’t be a Muslim without fear of being whisked off to a secret prison to be tortured, and in China you can’t advocate democracy without the same fate.
You know, I have a lot of respect for the Chinese. The government may be repressive with a terrible human rights record, but at least they are honest about it. If you are dissident, you get locked up and they throw away the key. In America, we dance around chanting democracy and liberty at the top of our lungs while we bow down to those in power and let them ignore the Bill of Rights and declare random wars as an excuse to not divulge anything about their operations.
We’d better brush up on our Mandarin. In 20 years, China’s going to want their money back. And all the $30 DVD players in the world won’t save us.
The Bush administration and the multinational corporations have succeeded: government has unprecedented, unlimited power over its citizens with no checks and balances or due process, and Americans are now poorer than ever, with an eroding middle-class and a system that makes it near impossible to secure the basic necessities of life: in education and a place to live.
Kudos to Stalin, Mao, and Hitler.
At least they wouldn’t pass the “Patiot Act” to take away your rights and send you to a “Freedom Camp” to die.
I don’t believe in any sort of divine justice, so there really is nothing we can do. The rich get richer, and the poor get screwed. Well, at least I can say this: thousands of years of recorded history, and all we want to do as a race is try to control each other and destroy each other’s lives. Yay for the human race.
Days like this I feel like becoming a survivalist… but I don’t think I would get the Internet in some World War III shelter. It all goes back to that article about Kraftwerk’s lyrics.: expressing “the paradoxical nature of modern urban life — a strong sense of alienation existing side by side with a celebration of the joys of modern technology.”
I just want to shut Pandora’s box and go back… but that’s childish. We’re stuck with it all… the endless databases of our call records and bank statements… burgeoning towers of security cameras with plate and face recognition.
One of the commenters on the FCC article said it best:
“An armed insurrection against a govenment that can shut down your bank accounts, tap your phones, read your email, track you down with FLIR [Forward-looking infrared], etc… is wishful thinking.”
Technology has succeeded in making guns obsolete. I don’t know whether this is scary or a wonderful moment for mankind.
One thing’s for sure. We will soon be living in a brave new world unparalleled by anything created by Huxley or Orwell.
Categories: Ennui
