Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

Yeah, right. I arrived in London, possibly the most heavily surveilled city in the world, about midnight on 6 July 2006.

Don't get me wrong, its a great investigatory tool, after the fact.

There's a light and a potential dark side to your vision, that parallels the light and dark side of human nature. How can we know that "those in control" in your projected future have the best judgement or intentions? The private sector is not without a record of poor behavior. The kind of scenario you propose could use the same kind of scrutiny for which the games you oversaw a while back regarding military and political outcomes, were constructed for. There's always room for the unforeseen. Has Enterra been running such "games?"

Your statement may be correct in regards to a society where there are adequate checks and balances on government power. It is totally wrong for everyone else. Right now, the latter situation is the case for the vast majority of people living on the planet. Even in a country like the USA, there are large pockets of corruption and plenty of examples of misuse of government power. If America decides to give up the 4th Amendment or any other part of the Constitution, then Bin Laden and his followers will have won a major battle against democracy.

This goes back to the myspace, youtube reference, is it ok to post copywrited material on those sites, things are certainly getting interesting now that google has bought up youtube and just recently universal has sued myspace for infringment ( I believe is the term )

Today, most workplaces are monitored extensively to insure company secrets or assets are not divulged.

I think that the laws say that a person has no expectation of privacy in a public place, either physical or cyberspace. So in public areas its reasonable to expect this kind of survellience.

Hooray for the 21st century!

"The slaves of domestic tyranny may vainly exult in their national independence, but the Arab is personally free"
-Gibbon

I know its a hotly debated subject, but seeing as the 'terrorist threat' actually appears to be a rather minimal threat to the average american... (I have a greater chance of being kill by an asteroid, historically) [http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20060901facomment85501/john-mueller/is-there-still-a-terrorist-threat-the-myth-of-the-omnipresent-enemy.html],

why should we throw away our personal freedom to 'ubiquitous sensing technology ,' in the name of 'resilience'? Shouldnt we focus on connecting our financial/personal networks to the Mid-East (that was the goal in Iraq, no?), rather than creating rather absurd firewalls here in the US?

In the past week, a video clip of police officers using tasers on a man in the UCLA library was posted online. The video was taken on a bystander's cell phone. Within several days, the video was on the front page of the tech-news site, digg.com. Over the next three days, dozens of stories about the incident sprang up. Official statements were released, and now the incident is being covered in national news media.

Technology is providing a counter to big brother, in what Steve Mann called "sousveillance" -- surveillance from below. New forms of content distribution, like YouTube, are filling an important niche online today.

Surveillance, in isolation, is neutral but the real world seldom has things in isolation. Combined with ill will, surveillance is an all too useful tool to aid in vendetta and persecution. I believe that you don't have to have a lot of such destructive impulses before a massively surveilled society turns into a net negative.

When William the Conqueror established himself in England he built Castles and created the "Doomesday Book." The book gave him a list of everyone and everything in his newly won land. With GIS available why have we not done one better in Iraq. Why not establish "tax farming" to increase the number of people who are concerned about maintaining stability and increasing the tax base. By simply dumping projects ito Iraq we are simply increasing the number of people who get rich cutting up our investment and exporting them to rich but trade starved Iran. Why not make every highway in Iraq a toll road and make all Iraqi vehicles in Iraq carry an "E-Z pass" RFID tag or pay a higher toll and be subjected to an extensive search at the toll plazas. Data linking the toll plazas would then allow for the tracking of all of the vehicles in Iraq. Why not make providing peace and security more profitable right down to the security checkpoints than the proffit the insurgents make from destroying that peace and security? Why not use this supposed "Big Brother" technology to fight the insurgency? Saddam did not need this stuff but he did things that we have him on trial for.