The Future American Police State

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melon

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"Pentagon Plans a Computer System That Would Peek at Personal Data of Americans"

(source: New York Times)

The Pentagon is constructing a computer system that could create a vast electronic dragnet, searching for personal information as part of the hunt for terrorists around the globe ? including the United States.

As the director of the effort, Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter, has described the system in Pentagon documents and in speeches, it will provide intelligence analysts and law enforcement officials with instant access to information from Internet mail and calling records to credit card and banking transactions and travel documents, without a search warrant.

Historically, military and intelligence agencies have not been permitted to spy on Americans without extraordinary legal authorization. But Admiral Poindexter, the former national security adviser in the Reagan administration, has argued that the government needs broad new powers to process, store and mine billions of minute details of electronic life in the United States.

Admiral Poindexter, who has described the plan in public documents and speeches but declined to be interviewed, has said that the government needs to "break down the stovepipes" that separate commercial and government databases, allowing teams of intelligence agency analysts to hunt for hidden patterns of activity with powerful computers.

"We must become much more efficient and more clever in the ways we find new sources of data, mine information from the new and old, generate information, make it available for analysis, convert it to knowledge, and create actionable options," he said in a speech in California earlier this year.

Admiral Poindexter quietly returned to the government in January to take charge of the Office of Information Awareness at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, known as Darpa. The office is responsible for developing new surveillance technologies in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.

In order to deploy such a system, known as Total Information Awareness, new legislation would be needed, some of which has been proposed by the Bush administration in the Homeland Security Act that is now before Congress. That legislation would amend the Privacy Act of 1974, which was intended to limit what government agencies could do with private information.

The possibility that the system might be deployed domestically to let intelligence officials look into commercial transactions worries civil liberties proponents.

"This could be the perfect storm for civil liberties in America," said Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington "The vehicle is the Homeland Security Act, the technology is Darpa and the agency is the F.B.I. The outcome is a system of national surveillance of the American public."

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld has been briefed on the project by Admiral Poindexter and the two had a lunch to discuss it, according to a Pentagon spokesman.

"As part of our development process, we hope to coordinate with a variety of organizations, to include the law enforcement community," a Pentagon spokeswoman said.

An F.B.I. official, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified, said the bureau had had preliminary discussions with the Pentagon about the project but that no final decision had been made about what information the F.B.I. might add to the system.

A spokesman for the White House Office of Homeland Security, Gordon Johndroe, said officials in the office were not familiar with the computer project and he declined to discuss concerns raised by the project's critics without knowing more about it.

He referred all questions to the Defense Department, where officials said they could not address civil liberties concerns because they too were not familiar enough with the project.

Some members of a panel of computer scientists and policy experts who were asked by the Pentagon to review the privacy implications this summer said terrorists might find ways to avoid detection and that the system might be easily abused.

"A lot of my colleagues are uncomfortable about this and worry about the potential uses that this technology might be put, if not by this administration then by a future one," said Barbara Simon, a computer scientist who is past president of the Association of Computing Machinery. "Once you've got it in place you can't control it."

Other technology policy experts dispute that assessment and support Admiral Poindexter's position that linking of databases is necessary to track potential enemies operating inside the United States.

"They're conceptualizing the problem in the way we've suggested it needs to be understood," said Philip Zelikow, a historian who is executive director of the Markle Foundation task force on National Security in the Information Age. "They have a pretty good vision of the need to make the tradeoffs in favor of more sharing and openness."

On Wednesday morning, the panel reported its findings to Dr. Tony Tether, the director of the defense research agency, urging development of technologies to protect privacy as well as surveillance, according to several people who attended the meeting.

If deployed, civil libertarians argue, the computer system would rapidly bring a surveillance state. They assert that potential terrorists would soon learn how to avoid detection in any case.

The new system will rely on a set of computer-based pattern recognition techniques known as "data mining," a set of statistical techniques used by scientists as well as by marketers searching for potential customers.

