Along the lines of Google Suggest, which replaces your own thoughts with intrusive suggestions, the cheery little police state in Britain is exploring some anticipatory thought control of its own:
“The technology, called Sigard, monitors movements and speech to detect signs of threatening behaviour.
Its designers claim the system can anticipate anti-social behaviour and violence by analysing the information picked up its sensors. Continue reading
Lloyd Marcus at Renew America, June 28, 2010:
“Again, I say charges that the movement is racist are absurd. Here are a few of my personal tea party experiences. Keep in mind, I have performed at well over two hundred tea parties across America. Continue reading
An article by Nicky Hager at Cryptome.org from Covert Action Quarterly (1998) about Echelon. Hager’s book on the subject, “Secret Power: New Zealand’s Role In the International Spy Network,” is dated 1996, so I’m a little confused by the dating of the article. Echelon is/was a global espionage and interception system coordinated by the US/UK with the aid of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. In NZ, writes Hager, it was implemented without the assent of the public and most public officials.
Here’s a timeline for the development of the system. Per Cryptome, the earliest public report on Echelon is in 1972.
The first reporter to write on it is British intelligence reporter, Duncan Campbell: “They’ve Got It Taped,” New Statesman, August 12, 1988 (republished at Cryptome.org). Campbell testified before Congress on the subject in 1999 and prepared a report for the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) that was refused by EPIC’s director Marc Rotenberg, on the grounds that much of the information hadn’t been substantiated (see this correspondence between Rotenberg and Young). After that, there was debate between Campbell and Bamford over what the main focus of the espionage was. I will expand on that and link it later…
“IN THE LATE 1980’S, IN A DECISION IT PROBABLY REGRETS, THE U.S. PROMPTED NEW ZEALAND TO JOIN A NEW AND HIGHLY SECRET GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE SYSTEM. HAGER’S INVESTIGATION INTO IT AND HIS DISCOVERY OF THE ECHELON DICTIONARY HAS REVEALED ONE OF THE WORLD’S BIGGEST, MOST CLOSELY HELD INTELLIGENCE PROJECTS. THE SYSTEM ALLOWS SPY AGENCIES TO MONITOR MOST OF THE WORLD’S TELEPHONE, E-MAIL, AND TELEX COMMUNICATIONS. Continue reading
From Eric Sommer at Pravda.ru via Market Oracle, January 14, 2010:
“The western media is currently full of articles on Google’s ‘threat to quit China’ over internet censorship issues, and the company’s ‘suspicion’ that the Chinese government was behind attempts to ‘break-in’ to several Google email accounts used by ‘Chinese dissidents’.
However, the media has almost completely failed to report that Google’s surface concern over ‘human rights’ in China is belied by its their deep involvement with some of the worst human rights abuses on the planet: Continue reading