Moving on

Focusing on government surveillance and spying operations wasn't really the aim of this blog when I decided to start it, so this is going to be the last post along those lines in awhile.  As developments continue, I'll post updates periodically.  For this last piece, I just wanted to recommend a couple of other recent articles dealing with this subject.

The first is a series from the EFF investigating the government's use of social media as tools for investigation and surveillance.  Not surprisingly, it finds that it's use is vast and obtrusive.

The second is from Wikileaks.  It reveals an immense secret network of funding from the NSA to academics researching various surveillance related technologies.  Essentially the problem for the government at this point is access to too much information - what they need now are automated ways to intelligently filter and analyze it.

What all of this reveals is that the government is terrified of people being independent actors.  As long as your activities are limited to working, shopping, heading out to the bar after a hard week at work, you're in the clear.  Start a family and do home improvements on the weekend - great!  Go kill Muslims in distant lands - fantastic!  Limit your political activity to voting every few years for more of the same, dressed up as something different - sure.  Those are State sanctioned roles to fill.  But should you think that you have some kind of meaningful say in how things are run and organized?  Well at a minimum that needs to be watched, and should you start to be successful, it needs to be stopped.  This is the logic of the State.