The system would permit a team of intelligence analysts to gather and view information from databases, pursue links between individuals and groups, respond to automatic alerts, and share information efficiently, all from their individual computers.

The project calls for the development of a prototype based on test data that would be deployed at the Army Intelligence and Security Command at Fort Belvoir, Va. Officials would not say when the system would be put into operation.

The system is one of a number of projects now under way inside the government to lash together both commercial and government data to hunt for patterns of terrorist activities.

"What we are doing is developing technologies and a prototype system to revolutionize the ability of the United States to detect, classify and identify foreign terrorists, and decipher their plans, and thereby enable the U.S. to take timely action to successfully pre-empt and defeat terrorist acts," said Jan Walker, the spokeswoman for the defense research agency.

Before taking the position at the Pentagon, Admiral Poindexter, who was convicted in 1990 for his role in the Iran-contra affair, had worked as a contractor on one of the projects he now controls. Admiral Poindexter's conviction was reversed in 1991 by a federal appeals court because he had been granted immunity for his testimony before Congress about the case.

***********

Such a surprise, indeed. :| I just looooove all that America is doing in the name of "anti-terrorism." :|

I'm sure George Orwell would be proud.

Melon
 
next thing you know, everyone will be expected to have a computer chip inserted into their bodies for the sake of national security, and those that would be opposed to it will be viewed as "terrorists."

i too love what is happening in the name of national security.
 
I thought it was "home of the brave land of the free"
not "home of the paranoid and land of the we-used-to-be-free"

:no:

America sounded like such a wonderful idea...to bad it's being turned into our worst nightmare.
 
"worst nightmare"

???

let's not get carried away now

it's alarming, absolutely, but is this really something that new? I think what's new here is that they are actually admitting to these things, since of course they have an excuse (one that at least some people will buy) for doing it, maybe I'm wrong, I don't know...
 
Zoomerang96 said:
next thing you know, everyone will be expected to have a computer chip inserted into their bodies




i wouldnt be surprised if that happened.
 
I'll bet everyone from the pseudo-government to the media will support everything the federales propose.

Where's the desent? Where's the outrage?

Where's Superman, when you need him most?
 
Does anyone really believe that the government hasn't been able to do this in the past or hasn't been doing it to begin with? What do you think the NSA is exactly? What do you think the FBI's carnivore system is being used for? Let's not pretend that this is anything new or that our freedom in this country has ever been based upon our privacy. Our affairs can constantly be monitored and this has been true for a LONG time.

http://www.fbi.gov/hq/lab/carnivore/carnivore2.htm
 
But the real question is:

How much of the U.S. population would be charged against illegal activities?... All the Internet porn filling up the bandwidth... all the suspicious militia "terrorism" activities that might go on... the mafia financial fraud transactions.... corruptions & scandals that go on.... wouldn't we all be guilty?... to some greater or lesser degree? :sexywink:

and how can the government keep track of each and every individual... as if there's one FBI Special Agent for every American citizen... then that'd be a 1:1 ratio... or maybe even 1:10 or 20... Then the U.S. would be half occupied by Federal agents.... :crazy: ... anxiously watching over their neighbor... waiting for their next self-incriminating act...

:crack:

:scratch:
 
theSoulfulMofo said:
But the real question is:

How much of the U.S. population would be charged against illegal activities?... All the Internet porn filling up the bandwidth... all the suspicious militia "terrorism" activities that might go on... the mafia financial fraud transactions.... corruptions & scandals that go on.... wouldn't we all be guilty?... to some greater or lesser degree? :sexywink:

and how can the government keep track of each and every individual... as if there's one FBI Special Agent for every American citizen... then that'd be a 1:1 ratio... or maybe even 1:10 or 20... Then the U.S. would be half occupied by Federal agents.... :crazy: ... anxiously watching over their neighbor... waiting for their next self-incriminating act...

