Our Internet Surveillance State

Crypto-Gram ^ | 3/15/13 | Bruce Schneier

[LucyT]

Well, at least they know where my cell phone is all the time.<<<<

I keep losing my cell phone, and since they know the location, would they be willing to help find it? Do they have a toll-free number I could call?

Me: Hello Phone Surveillance, my cell phone is missing, again. Any ideas where it might be?

Phone Surveillance: Hello, Lucy. Your phone is in your pink blouse pocket in the laundry basket.

Me: Okay, thanks! ‘Bye now.

Phone Surveillance: Wait! There’s more. One of the buttons is loose and needs repairing before you lose it, too.

Me: Oh, I hadn’t noticed... well, thanks again. G’Bye.

[rodguy911]

Great piece,we risk it all every time we stand up for what is right.Truth is it really doesn’t matter anyway. If the regime or others want you they simply make up. fabricate BS and off you go.

[glorgau]

they can use computers to comb the raw data with surprising efficiency.

"How hard is it to 'de-anonymize' cellphone data?"

[azishot]

LOL! I love your humor. Maybe they could suggest what new phone I should get.

[Graewoulf]

Thanks for the PING!

[IrishPennant]

Fine...know me...track me...plaster my web pages with ads for Papajohns after I just ordered Papajohns (genius there, I tell ya)...but no one, no one I tell ya (mwaaaaaahahaha), will ever know I tuck my t-shirt into my underwear.

Wait! Ahhhhhhhhhhhh...did I just....???? Oh, damn you blasted interweb thingy!

[zeugma]

Important data (e.g gun registration) is not comparable to favorite ice cream. The government already chokes on the amount of data it has so far, and it sure as heck doesn’t make us any safer. The best antidote is to make government smaller and keep it from nosing into the wrong areas.

Absolutely agree. Smaller government would be beneficial all the way around. Another way to combat the information vacuums is to give it bogus information any time you can. The more garbage the system contains, the less useful are conclusions drawn from it.

[Huebolt]

Data mining is big freaking business and it's really only in its infancy

Yes. I did nothing but data mining in my previous employment.

I could extract key phrases out of anectodal text data from terabytes of tech center trouble calls. ID the product type, problem description, and ANY OTHER phrase the quality dept. thought useful.

These were not fielded data base records, just typed in responses to customer trouble calls. The telecom industry had to report outages etc.

I compiled all this into reports showing equipment type and problem type, as well any anthing else wanted.

I then automated it into a single push button on a menu that downloaded, processed, and presented all this.

And this was a while back...

[NoGrayZone]

hahahaha!!!!