So, Obama ought to now find himself in control of a remarkable and efficient surveillance apparatus, capable of tracking large numbers of electronic transactions and conversations.
All probably unconstitutional, and possibly still illegal, but the temptation to use them must be there.
But how...
First, clearly, I think all former Coalition Provisional Authority employees must be put under surveillance.
They could be the biggest threat facing the nation.
No telling how many might have "gone native", become aQ symps.
Bug them. Tape their calls, survey their homes, track their financial activities for anomalies, unexplained income or cash movements. Check what books they readmovies they watch.
Some of these people will do anything for money.
Some others are ideological fanatics. Which ideology is less important than the intensity of the experience.
Secondly, it is time to monitor all financial transactions and electronic communication to and from offshore banks and financial institutions.
Especially those in tax havens or with obsolete notions of customer privacy.
Leak the information on those which are merely immoral, prosecute those which are illegal, and tax the rest.
I don't know if the surveillance will ever shut down now that it can be done.
The only thing saving us from a prompt panopticon singularity is the old east german dilemma - it takes more than one person to comprehensively survey a single target, and then who watches the watchers?
Bit better processing and that little problem could be circumvented.
Then we'd better hope for some "antibodies" or escape to a "transparent society".
But, hey, we'll soon be able to store everyone's phone call on our iPods.
Question is whether we can ever efficiently browse the list.
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Indeed. Personally I'm a firm believer in freedom over safety. They're both illusions of the mind, to one degree or another, but I'd rather not be hauled away in a van and be pounded in the testicles until I sign a statement saying that no, really, my offhand remark about killing all the politicians was an admission to terrorist conspiracy.
I suppose what I'm saying is that I don't really care what people know about me, but rather that I'm concerned about what they'll do about it, especially since it's all words, and so much of the froth mouthed masses mistake words for actions.
I think times will get very interesting if the economy continues to slide, which certainly seems likely. Interesting in the Chinese curse sense of the word. Like, arguably, waking up tied to a chair to see a bucket of water, length of steel flex tube, and a battery is interesting.
My mind must be on some grim business today.
thanks.