:crack:

:scratch:

This is a very good point. The dirty secret of Orwellian debates is that it's roughly implausible for the U.S., as it exists now with all of its checks and balances, to turn into the state portrayed in 1984. The arguement is limited in terms of plausability AND logistics. It carries the same weight as the NRA\militia folk who try to convince us that one day we'll need all these weapons to fight back against an oppressive government. If you're going to argue that these new measures will turn into a police state then you shouldn't disagree with the plausability suggested in a common arguement made by pro-gun advocates that this is actually a risk (though your means of rebelling against the government might be different).
 
My biggest concern is that in the future, ... people will turn to computer codes/records (e.g. Internet cookies, IP addresses, Internet logs) as "damning evidence" of whatever electronic criminal activity that might have transpired on an individual's computer... though it might not be the computer owner's actions but perhaps their spouse, roommate, friend, or whomever.... and the owner of the computer in question will be screwed. :ohmy:
 
boywonder said:
This is a very good point. The dirty secret of Orwellian debates is that it's roughly implausible for the U.S., as it exists now with all of its checks and balances, to turn into the state portrayed in 1984.

Is it? I think the Republican Party has done an excellent job of stacking this "war on terrorism" to a point that no "real" American should question it. It should be noted that, with the creation of the Homeland Security department that the Republican Party filibustered the bill 12 times before the election--only to blame delays on the "unpatriotic" Democrats during the campaign. A brilliantly Machiavellian tactic.

Of course, "1984" was a scathing critique of Soviet communism, but I would also argue that the "choice" in capitalism is little more than an illusion. We used to chuckle at the fact that the government owned all the property in communism; but, in America, if you don't pay your property "taxes," the government can come in and take it all away. In effect, we are renting our property from our government...so much for "ownership."

The "dirty" fact of the Orwellian nightmare is that its success is dependent on the ignorance of the populace--a reinvention of history ("our Founding Fathers were Christians") and semantical games (Department of "Homeland Security"). Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past. And it is no secret that the Roman "Republic" mutated into an autocratic "Empire."

And do not think it impossible to monitor all electronic communications simultaneously and globally...

Melon
 
melon said:



...But Admiral Poindexter, the former national security adviser in the Reagan administration, has argued that the government needs broad new powers to process, store and mine billions of minute details of electronic life in the United States.


...In order to deploy such a system, known as Total Information Awareness, new legislation would be needed, some of which has been proposed by the Bush administration in the Homeland Security Act that is now before Congress. That legislation would amend the Privacy Act of 1974, which was intended to limit what government agencies could do with private information.




I find it ironic that a Republican administration is (apparently indirectly) helping launch this so-called Total Information Awareness system, when said system seems to be the perfect precursor to "The Anti-Christ" scenario, which conservative (and mostly Repubican) Christians are so often warning us about. Self-fulfilling prophecy. :|
 
Re: Re: The Future American Police State

pub crawler said:
I find it ironic that a Republican administration is (apparently indirectly) helping launch this so-called Total Information Awareness system, when said system seems to be the perfect precursor to "The Anti-Christ" scenario, which conservative (and mostly Repubican) Christians are so often warning us about. Self-fulfilling prophecy. :|

Hmm...but do you know what? Perhaps this is by design. Jerry Falwell, for instance, supports our involvement and support for Israel in the Middle East, because he believes that, before the second coming of Jesus, the Jews are to control the Holy Land. Upon that, according to Falwell, 2/3 of the Jews are to die and the other 1/3 are to convert to Christianity.

Self-fulfilling prophesy? Extreme right Christianity would actively support such methods to bring upon the apocalypse.

Melon
 
yes melon, and yes to the person you quoted.

it is incredibly ironic that they are the ones that are, by all appearances, setting us up for a perfect "end times scenario."

im not saying anyone has to believe it, but i do. and i find this all to be startling.

and disturbing.
 
Zoomerang96 said:
im not saying anyone has to believe it, but i do. and i find this all to be startling.

and disturbing.

