REPUBLIC REBORN

KFOR is reporting that military weapons manufacturer,ahem “aerospace company”,  Kratos, is coming to Oklahoma City very soon.

Oklahoma rep. Steve Russell announced the deal last Friday, meaning he probably brokered the crony boondoggle.  Of course the usual benefits were rolled out: hundreds of jobs would be created, good for the economy, committed to serving our country, soldiers, America woooooo, etc.

Kratos specializes in unmanned “target drones”, which are used by the military to simulate enemy aircraft.

The chosen name for the weapons developer is a bit on the nose, as ‘Kratos’ is the Greek God of strength and power.  But then again, these warlords love ridiculous names.

Gizmodo: Facebook conveniently declares “privacy principles” ahead of stringent new regulations

Washington Examiner: Senator who released Pentagon Papers: Republicans are cowards if they don’t release FISA memo

The Intercept: Fitness tracker data highlights sprawling US military footprint in Africa

Techdirt: Senators demand investigation of intelligence community’s refusal to implement whistleblower protections

EFF: ICE accesses a massive amount of license plate data.  Will California take action?

Esquire: The Un-American ICE

New York Times: Immigration’s border enforcement myth

EFF: It’s time to make student privacy a priority

Consortium News: The war that never ends

Libertarian Institute: Military-Industrial Complex famous quotes

Zero Hedge: Fitness tracking app accidentally reveals secret US military bases, CIA ‘black sites’

WSWS: New York Times cashes in on Facebook’s news censorship

And yes, I’m still posting a story from the New York Times: The ‘killer robots’ are us

Antiwar.com: JUSTIN RAIMONDO: Kick Turkey out of NATO

SFGate: Border Patrol accused of retaliating against aid group in Arizona

MintPressNews: To assassinate Arafat, Israel’s Mossad planned to blow up passenger plane

And more from MintPressNews: 70 years of disinformation: CIA funded opinion magazines in Europe

SingularityHub: Machines teaching each other could be the biggest exponential trend in AI

Motherboard: Autonomous semis could help solve trucking’s major labor shortage

Nautilus: The sound so loud it circled the Earth four times

Wired: What’s so ‘anti’ about antimatter?

World Net Daily: ‘Police State’ national ID card tucked away in immigration bill

Daily Mail: ICE now has access to a nationwide license plate database

North Jersey: NJ police brutality: millions paid in secret settlements that keep bad cops on the street and the public in danger

CATO: When our faces are our “papers”

Activist Post: 7 times the US has lost nukes that still haven’t been found

Fifth Domain: The next cyber arms race is in artificial intelligence

Daily Star: AI Army: China hiring team of robotics experts in “terrifying” military development

The Hill: Destroying, suppressing evidence is FBI standard procedure

National Review: Why trust the FBI?

FEE: Minimum wage fallout is caused by government, not business

Alternet: Magic mushrooms fight authoritarianism Ed: Abandon Big Pharma’s poison pill racket and give everyone psychedelics and weed.

Economist: Fentanyl is lethal and almost impossible to keep out of the country. Ed: Legalize clean heroin in some form and give addicts a safe place to use it, it’s the only way to stop the fentanyl epidemic.

Truthdig: FISA is a direct threat to American’s privacy

The Week: ICE can now track license plates all over America

Huffington Post: Facebook and Google’s surveillance capitalism model is in trouble

Kuwait Times: New tactical nukes in US arsenal raises risks, experts and critics warn

Reason: No, Russian bots aren’t responsible for #ReleaseTheMemo

Cato: Why does AT&T want Net Neutrality regulation?

Mises: Law enforcement is not the same as security

High Times: Could the end of Prohibition mean the end of Cartel violence?

Digital Trends: Deep learning vs. machine learning: Here’s the difference

Imperfect Creator: Nature: Artificial neurons compute faster than the human brain

NBC News: Simple math may show how many space aliens may be out there

So Ford has apparently filed a patent for an automated police car, giving privacy and civil liberties advocates something entirely new to oppose.

“The patent, first spotted by Motor1, describes an autonomous police vehicle that would be able to detect infractions performed by another vehicle, either on its own or in conjunction with surveillance cameras and/or road-side sensors.

The AI-powered police car could then remotely issue citations or pursue the vehicle. Or (and this is where it gets really creepy), “the method may further involve the processor remotely executing one or more actions with respect to the first vehicle,” according to the patent.

In other words, the autonomous police car could wirelessly connect to the original car to communicate with the passenger, verify identity, and issue a citation.

In fact, Ford’s patent filing describes a machine learning algorithm that would be able to determine whether or not a vehicle breaking the law warrants a warning as opposed to a citation, and relay that decision to the driver.”

I suppose that with the rise of the driverless car, this situation would be inevitable.  Now the specter of a driverless police car cruising around, analyzing its surroundings by means of a “machine learning algorithm”, and making its own decisions.

At what point in time will Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics need to be rolled out?

  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