Same Surveillance State, Different War

How government justification for mass surveillance during the war on drugs turned into rationalization for spying on citizens in the war on terror

It’s been a long 22 months since the first of thousands of classified government documents became public in what has turned into a drumbeat of astonishing revelations about the scope of mass surveillance carried out by the United States government.

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The History of the Board Ho

people who participate in chat boards like stratics often fail to realize that they are really part of a corporate data mining project in which their posts are scanned for personal information, preferences, buying habits etc. they are, by virtue of their contributions, giving away valuable information about themselves valuable to corporations that build video games and other tech toys. by providing this personal information, they also provide a jerry-springeresque spectacle for the entertainment of others, hopefully drawing more eyes to the board, hence more posts, hence more data for the marketing data crunchers. the participants, by giving away valuable personal information about themselves have commodified their private lives they have become board ho’s. the social structure of these boards is highly controlled to maximize this effect, with certain types of elite posters encouraged and rewarded these are the board ho divas. these posters play a pivotal role in ensuring that the product delivered to the marketing machine will be as useful as possible. in return the board ho divas receive a kind of social capital from the other board ho’s. At least they get something. The rest of us are getting broke off for free.

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I’m not a number, I’m a free man!



Beneath the Rose

There is a certain irony in discussing secrecy in the panopticon of the modern world. Beneath the suspended rose of the conspirators, whether for or against the state, the occult virtue of secrecy is a somewhat quaint conceit, I can ask you to turn off your phones, but that will do little good: it will in fact be a suspicious sign. Your GPS coordinates are known, the microphones and cameras you carry can be remotely activated. Your very interest in this subject has been duly noted, you are guilty by association, and that thought crime is logged and cross-matched with your other deviations. In the security industry phones are known colloquially as trackers and we use them to micro-manage our docility.

No phone?  The number plates of your car have been logged by roadside cameras on the way here, your credit card details when you paid for a ticket, your facebook page when you liked the event. You are haemorrhaging data, and in addition you have been trained to dutifully update your status and identify your friend’s faces to complete a picture that is almost perfected. As the refrain in Orwell’s 1984 goes ‘Under the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you and you sold me.’ You are being cyber stalked by your boss, your work colleagues, your exes, your ‘friends,’ credit agencies and corporations.

Everyone is a fucking cop nowadays.

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