In the end, for a successful anti-Christ, one has to deceive those who are on guard the most--conservatives. That is why, for years, it has been my belief that the "end times" would be started and executed by conservatives. Whether that will happen, I guess we'll have to continue watching.

Melon
 
Re: Re: Re: The Future American Police State

melon said:


Extreme right Christianity would actively support such methods to bring upon the apocalypse.

Melon


Hmmm, I wonder if I'm thinking along the same lines as you. Are you saying they'd support such methods to bring upon the apocalypse in order to expedite the advent of the "Rapture"/Second Coming, i.e. to expedite the opening of their gateway to Heaven? Or am I way off?
 
Re: Re: Re: Re: The Future American Police State

pub crawler said:
Hmmm, I wonder if I'm thinking along the same lines as you. Are you saying they'd support such methods to bring upon the apocalypse in order to expedite the advent of the "Rapture"/Second Coming, i.e. to expedite the opening of their gateway to Heaven? Or am I way off?

Yup...we're on the same page.

Melon
 
I think it is an extreme minority that believe they can influence or "trigger" end times.

Every Christian should have a basic knowledge of prophecy and end times as part of knowing God's Word. The mistake comes when we try to match names, number, times and events to the events described in Scripture - which directly warns us against making such predictions.

Government policy to trigger the Second Coming?
 
nbcrusader said:
Government policy to trigger the Second Coming?

I've kept my George H.W. Bush quote in my signature for a reason. Remember the 1992 election when Bush, Sr. lost and Clinton was reelected? The immediate anger emanating from the extreme Christian right led me to believe that, perhaps, they were angry that their "agenda" was going to be thwarted. Hence, the immediate calls to "Impeach Clinton" in 1993. With Bush, Jr. in office, I feel that the extreme Christian right is taking off right where they left off, and a global war--hence, the "war on terrorism"--might be enough to finish their agenda to bring on the Rapture. This administration, perhaps, is uninterested in peace, just because of this.

It is my view that there are many prominent extremists in the Bush, Jr. administration, who--right or wrong--are wishing to advance the end of the world. And you are correct, nbcrusader, the Bible does warn against trying to make such predictions for the end of the world. Unfortunately, we may have to learn the hard way why separation of church and state has always been necessary.

Anyhow, these are some random thoughts. I'm likely to change my mind on this.

Melon
 
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The Future American Police State

oliveu2cm said:
But wouldn't this be unholy? Unchristian? Just plain wrong???

:confused:

I agree. The greatest evil of them all is disguised in holiness.

Melon
 
melon said:


Is it? I think the Republican Party has done an excellent job of stacking this "war on terrorism" to a point that no "real" American should question it. It should be noted that, with the creation of the Homeland Security department that the Republican Party filibustered the bill 12 times before the election--only to blame delays on the "unpatriotic" Democrats during the campaign. A brilliantly Machiavellian tactic.


I don't recall this tactic being used that often. In fact, I recall one candidate using it as he was campaigning during the midterm elections and the Democrats made a big stink over Republican's capitalizing on the war on terror. I don't see how you can argue that the administration has prevented people from criticizing it, when all the liberal pundits have done nothing but criticize starting from a month after 9-11.

Remember, Daschle kept pushing further and further to see whether he could pin the events of 9-11 on the current administration, but he failed because the evidence wasn't there and Clinton had as much (if not more) blame than Bush. Then, of course, you have every liberal pundit constantly attacking the administration including: Bill Maher, Ted Rall, Arianna Huffington, Michael Moore, etc etc. Then, you have every liberal site and forum on the web going crazy pinning all kinds of conspiracy theories on Bush. You have members of his own party doubting his war plans on Iraq. Clearly, I haven't heard anyone (of consequence) tell these pundits that they're not "real" Americans. I think it's a mostly imagined persecution on the part of liberals. The only time I can of where it was "unAmerican" to question the President, was just a few months after the attack when the country was trying to unite. Seems like a ton of dissent to me. Machiavelli would have been ashamed. "Machiavelian"? Practicing those alternatives to N*zism already?

