Bloomberg: Pentagon wins as Trump readies $716 billion budget request

TruthOut: How the Pentagon enlisted Trump to continue its perpetual “War on Terror”

Techdirt: New York police union sues NYPD to block public release of body camera footage

The Intercept: The NSA deletes “honesty” and “openness” from core values

Reason:  The NSA gets honest about its lack of honesty

Sputnik: Ex-FBI agent: NSA unlikely to be punished for illegal data destruction

Science Daily: Superconducting synapses may be missing piece for ‘artificial brains’

The New Yorker: The Google Arts and Culture app and the rise of the ‘coded gaze’

AS an example of the effect that persistent, total government surveillance has on an individual, look to what likely drove Ernest Hemingway to commit suicide: continuous surveillance by government agents. 

The FBI monitored Hemingway continuously from the 1940s until his suicide in 1961, ostensibly based on his ties to Cuba.  There’s a story of a distraught Hemingway sitting in a restaurant with his wife.  When she asked what was wrong, he responded with, “Those two FBI agents at the bar, that’s what’s wrong.”

This happens to journalists all the time.  Low-level harassment, the purpose being nothing more than breaking the spirit of the target.

Barrett Brown is a more recent example of the psychological effect that the harassment of journalists by armed government agents has.

And there’s the strange death of journalist Michael Hastings, whose car inexplicably accelerated before crashing in a ball of fire.

Wikileaks later released CIA documents revealing that smart cars can be remotely hacked, and that doing so would be a wonderful way to off someone they deemed needed it.

“Beware then, that when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster, and when you stare into the abyss, the abyss also stares into you.” -Nietzche

In response to a reader email, yes, I read these links.  And as to why I don’t post them Instapundit-style but rather in globs of ten or so, well, it’s because I use the research that I do as well.  It’s easier to scroll back through the blog to find stories when they’re bunched up in one post, as opposed to scattered to the digital winds.  The aim of this site is to be a resource for those who are serious about ending total surveillance, restoring a civilized level of privacy protections for citizens of this country.  When the construction of the Surveillance State here is complete, we will have nowhere to hide from our government.

This has grave implications for our ability to engage in dissent and protest against the crimes of our governments.  What’s more, it will have dire implications for journalism.  Journalists will be tracked and surveiled at a far higher rate than the rest of us.  Passive, pervasive harassment of journalists has the ability to stifle the search for truth, information all of us depend on for an accurate view of what our government is up to.

Governments of the world murdered 252 million unarmed civilians during the twentieth century, not because they suddenly became more cruel, but because they have the means.  Advances in technology and industry during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century gave humankind the ability to wage war on a global scale. So we did.  It gave governments the means also to mass murder their own citizens.  So they did.

To say it can’t happen again is the height of naivete. The chief lesson of history is that governments murder and enslave.  That is not hyperbole, it is fact.  The Surveillance State will empower governments to do far more.  Do I think that mass murder is on the horizon any time soon?  I don’t.  What I believe this surveillance infrastructure will be used for is incremental enslavement, the boxing in of citizens, who aren’t aware of the prison being built around them until they try to escape.  It will by then be too late.  This is why privacy should be enshrined into law on an equal plane with that of free speech.  Our data is ours, our lives are our own.

I also post fun science-y stories.

Well hello there, Skynet: Gizmodo: The US intelligence community apparently wants someone to build them a brain

Activist Post: Oklahoma’s exemplary AMI Smart Meters Removal and Consumer Protection Bill: A model for other states to follow

Slate: Americans wanted more privacy protections.  Congress gave them fewer.

Prospect: The new surveillance capitalism

Architectural Digest: This brand new drone is tiny and basically unbreakable

Mises Institute: 2018 looks to be another good year for weapons manufacturers

Reason: Man incarcerated for 6 years without trial because he demanded a speedy trial

The Intercept: Blowback: How US drones, coups, and invasions just create more violence

High Times: Detroit has more opioid overdose deaths than murders Ed: Give the people marijuana and psychedelics, spread them far and wide.  It will end this crisis.

WIRED: Why no gadget can prove how stoned you are

Science: Muon’s magnetism could open door to new physics

Washington Examiner: Leading FISA critics in Congress split along party lines on ‘release the memo’ push

The Federalist: What to expect from the House intel memo on surveillance abuse

Fox News: Rep. Issa says Americans have a right to see FISA abuse memo

The Hill: As walls close in on the FBI, the bureau lashes out at its antagonists

Washington Post: How to fight mass surveillance even though Congress just reauthorized it

Economic Times: EU court rejects Facebook class action suit by privacy activist

National Review: The digital Emperor of China’s Surveillance State

Charles Koch Institute: Veterans, civilians don’t believe military intervention makes us safer

LA Times: Why going to 7-11 has become a political act

American Conservative: The moral case against Trump’s import tariffs

RealClearPolicy: Bayer-Monsanto merger would devastate farmers, raise food prices

National Review: YouTube’s new father figure

 ZMEScience: Psychedelic mushrooms boost love for nature and dislike for authoritarianism, study finds

Slightly dated, but important: Science Alert: Magic mushrooms do the opposite of antidepressants, but that may be why they work

SingularityHub: How fast is AI progressing? Stanford’s new report card on artificial intelligence