Filed under: Civil Rights, Constitution, Government, Politics, Predictions, Privacy, Society, Terrorism, Travel, Violence
I was reading a discussion about this article concerning foreign students, and came across the following comment which really rang true:
You do realize that many of us who live outside the US consider that it is a Police State?
posted by adamvasco at 6:23 PM on January 11
I was a foreign-exchange student in West Germany in the summer of 1974. It was a wonderful experience. As part of that wonderful experience, the group I was with took a trip into East Germany. And yes, it was pretty much exactly what you would expect from hearing stories from that era, complete with Stasi minders, random security checks, and guards coming onto our bus and conducting searches multiple times.
Perhaps this is part of the reason why I object so to the expansion of a “security state” here in the U.S. – I’ve seen what that can lead to. Personally, I don’t think we’re there yet – but all the pieces are in place, and all it would really take would be for someone in power to start actively using this structure not just to ‘provide security’ but to impose an actual police state. And it is very sobering to hear from outside that this is how our country is perceived.
Jim Downey
Filed under: ACLU, Civil Rights, Emergency, George Orwell, Government, Politics, Predictions, Privacy, Science Fiction, Society, tech, Terrorism, Travel, YouTube
The Miami-Dade Police Department recently finalized a deal to buy a drone, which is an unmanned plane equipped with cameras. Drones have been used for years in Iraq and Afghanistan in the war against terror.
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MDPD purchased a drone named T-hawk from defense firm Honeywell to assist with the department’s Special Response Team’s operations. The 20-pound drone can fly for 40 minutes, reach heights of 10,500 feet and cruise in the air at 46 miles an hour. “It gives us a good opportunity to have an eye up there. Not a surveilling eye, not a spying eye. Let’s make the distinction. A surveilling eye to help us to do the things we need to do, honestly, to keep people safe,” said Miami-Dade Police Director James Loftus.
This quotation, slightly altered, is inscribed on a plaque in the stairwell of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty: “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
(CNN) — If you get arrested in California, better hope there are no incriminating texts or e-mails or sensitive data stored on your phone.
On Monday, the California Supreme Court ruled that police in that state can search the contents of an arrested person’s cell phone.
Citing U.S. Supreme Court precedents, the ruling contends that “The loss of privacy upon arrest extends beyond the arrestee’s body to include ‘personal property … immediately associated with the person of the arrestee’ at the time of arrest.”
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
Metro anti-terrorism teams will immediately start random inspections of passengers’ bags and packages to try to protect the rail and bus system from attack, transit officials said Thursday.
Police using explosives-screening equipment and bomb-sniffing dogs will pull aside people carrying bags for the inspections according to a random number, Metro Transit Police Chief Michael Taborn said. The searches might be conducted at one location at a time or at several places simultaneously. If people refuse, they will be barred from entering the rail station or boarding a bus with the item, Taborn said. The inspections will be conducted “indefinitely,” he said.
“You live in a defended island of freedom, but your life is part of the main. So let me ask you as I close, to lift your eyes beyond the dangers of today, to the hopes of tomorrow, beyond the freedom merely of this city of Berlin, or your country of Germany, to the advance of freedom everywhere, beyond the wall to the day of peace with justice, beyond yourselves and ourselves to all mankind.”
If you’ve ridden the subway in New York City any time in the past few years, you’ve probably seen the signs: “If You See Something, Say Something.”
In Washington, D.C., Metro riders are treated to a recording of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano urging them to report suspicious sights to the proper authorities.
Now, Wal-Mart shoppers across the country will see Napolitano’s message in a video as they stand in the checkout line.
“We are expanding ‘See Something, Say Something’ in a number of venues,” Napolitano tells NPR’s Audie Cornish. “It’s Wal-Mart, it’s Mall of America, it’s different sports and sporting arenas, it’s transit systems. It’s a catchy phrase, but it reminds people that our security is a shared responsibility.”
“All this means that the people of any country have the right, and should have the power by constitutional action, by free unfettered elections, with secret ballot, to choose or change the character or form of government under which they dwell; that freedom of speech and thought should reign; that courts of justice, independent of the executive, unbiased by any party, should administer laws which have received the broad assent of large majorities or are consecrated by time and custom. Here are the title deeds of freedom which should lie in every cottage home. Here is the message of the British and American peoples to mankind. Let us preach what we practice — let us practice — what we preach.”
In ancient times, Gorgon was a mythical Greek creature whose unblinking eyes turned to stone those who beheld them. In modern times, Gorgon may be one of the military’s most valuable new tools.
* * *
This winter, the Air Force is set to deploy to Afghanistan what it says is a revolutionary airborne surveillance system called Gorgon Stare, which will be able to transmit live video images of physical movement across an entire town
“Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.”