Also, I wouldn't mock the process of filibustering, because it seems likely that Democrats are going to have to revert to it as a recourse in the Congress. That might come back to bite you in the ass.


Of course, "1984" was a scathing critique of Soviet communism, but I would also argue that the "choice" in capitalism is little more than an illusion. We used to chuckle at the fact that the government owned all the property in communism; but, in America, if you don't pay your property "taxes," the government can come in and take it all away. In effect, we are renting our property from our government...so much for "ownership."


You also have to pay taxes on fast food and other purchases. Are we not the owners of that? I hope we are because it's going to be hard to vomit up that BLT I ate in the early 90's if the tax man cometh. We pay taxes for marriage too. That means that the government can regulate who gets married! We pay taxes on our income and not paying those taxes can lead to jail time! The government can literally put you in jail for not paying them money. Seriously, it seems that if you're a liberal (or have some liberal ideas), then you shouldn't be attacking property tax (or any tax), because taxes are going to pay for social programs and the government isn't exactly in a budget surplus period. This is NOT the choice that we're supposed to find in capitalism. It isn't the choice to take advantage of this country's resources and not pay for any of it. It's the choice of religion, political affialiation\idealogy, etc etc.

The "dirty" fact of the Orwellian nightmare is that its success is dependent on the ignorance of the populace--a reinvention of history ("our Founding Fathers were Christians") and semantical games (Department of "Homeland Security"). Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past. And it is no secret that the Roman "Republic" mutated into an autocratic "Empire."

And do not think it impossible to monitor all electronic communications simultaneously and globally...

Melon


That's not the "dirty" fact of an Orwellian nightmare. It's the most obvious fact. Remember the book? They had ministries to take care of that. I believe it was called the ministry of truth or something to that effect. A "dirty" little secret is something that ISN'T obvious on first inspection. Still, I don't believe that the government can effectively monitor the many terabytes of information passed per second around the global web.

1 character = 1 byte
Terabyte= 1,099,511,627,776 bytes

If you consider all the different encryption schemes, operating systems, proxy servers, etc etc, it doesn't add up. That's just internet traffic! Not considering telephone, snail mail, etc.
It's unlikely that the government will be able to convict someone based on tracing them across the internet if they (the suspects) can make a viable arguement that someone else could have been using their computer. Most intelligent people use anonymous proxy servers to do their "bad deeds" on the internet anyways.
 
Last edited:
boywonder said:
I don't recall this tactic being used that often.

I guess if we aren't glued to C-SPAN, we'll never see it.

Clearly, I haven't heard anyone (of consequence) tell these pundits that they're not "real" Americans. I think it's a mostly imagined persecution on the part of liberals. The only time I can of where it was "unAmerican" to question the President, was just a few months after the attack when the country was trying to unite. Seems like a ton of dissent to me. Machiavelli would have been ashamed. "Machiavelian"? Practicing those alternatives to N*zism already?

Also, I wouldn't mock the process of filibustering, because it seems likely that Democrats are going to have to revert to it as a recourse in the Congress.

Pay attention. I wasn't mocking it. It only seems odd that a party would filibuster its own idea, and then blame it on the other side. Politics, anyone?

You also have to pay taxes on fast food and other purchases. Are we not the owners of that?

I think this is a flat out silly comparison. You pay taxes on food *once* and its yours. You pay property taxes *every* year. They never end, and, as such, you never own your property.

We pay taxes for marriage too. That means that the government can regulate who gets married! We pay taxes on our income and not paying those taxes can lead to jail time! The government can literally put you in jail for not paying them money. Seriously, it seems that if you're a liberal (or have some liberal ideas), then you shouldn't be attacking property tax (or any tax), because taxes are going to pay for social programs and the government isn't exactly in a budget surplus period.

