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Back to 1984!
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I am sure everybody knows George Orwell and his prediction for our world in near future.
Now 1984 is here.
Because, UK is planning to monitor and record every phone call, web page, and email sent by her citizens.
If you don’t believe in George’s predition, then check this!!!I don’t want to come over all “literary” but Orwell’s book wasn’t a prediction
it was a history. As far as he was concerned all the things in his dystopian
world had already happened (with the exception of a few far-fetched flights
of imagination like a television that watches you while you watch it).Britain’s “surveillance society” is bad, I agree, but I feel reassured by the
fact that it’s being discussed. When the police executed an innocent man on the
tube a couple of years ago few people dreamt that such a thing could happen
in London. Chillingly, many people felt it was justified.PeteTheBloke wrote:
I don’t want to come over all “literary” but Orwell’s book wasn’t a prediction
it was a history. As far as he was concerned all the things in his dystopian
world had already happened (with the exception of a few far-fetched flights
of imagination like a television that watches you while you watch it).I didn’t know that, I feel enlightened :D
I don’t like the sound of this
we’re not children, we don’t need to be put in play pens and watched over in case we put our fingers in the plug hole or set the sofa on fire
(although, given the chance, I’m sure most people wouldn’t be overt to setting some furniture on fire :lol: )Joker wrote:
(although, given the chance, I’m sure most people wouldn’t be overt to setting some furniture on fire :lol: )
Lock your doors! The cops are on their way…ARSONIST!!!
Maybe it’s just me and my suspicious nature but do you really think that they’re not already doing it??
Governments gather data… but the volumes are so vast that they don’t go delving into fine detail just for the sake of it.
They do two things:
(1) Run statistics
(2) Only look for needles when they are worth looking for e.g. known terrorist activity etc.They monitor our internet usage here in work… all the data is recorded… but nobody has time to analyze it… cos the vast majority of the data is pointless.
J
“but nobody has time to analyze it”
Technically, people don’t analyse it, algorithms do.
Transmitted speech and data is scanned, and people analyse what’s been flagged.
Throw facial recognition algorithms into the mix, which have advanced hugely in the last few years and it throws up a lot of interesting possibilities for the future.http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/0,1000000091,2079849,00.htm
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/telecoms/article2748780.ece
http://www.dataprotection.ie/viewdoc.asp?DocID=378
Is it enough to say, “Sure, no one looks at it”?
In a democracy we make a pact with the government: you protect us and we’ll
pay our taxes, if we don’t like you we’ll vote for the other bunch.This is seen as an improvement on the feudal system: you protect us and we’ll
pay our taxes, if we don’t like it we’ll get our heads bust.Things have gone further: you protect us AND give us welfare if we need it and we’ll
pay our taxes, if we don’t like you we’ll vote for the other bunch.What happens then is insidious: as long as you give us welfare we won’t
even bother voting.We get the government we deserve. One day they won’t be able to fund the
welfare and we’ll go back to head-busting. Plus ca change, plus ce la meme chose.Yes… computers anaylze data… but data, for the most part, is just 1’s and 0’s to a computer… of course rules can be implemented… but in order to make true sense of it all, make informed decisions and take the appropriate actions human intervention is required more often than not. Leave it to the computer and it’ll just screw it all up… why… because of the bad human intervention in the first place i.e. the programming.
Email has been monitored by the UK and USA for years. And AFAIK, our internet conenctivity is routed via the UK so your international email has been monitored too.
Could be worse, I believe Saudi Arabia has a national web filter!
joe_elway wrote:
Could be worse, I believe Saudi Arabia has a national web filter!
Saudi Arabia treats half its population as inferior “citizens” (because they are women).
In 2005 a woman was arrested simply for carrying a placard asking for women’s rights.China’s internet filters are much bigger (if that’s the right word).
Amnesty Report wrote:
The government’s crackdown on journalists, writers, and Internet users intensified. Numerous popular newspapers and journals were shut down. Hundreds of international websites remained blocked and thousands of Chinese websites were shut down. Dozens of journalists were detained for reporting on sensitive issues.
The government strengthened systems for blocking, filtering, and monitoring the flow of information. New regulations came into effect requiring foreign news agencies to gain approval from China’s official news agency in order to publish any news. Many foreign journalists were detained for short periods.
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