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One of the most powerful and easily understood explanations of why the NSA's massive surveillance over-reach threatens the integrity and security of regular, law-abiding Americans is the story of how the FBI tried to use its cache of surveillance to silence Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The National Archives has just released an uncensored copy of the letter, "You Are Done," that was sent to King. The New York Times has an analysis from the researcher who uncovered the letter that puts the story into both historical and modern context.
An image of the original letter does not seem to be available on the National Archives web site, so here is a paywall-free copy hosted at Gawker.
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That Time the FBI Tried to Blackmail Martin Luther King Jr.
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Everything bows to success, even grammar.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Friday November 14 2014, @08:46PM
THIS IS ABSOLUTELY FALSE
Excuse the caps, but you shouldn't even begin to think these thoughts.
NSA mass surveillance is performed by people. Do not be fooled by Big Data waiving their hands around and demonstrating incredibly complex and sophisticated methods to mine data, determine how to mine in the first place, and work with data so large that no human could possibly do it. Not even thousands working together 24/7.
None of those algorithms and process exist with judgment. This is not philosophical fluff either. While the computers may be responsible for the implementation, it's humans that are still fully required to program these computers with the desired filters. Just because Google is using computers to do my search for me, doesn't mean that it wasn't actually me doing the search, or that a human was uninvolved.
If you review the programs in use by the FBI and NSA what you see are direct references to their tools being search engines. So it's nothing more than a search engine connected to a database.
Even if you gave me the most fantastical computer system, with infinite inputs and processing power, artificial sentience rivaling anything seen in the movies, I would still greatly hesitate. It will still come down to some NSA agent someplace deciding how to use these mythical level powers.
One might want to pretend for a moment they were 2,000 years ago in Rome speaking with their elites. Show them the powers of Big Data and mass surveillance and I don't believe they would regard you as anything other than a god. Roman and Greek gods could be tremendous dicks, which is a really good message they are sending us. It didn't matter how powerful, or seemingly disconnected from society the god was, they were still subject to the human condition at least mentally.
You can abstract away these tools whatever you way you want. It's still the elite and government agents solely responsible for the nature of their use.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.