Bryce Williams wasn’t expecting to walk through a metal detector or have his bags screened for explosives at the Greyhound bus terminal near downtown Orlando.
But Williams and 689 other passengers went through tougher-than-normal security procedures Thursday as part of a random check coordinated by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration.
The idea is to keep off guard terrorists and others who mean harm, thereby improving safety for passengers and workers. There was no specific threat to the bus station on John Young Parkway south of Colonial Drive.
I can’t help but feel that we took a wrong turn somewhere.
Jim Downey
*Of course. Cross posted to dKos.
Filed under: Brave New World, Emergency, Failure, General Musings, Predictions, Science Fiction, Society
It’s been a while since I’ve written much of anything about economic conditions; frankly, the whole mess was just too depressing no matter how I looked at it, and I knew (and said) that the end result was going to be that we would wind up transferring more of our wealth to the bastards who caused the economic collapse.
But it is worthwhile to look at what happened and why. And this is perhaps the best examination I’ve found yet of the systemic, structural problems which are behind the latest mess. It’s a somewhat dense and jargon-packed piece on finance, but here’s the money quote:
For the time being, we need to accept the possibility that the financial sector has learned how to game the American (and UK-based) system of state capitalism. It’s no longer obvious that the system is stable at a macro level, and extreme income inequality at the top has been one result of that imbalance. Income inequality is a symptom, however, rather than a cause of the real problem. The root cause of income inequality, viewed in the most general terms, is extreme human ingenuity, albeit of a perverse kind. That is why it is so hard to control.
Another root cause of growing inequality is that the modern world, by so limiting our downside risk, makes extreme risk-taking all too comfortable and easy. More risk-taking will mean more inequality, sooner or later, because winners always emerge from risk-taking. Yet bankers who take bad risks (provided those risks are legal) simply do not end up with bad outcomes in any absolute sense. They still have millions in the bank, lots of human capital and plenty of social status. We’re not going to bring back torture, trial by ordeal or debtors’ prisons, nor should we. Yet the threat of impoverishment and disgrace no longer looms the way it once did, so we no longer can constrain excess financial risk-taking. It’s too soft and cushy a world.
“Too soft and cushy,” indeed. I must admit (and have before) that one of the reasons that I wrote the backstory to Communion of Dreams the way I did was, as Umberto Eco said so well, “I wanted to poison a monk.” A certain part of me thinks that a good round of ‘off with their heads’ would be really healthy for our society overall, though somewhat less so for Wall Street.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Predictions, Science Fiction, tech, YouTube
Man, I so love to see technology advancing to exactly what I was envisioning for Communion of Dreams. And when I say “envision”, I mean that literally:
That’s from Word Lens, a company who came up with instant-translation software you can use on your smart phone. And it’s just brilliant.
That’s *exactly* the sort of tech I projected for CoD – there is a reference early on to the main character asking his AI “Expert” to load a program to allow him to understand Mandarin in real time, and to provide him with an augmented-reality text for responses that he could read in order to allow him to communicate with a young girl from China. Yeah, that is more advanced than what we see in the vid above, but not that much moreso.
Wow.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Ballistics, Feedback, Marketing, Music, Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction
Well. Post 999. Who woulda thunk it?
I started this blog one month short of 4 years ago, ostensibly to discuss the process of revising, then submitting for publication Communion of Dreams.
Of course, along the way it became something much more than that. Another book emerged from it. I made a lot of friends. I connected with old friends. I documented the twistings and turnings of my life and fortunes. Stared into my navel far too much. Stared into the bright sun upon occasion. Started a new project, and watched it become insanely popular (though not exactly remunerative.)
I’m still waiting for final confirmation of the publication date and details from the publisher who is interested in CoD – even at this late date in the whole process, things could fall through. But with a little luck, the book will actually be out sometime in the new year, and we’ll see whether the over 29,000 downloads it has had since I first launched this blog translate into actual sales.
Wow – 29,000 downloads. That still amazes me, given that it has all been word of mouth and informal promotion.
So, thanks for the ride, everyone.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Ballistics, Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Survival
Well, well, well. For the last couple of months the totals have been slowly approaching our all time high of 303,000 hits in December 2008 – the first full month when we launched BBTI and made a big splash in the firearms world.
November 2010 blew that number right out of the water. We had a total of 384,578 hits last month.
Wow.
As I noted last Friday, I was pretty confident that we would break the all-time high in November. But a big surge at the end of the month, in part thanks to the article in Concealed Carry Magazine but in bigger part to an article which showed up on the popular Survival Blog which cited our data. Thanks, guys!
