This administration can't be trusted with a bathroom key.
5.56mm
Ha! Folks who put up with broken promises vote Democrat....
It hadn’t even occurred to me that they would use the data this way, but this is exactly the kind of thing that Big Data is supposed to make possible. Between this and the promise if not the actuality of amnesty, this is why the Left thinks they have a chance of turning Texas blue within four years, and there’s a plausible chance that they’ll manage it too.
Those living in TX had better be on their toes in the upcoming election season. Get involved, and walk your shoes off to GOTV. The Left has two “legitimate” unfair advantages this time in addition to the usual vote tampering and ballot box stuffing, and they’re going to milk them for all they can. More than a few Texas districts are more “purple” than most are willing to admit. All the Left has to do is shift just enough of them by just enough, and they can manage a skin-of-the-teeth color change. It might not make all that much of an impact in the state house there, but it might buy them enough additional seats in the US House. Not to mention the psychological impact of a plausible “Blue Texas” for 2016.
It would not take that many keystrokes to do it.
Perhaps the very worst elements of having a surveillance state are not obvious, but matter most in the long run.
1) It is an admission by the government that it cannot deal with the few big, important things that government is supposed to do; so instead it puts all its energy into unimportant minutiae. It begins to think that *accurately* counting all the grains of sand on a beach doesn’t just “matter”, but is “vital” to some imagined purpose. At the same time it ignores an approaching tsunami, “because it is too busy doing this vital sand counting.”
2) Seeing that this is a ready source of bureaucratic funding, all the bureaucrats want a piece of the budget pie. For example, it’s *not* just the NSA that is spying on everyone with the PRISM system.
The FBI is *also* spying on everyone, which used to be with the CARNIVORE system, but now uses NarusInsight, CALEA, and information provided by and given to, other agencies.
The DHS is *also* spying on everyone, using the ADVISE system, which data-mines information as well from civilian sources.
And this opens yet another door to surveillance, of that surveillance conducted by numerous corporations at the behest of the government, which multiplies their data input considerable.
Truly vast amounts of sand being counted a grain at a time for a vital imaginary national purpose.
It is almost laughable that a tiny amount of this is being diverted for political purposes as an “outrage”, because of the fact that all of this surveillance is of people who are mostly honest, who would never commit terrorist acts, and are engaged in daily lives that are extremely boring and repetitive.
The Leviathan surveillance monster wastes so much time doing this that it is almost sheer luck that it ever finds anything useful. So what is the price for stopping two jackasses with a pressure cooker? $500 billion? A trillion?
And if it fails to stop them, does that mean that the vast majority of this surveillance should end?
No, but it does mean that it needs to be downsized to the point where it is efficient, cost effective, and actually does stop terrorists. Which is pretty much what we had before all of this other stuff was used.
There is a good reason the 2010 census was taken over by the White House and away from Commerce where it had been. That is the data base of data bases.
“All your data bases are belong to us.”
Hey, I think I’ll make that my tag line!
Barney Brenner of Townhall cites a specific effort in Arizona which is basic politicing using paid for canvassers going door to door into areas where the voting is light.
That type of campaigning used to be used by Republicans where the local organization through the committeeman was given funds to help defray any expences in running door to door campaigns. It also doesn’t require data mining in determining those areas,census tract vs voter turnout tells you the areas involved. Which the Brenner piece confirms.
Ostensibly to save money that style of campaigning was tossed by the Republican hierarchy in favor of mass media, tv, and mailings then subsequently robo-phone calls. What makes Brenner’s observations noteworthy was that those efforts go ignored and door to door canvassing paying off.
The difference is these were paid for canvassers.Paid for by whom ? Very likely in some fashion by US. In areas where the democrats had complete control it was done by patronage workers taking the time supposed to be devoted to their city, county or state job around election time and used to canvass their precincts or areas assigned to them by their committeeman. Most states have laws against this but few prosecutuions unless of course their Republicans.
If tea party and conservatives want to win races their candidates must develop a similar door to door strategy. It is just not good enough to show up at a protest rally. Part of their campaign strategy must include devoting campaign expences for door to door campaigning, and in particular identifying and targeting those areas.
We had a bloodless Coup d'état and are now moving on to a complete monarchy.
You have plainly stated the plans they have and I believe we had a preview of the success of their plans in the last election.
Many here don't see any danger in the MetaData collection, but we know better.
Thanks for the post.