Privates

by digby

Since I blog anonymously, it’s pretty obvious that I’m a big fan of privacy. As such, I admit that I’m kind of shocked at how much information people put online about themselves. It’s probably a temperamental thing more than anything else, but I just can’t fathom why people are so anxious to lay everything out for strangers. (But then I never got why anyone would go on Jerry Springer either.) And I suspect that it’s not a very healthy thing in the long run.

From Sadly No!

Wanna freak yourself out? Consider the Big Brotherly implications of blogging:

New Scientist has discovered that Pentagon’s National Security Agency, which specialises in eavesdropping and code-breaking, is funding research into the mass harvesting of the information that people post about themselves on social networks. And it could harness advances in internet technology – specifically the forthcoming “semantic web” championed by the web standards organisation W3C – to combine data from social networking websites with details such as banking, retail and property records, allowing the NSA to build extensive, all-embracing personal profiles of individuals.

Gee, I can’t imagine how that capability might possibly be abused.

No kidding. My rather paranoid assumption is that there are certain forces in the world that will always use whatever power they have against you. Certainly, I believe that in a country in which the secret policing agencies have been empowered with virtually limitless funds and are allowed to operate in secrecy, it is virtually assured that information will be abused. It’s the nature of authoritarian power.

My spouse is up in Alaska right now working. Apparently, the place is crawling with police, everywhere, and the local daily police blotter is much bigger than it’s ever been despite no population growth. They have received a lot of homeland security money from Uncle Ted Stephens.

This story, which I’ve written about before,really tells the tale:

DILLINGHAM, Alaska — From Anchorage it takes 90 minutes on a propeller plane to reach this fishing village on the state’s southwestern edge, a place where some people still make raincoats out of walrus intestine.

This is the Alaskan bush at its most remote. Here, tundra meets sea, and sea turns to ice for half the year. Scattered, almost hidden, in the terrain are some of the most isolated communities on American soil. People choose to live in outposts like Dillingham (pop. 2,400) for that reason: to be left alone.

So eyebrows were raised in January when the first surveillance cameras went up on Main Street. Each camera is a shiny white metallic box with two lenses like eyes. The camera’s shape and design resemble a robot’s head.

Workers on motorized lifts installed seven cameras in a 360-degree cluster on top of City Hall. They put up groups of six atop two light poles at the loading dock, and more at the fire hall and boat harbor.

By mid-February, more than 60 cameras watched over the town, and the Dillingham Police Department plans to install 20 more — all purchased through a $202,000 Homeland Security grant meant primarily to defend against a terrorist attack.

I suspect that this is happening all over the country and it is almost certainly happening at the federal level. If you pay for it, they’ll use it. And cops will use it to find people who are committing “crimes.” I think we all know where that leads.

Gavin at SN highlights some earlier work he and Lambert did on this topic and it’s really creepy. I predict that this issue is going to be very big. in fact, I would put a pitch in right now that the democratic party becomes the party of privacy. Somebody’s got to.

Speaking of which, I haven’t commented on the “Armando issue” until now because it’s just so depressing. Armando has been a supporter of mine over the years. Before he became a bigshot blogger on his own, he used to comment here prolifically and was always a great booster of my work over on Kos. We have both written a lot about Lincoln 1860 and the American tribal divide and the like. I’m not a DKos regular so I only interact with him on this larger blogospheric level, but in a wierd way we’ve been close.

His outing is disgusting to me, however, on principle and not because he’s been a friend. There have been a spate of these things lately coming from the right and it’s a problem. It’s not surprising, unfortunately. Character assassination has long been one of the most potent weapons in the wingnut arsenal. It was only a matter of time before they began to use it against bloggers. But it’s a cautionary tale. If malevolent people can use their power against you they will. QED.

Update: Here’s a link to Lambert’s entire series on this issue called “Weapons of Mass Surveillance.” (He writes “Use the “up/next/previous” feature at the bottom of the post to see the whole series.”) It’s some fascinating, if scary, stuff.

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