First off, "boywonder," I'm not some archetypical liberal. I'm against property taxes, but am for graduated income taxes. I am for modifying sales taxes, so that they are required to be included in the sticker price of the item, rather than added after when at the cash register. I'm for modifying capital gains taxes, so that those who own their property non-speculatively (in other words, you aren't in it for the short-term "capital gains"), aren't taxed it. I think that schools should be funded at the state level, rather than the local level, with all public schools getting equal funding. No more "rich" and "poor" school districts.

In fact, my beef with the Republican Party is that they are fiscally irresponsible, slashing taxes for the top 1% with one hand and spending us into oblivion with the newest military toys in the other. If I had the chance to be in the presidency, I would reduce spending, pay off the national debt, and then cut taxes immensely.

We have too much of a bureaucracy, and we're bleeding at the seams. I think we should be upset that nearly 15% of our national budget every year goes to national debt payments...and that should increase, due to the Bush Administration's fiscal irresponsibility with the last tax cut.

But I digress...

This is NOT the choice that we're supposed to find in capitalism. It isn't the choice to take advantage of this country's resources and not pay for any of it. It's the choice of religion, political affialiation\idealogy, etc etc.

Yes..."choice." And how funny how all the "choices" cost the same. How all cars have similar frames and guts to them. How all television shows follow the same formula. How the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are fairly similar in practice, when you cut out all the campaign rhetoric. Yes..."choice."

That's not the "dirty" fact of an Orwellian nightmare. It's the most obvious fact.

True enough, but this is a semantical argument on your part.

1 character = 1 byte
Terabyte= 1,099,511,627,776 bytes

If you consider all the different encryption schemes, operating systems, proxy servers, etc etc, it doesn't add up. That's just internet traffic! Not considering telephone, snail mail, etc.
It's unlikely that the government will be able to convict someone based on tracing them across the internet if they (the suspects) can make a viable arguement that someone else could have been using their computer. Most intelligent people use anonymous proxy servers to do their "bad deeds" on the internet anyways.

Ha! If you go by PC standards, then, yes, it would be difficult to process all those terabytes. However, top of the line supercomputers can process this nearly effortlessly. Now link hundreds of these together.

Proxy servers are useless if all of them are being monitored. A proxy server still has to hook up to the internet backbone--just as all internet traffic does. Telephony is also easy to monitor with the right equipment at the central office. The sheer reality is that, due to the fact that all electromagnetic waves travel at or near the speed of light, you could have all of your traffic routed to a monitoring site, then en route to you, without you ever noticing.

Snail mail is different, because it is not an electronic mode of communication.

Melon
 
Zoomerang96 said:
next thing you know, everyone will be expected to have a computer chip inserted into their bodies for the sake of national security, and those that would be opposed to it will be viewed as "terrorists."

i too love what is happening in the name of national security.

I think this is a very definite possibility, and that kind of scenario (for me, anyways) gets too close to the prophesy of the "mark of the beast" - and for that reason I would never stand to have a chip implanted in me. And I could very much could see the terrorist accusation being thrown at people who refuse to take part - very scary, but I bet it's coming.


Also, I don't see how it is possible for us to "induce" the Rapture/2nd Coming - God will use people when the time is right, and this could be coming up on the right time, but it is all under His control, our wishing and pushing is not going to make it happen any sooner.
 
I guess if we aren't glued to C-SPAN, we'll never see it.

You'll never see it because it's imagined. It's a common thing for a group to exagerate persecution for political gain. Jesse would be proud.

Pay attention. I wasn't mocking it. It only seems odd that a party would filibuster its own idea, and then blame it on the other side. Politics, anyone?

I don't believe the Republicans were filibustering their own bill. They didn't like the version the Democrats wanted. Politics, anyone? Are you kidding me? Yeah, liberals are never guilty of politics. Psst.

I think this is a flat out silly comparison. You pay taxes on food *once* and its yours. You pay property taxes *every* year. They never end, and, as such, you never own your property.

