Where Is The Superhighway Taking Us?

[Lightning Rod]

The Wild West days of the internet are almost over. Everywhere you look on the internet superhighway toll-booths are going up.

In China they are handing out life sentences for porn distributors. The Justice Dep. in our government is salivating, trying to think of ways they can get a handle on this thing--child porn, it's used by terrorists and for identity theft--that sort of thing. Truth be told, an international free trade zone scares the hell out of government types.

The net is built for crime but it's also built for surveillance. As usual it's just taken the cops awhile to catch up with the crook/entrepreneurs.

What do you think the future of the web will be? Will it be a tool for freedom or an instrument of control?

[Zlatko Waterman]

Dear LR:


When I became a teacher in the California State College System in 1972, I had to be fingerprinted by the FBI and sign a loyalty oath. The oath maintained that I was not "an agent for the overthrow of the US government by force or violence." It didn't assert anything about writing, drawing pictures, or speaking my mind in public.

In 1974 I was visited by the FBI in connection with the SLA case. I had known one of its ( the SLA, not the FBI) members in Berkeley and had some other connections that interested the Feds. So, consequently, I know the FBI has a file on me.

They had a file on Stuart Symington so large the xeroxing fee was in the thousands of dollars when the Missouri Senator asked to see it, complete.

It's possible to intrude on "private" zones of Internet traffic, such as private e-mail. Anything that can be digitized can be cracked open and read. That includes this posting, of course, providing it's sufficiently interesting to someone.

But the government is overworked, like every bureaucracy, because it manufactures more work for itself than it can perform, most of those tasks being meaningless, like the FBI visit they paid me. At the time they were desperate for any leads on the Patricia Hearst kidnapping-- even tenuous, associative ones. The overwork/overload situation used to make it likely that no one would monitor you unless you were centrally or peripherally involved with an ongoing, high-profile investigation.

But Internet electronic robot searches have changed all that, so I am given to understand by several "computer geek" friends of mine. Much ongoing investigation ( which is vaguely defined and continuous) never stops because it doesn't require human agents.

"Crimethink" (Orwell) is translated into e-mail and sent out to be cyber-snooped in e-mail.

When I see all those cell phones at people's ears ( I have used a cell phone once-- one I borrowed because I had a flat tire--I do not own one, and will not) I can't help but think that soon they will be surgically implanted, say in the mastoid bone? Already people use a "hands-free necklace" version.

In a 1967 film, "The President's Analyst", phones surgically implanted in the skull are depicted. The Telephone Company turns out to be the most powerful and insidious agency on the planet.

( link to film's discussion)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062153/


The Internet is a squirming, recently nascent, tentacled little beast who is sometimes naughty and sometimes nice. But not all sugar and spice-- plenty of snails and puppy-dog tails.

"At midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew/
go out and round up everyone/
who knows more than they do . . ."

--Bob Dylan


--Z

[Zlatko Waterman]

Dear LR:


Try this link to an article about "Milking the Internet Cash Cow."

Learn how communication companies are entrepreneurs in the surveillance business; they're eager to anticipate the FBI's every move.


(link)


http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/06 ... p_bonanza/



--Z

[Lightning Rod]

This is most helpful, Z

you never fail to point me in an interesting direction

like I said, the Justice Dept. is salivating trying to get their teeth into the net