Perhaps the most terrifying thought in the minds of many is a government that controls all information. I know there are some out there, hopefully not a majority, who will say “who cares”, but those people are just damned fools. Every government in history that has had solid controls over what information it’s people had access to used it for their own purposes. They didn’t establish control and then leave it alone. The took control of what they wanted, removed some pieces, altered others, denied access to some without permission, and some information was simply not accessible to anyone. Do you think our government is any different? They certainly don’t have a great track record.
Government does not control information for the good of humanity. Government does not control information to ensure it’s easily and readily available to anyone anywhere. Government controls information because information is power, and it allows the government to more fully control it’s people.
In March, there was an article in Wired (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/1) that details plans for a new NSA datacenter in Utah. That’s enough to trigger a bit of worry in anyone who realizes how much data, control, access, and power the NSA has in your everyday life. Hell, it’s likely that I’m on a watch list somewhere, even before I wrote this, and I’m not a terrorist, have never made threats, don’t condone violence except in defense, and in fact encourage people to always follow the laws, even as I encourage them to get involved in the system to take control and change the laws. I’m certain that’s enough to get me flagged somewhere in the system, at some level, as a possible threat to keep an eye on.
That will be much more easily achieved, now that the NSA has their brand new datacenter and super computers getting all setup. From what we’ve been able to gather, this datacenter will be able to archive damned near every electronic exchange on the planet, and if any of that information is of interest, they have a system that can crack nearly any encryption known to man in no time flat.
Someone in the counter-intel community needs to get crackin (pun intended) on another solid encryption algorithm, something that’s got some bitness to it, that can slow this sucker down a bit. If it takes the system days or weeks to crack an encryption, that’s not security. If it takes it years or decades, then we’re talking about at least a little bit of security. Centuries would be better, that way by the time they get anything, you’re already dead.
Now someone somewhere is screaming about the “need” for this to watch terrorist and defend our nation. Fine. That’s great. If only that were the case. They are gathering information on anyone and everyone in the world that they feel like gathering information on. Including Americans. Without showing probably cause. Without a warrant. Without the courts being involved at any level. Some mid-management type in the NSA says “watch this guy” and it happens.
If that doesn’t scare the hell out of every person on the planet, especially Americans who think they are Constitutionally protected from invasions of privacy by their own country…… there is something seriously wrong in their head.
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