First off, "boywonder," I'm not some archetypical liberal. I'm against property taxes, but am for graduated income taxes. I am for modifying sales taxes, so that they are required to be included in the sticker price of the item, rather than added after when at the cash register. I'm for modifying capital gains taxes, so that those who own their property non-speculatively (in other words, you aren't in it for the short-term "capital gains"), aren't taxed it. I think that schools should be funded at the state level, rather than the local level, with all public schools getting equal funding. No more "rich" and "poor" school districts.


Granted that taxes are paid up front on food, but your reasoning that the government has too much power because of property taxes is silly considering you could also make the same arguement for marriage and income (arguements you conveniently ignored). If I made a fortune from an invention and the government took half of my profits, then why not criticize the government for being too powerful there? Because the mean inventor was hording all his profits and not giving it away to the poor like he should have?

In fact, my beef with the Republican Party is that they are fiscally irresponsible, slashing taxes for the top 1% with one hand and spending us into oblivion with the newest military toys in the other. If I had the chance to be in the presidency, I would reduce spending, pay off the national debt, and then cut taxes immensely.

The top 1% of income earners already pay a record-high 35% of federal taxes, according to the Joint Economic Committee. And the top 25%?which means those making more than $50,607 per year?pay 83% of all taxes. Thus, any cut, no matter how small, must of necessity benefit those who pay most of the nation?s bills. Our government is not Robin Hood. Our government is not Robin Hood. Say it with me now.....

Charging that the Republicans are responsible for too much government spending is just ridiculous. We didn't have a surplus in the 90's because Clinton was a great fiscal manager. Liberals love to spend government $$$ on social programs and these programs are ripe with bureaucracy. Let's not deny it.

Yes..."choice." And how funny how all the "choices" cost the same. How all cars have similar frames and guts to them. How all television shows follow the same formula. How the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are fairly similar in practice, when you cut out all the campaign rhetoric. Yes..."choice."

Television shows don't follow the same formula. Some sitcoms perhaps, but that's an oversimplification. Cars look similar so we are actually not choosing? Please. A pinto is not a Lamborghini. I don't think Republicans and Democrats are the same. Perhaps you weren't paying attention to the issues. Do you really think Gore would be doing the same thing Bush is now? Please, any Democrats who believe this, please raise your hands. Would we have a tax cut, a war with Iraq, etc etc? No way.

True enough, but this is a semantical argument on your part.

Not a semantical arguement on MY part. This is common sense to anyone who read the book and knows what a "dirty" little secret is.

Ha! If you go by PC standards, then, yes, it would be difficult to process all those terabytes. However, top of the line supercomputers can process this nearly effortlessly. Now link hundreds of these together.

Any proof of this? You didn't address the issue of encryption methods, etc.

Proxy servers are useless if all of them are being monitored. A proxy server still has to hook up to the internet backbone--just as all internet traffic does.

An anonymous proxy server is just that...anonymous. The person who runs the proxy server retains (or chooses not to retain) the logs of what IP addresses were receiving what packets. Most proxy servers are used solely for the purpose of illegal distribution of files, so I don't suspect these are the type of people who want to help out the government in any way they can.

Telephony is also easy to monitor with the right equipment at the central office. The sheer reality is that, due to the fact that all electromagnetic waves travel at or near the speed of light, you could have all of your traffic routed to a monitoring site, then en route to you, without you ever noticing.

Care to explain the science behind how electromagnetic waves of varying frequencies can be "rerouted" to a central location? Trillions of gamma rays, microwaves, x-rays, radio waves, etc are going to be sent to a central location where they can all be decoded and processed? :lol: What a logistical nightmare.
 
boywonder said:

An anonymous proxy server is just that...anonymous. The person who runs the proxy server retains (or chooses not to retain) the logs of what IP addresses were receiving what packets.



Hence, they are not anonymous.
 
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