News on Communion of Dreams is less dramatic. Things are still pending with publication, and I don’t have much info to share about that yet. Downloads, which had jumped in October, have dropped back to their usual range of 600+. As soon as I have details to share with everyone about the publication date, I will definitely post it here and on FaceBook.
All in all, the continued success of both of these endeavors amazes and pleases me. Now we just need to add in similar success with the care-giving book . . .
Happy December, everyone!
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to the BBTI blog.)
Filed under: Civil Rights, Constitution, Emergency, Predictions, Preparedness, Terrorism, Travel, YouTube
Gah. One of the things I kept seeing/hearing from those who support the TSA security procedures is that if you don’t like the groping or scans, just take a train or bus. When countered with the response that these procedures at the airports could be extended to train and bus stations, it’s common to hear the comment: “Nah, they’d *never* do that.”
Guess again:
Jim Downey
Via We Won’t Fly.
Filed under: Civil Rights, Emergency, Heinlein, movies, Predictions, Robert A. Heinlein, Science Fiction, Survival, Terrorism
By the time the dose of tempus was wearing off I had a picture of the United States in a shape that I had not imagined even when I was in Kansas City – a country undergoing Terror. Friend might shoot friend; wife denounce husband. Rumor of a titan could drum up a mob on any street, with Judge Lynch baying in the van. To rap on a door at night was to invite a blast through the door. Honest folk stayed home; at night the dogs were out.
The fact that most of the rumored discoveries of slugs were baseless made them no less dangerous. It was not exhibitionism which caused many people to prefer outright nudity to the tight and scanty clothing permitted under Schedule Sun Tan; even the skimpiest clothing invited a doubtful second look, a suspicion that might be decided too abruptly. The head-and-spine armor was never worn now; the slugs had faked it and used it almost at once.
That’s from Chapter XXIV of The Puppet Masters, the 1951 classic from Robert A. Heinlein.
It’s been a number of years since I last read the book – I think I read it prior to the release of the movie adaptation in 1994, but not since, so there were parts of the book which I didn’t remember. I had honestly forgotten that the alien invaders had come from Titan, for example – which is funny, since most of Communion of Dreams takes place there. And I forgot that Heinlein sets the book firmly in our current time – the first part of it is in July, 2007.
But what I hadn’t forgotten was the basic story line: alien invasion by quickly-reproducing “slugs” that can attach themselves to the human nervous system and completely control their hosts, using the full knowledge and abilities of those hosts. That made an impression on me when I first read the book in early adolescence. Scared the hell out of me.
What also made an impression was the above bit – the nudity. Hey, I was a hormone-soaked early teen. The idea of society quickly changing such that everyone would run around naked was . . . interesting.
When I re-read the book later (first semester of college at Grinnell – which so happened to be where the first bit of the book is set) and then again in advance of the movie, I just considered this bit to be part of Heinlein’s usual casual sexual tweaking of convention. It was no big deal, but I always just considered him of something of a ‘dirty old man’ who was looking for an excuse to get naked people into his books.
But now . . . well, I have to reconsider. He certainly nailed what people are like when frightened, and how that can have an impact on social mores. Consider my recent post about how willing some folks are to put up with the new security scanners and “enhanced pat downs,” and that’s just because of the *possibility* that these security procedures might make them marginally safer when flying. What if there was a massive threat which could be fought by shedding our clothes? People’d peel, and damned quickly.
So, Heinlein may indeed have just been something of a dirty old man. But he was also something of a prophet.
Jim Downey
Filed under: BoingBoing, Civil Rights, Failure, Government, Predictions, Privacy, Society, Travel
I haven’t written a lot about the most recent outrage over the “porno scanners” though it seems that my predictions almost a year ago are certainly coming true. And now the folks at Gizmodo have a nice addition to the mess:
One Hundred Naked Citizens: One Hundred Leaked Body Scans
At the heart of the controversy over “body scanners” is a promise: The images of our naked bodies will never be public. U.S. Marshals in a Florida Federal courthouse saved 35,000 images on their scanner. These are those images.
A Gizmodo investigation has revealed 100 of the photographs saved by the Gen 2 millimeter wave scanner from Brijot Imaging Systems, Inc., obtained by a FOIA request after it was recently revealed that U.S. Marshals operating the machine in the Orlando, Florida courthouse had improperly-perhaps illegally-saved images of the scans of public servants and private citizens.
* * *
Yet the leaking of these photographs demonstrates the security limitations of not just this particular machine, but millimeter wave and x-ray backscatter body scanners operated by federal employees in our courthouses and by TSA officers in airports across the country. That we can see these images today almost guarantees that others will be seeing similar images in the future. If you’re lucky, it might even be a picture of you or your family.
Something to look forward to from our fine friends at the TSA.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 