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Total Information Awareness a Reality Soon

posted by mattie_p on Monday March 10 2014, @09:08AM   
from the NSA-knew-you-would-say-that dept.

mrbluze writes:

"RT quotes the words of Julian Assange at the South by Southwest conference on Saturday.

'The ability to surveil everyone on the planet is almost there, and arguably will be there in a few years,' said Assange. 'And that's led to a huge transfer of power from the people who are surveilled upon to those who control the surveillance complex. It's an interesting postmodern version of power.'

This heralds the imminent realization of the goals of the Total Information Awareness program of the U.S. Government, officially commenced in the early 2000's but conceptualized in the 1960's. The underlying reasoning behind this program is pre-emptive policing.

Before Wikileaks exposures, 'we weren't actually living in the world, we were living in some fictitious representation of the world,' Assange noted. The surveillance of the Internet is 'the penetration of our civilian society. It means that there has been a militarization of our civilian space. A military occupation of the Internet, our civilian space, is a very serious one.'"

• Re:Private databases are at least as problematic.. Re:Private databases are at least as problematic.. (Score: 4, Insightful) by Daniel Dvorkin on Monday March 10 2014, @04:30PM

  by Daniel Dvorkin (1099) on Monday March 10 2014, @04:30PM (#14074) Journal

  For most Americans, I'd posit private data brokers like Axciom and the credit reporting bureaus are more of a practical threat than pervasive state surveillance.

  B-b-but that's the FREE MARKET! It's efficient and entrepeneurial and marketplace democracy and not like the bloated wasteful socialist big government that takes your tax dollars at gunpoint AT ALL! Why do you hate America?

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• Re:Private databases are at least as problematic.. (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 11 2014, @01:20PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 11 2014, @01:20PM (#14622)

  Any economy in which corporations are granted the rights of an individual but not the responsibilities/culpabilities of an individual is certainly NOT a free market. But hey, push that straw man.

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