19
votes
Pentagon working on tech to identify protestors with bad/non-existent opsec
Link information
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- Title
- Pentagon Wants to Predict Anti-Trump Protests Using Social Media Surveillance
- Word count
- 4890 words
I'm not one to think that the government does or really ever has embodied the ideals it claims to represent, but come on, this is an actual, clear attack on American values. If the people do not rise up in outrage over this and this general pattern of attempting to quell dissent than America really is over, I think.
The average American has more pressing concerns than the preservation of the Republic and the defense of not only their own rights but those of their fellow Americans. This is by design. This is how the richest among us want it to be, so that they can bring back feudalism and aristocracy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_you_live_in_interesting_times
Believe me I'm all for the State withering so we can build fully automated luxury anarcho-communism in its place, but it seems far more likely that it will instead continue to consolidate power in whatever weird post-modern inverted totalitarian nightmare way it is. Being able to run off to the country and "avoid the rush" as you say is already a privilege, why assume the new surveillance state will continue to allow you that privilege as it seeks to manage society to a greater and greater extent?
I think you're absolutely in a bubble if you think most people could do this, most people don't even have $1000 to cover an emergency.
Do you have a practical outline of how this would work? Where would you go? How much money do you need to start?
The most radical example I know of is Mick Dodge. Out the gate, you'd need at a minimum a high level of physical fitness and a wealth of survival skills that are not widely practiced or known today, as well as extremely high determination and a radically different attitude about what you need to live and be happy. Plus as a fairly large area of land with decent resources you can identfy. If you couldn't find one which is also unmonitored, you'd need to know how to be very stealthy.
And this is, again, extreme compared to modern attitudes of how life should be. But he's proof of the concept that at least some people can still drop out of civilization and live a happy life. I'll acknowledge any objections you could raise about the viability of it, but there are at least examples out there to follow.
This may only be tangentially related, but Montesquieu makes a pretty interesting contemporary observation about the nature of government in The Spirit of Laws:
File under "oh, fascist views are the ones that face unconstitutional repression?"