A procurement notice describes the one capability ICE doesn't have yet: a standing near-real-time intelligence enterprise to turn its surveillance into target lists.
Excellent exposition on the convergence of the post 9/11 damage to our civil liberties with the current racist, xenophobic abuse by the administration.
Information alone won't protect us, but we need it to reclaim our democracy. The administration is working so hard to suppress information, which proves how powerful revealing it is.
The irony is that the administration is gathering information to carry out its fascist aims, while the people are revealing information to protect us from the administration. The key difference is that the information they are seeking is antithetical to democracy while the information that we are seeking is foundational to democracy.
"The danger of ERO ONE is therefore not contained in the contract itself. It lies in what happens when a quarter-century of surveillance authorities, databases, commercial data, biometric systems, and military-derived intelligence practices are brought together and given an institutional mandate to find people. Each component was built at a different moment, under a different rationale, and with a different set of constraints. But as a whole, they constitute something much larger: a system capable of identifying, locating and directing the state’s coercive power toward individuals across the country. ERO ONE would give that system a more permanent analytical function. Once that capability exists, the question will no longer be what information the government possesses. It will be what it chooses to do with it"
Osama Bin Laden did far worse than blow up symbolically significant buildings that represented our economy(WTC), military(Pentagon), and- almost- gov’t(White House). He turned our fear of future attacks into a weapon that our own leaders would one day use against whichever of our own people they would decide to. Like Russia, using psychological weapons to destroy America without firing a shot. And our so-called leaders fell for it!
We live in a time when some people are paying attention and most people are not. Michael Wriston is paying attention, and he has visibility into things that few other people can see with the kind of clarity that he sees things with. Read him. Learn from him what is happening, if you want to know what is happening. But be prepared for what you will learn. If you aren't prepared to be terrified, then you should put your head back in the sand.
this excerpt sums up much of what is so awry now " I helped write the requirements that put moral injury into career field level training for all intelligence career fields, on the premise that people who do this work will be marked by it and that an institution has an obligation to prepare them for that. ...It is that they do the work more carefully. An analyst who has been taught that a bad call will stay with him treats the call differently, and that is the closest thing to a guardrail that operates when nobody is watching. " Moral injury is a topic never raised in the context of ICE/CBP.
"Julian Go — a sociologist at the University of Chicago — calls this the imperial boomerang, in which methods developed for use on populations abroad ultimately return to be used on populations at home."
This is the endgame. The fascist regime in power now fully intends to start with immigrants and expand arrests to their political opponents and convenient scapegoats. They have classified "the left" and Democrats as terrorists. If we don't stop the Nerd Reich and their unregulated AI and surveillance tools from embedding in our government, we are condemned to slavery and oppression by ruthless tyrants.
A FL woman was arrested and imprisoned for 13 days because a Flock camera incorrectly fingered her for theft; even when presented evidence she did not commit the crime, they said that their AI was "never wrong." Facial recognition is often wrong about black people, and particularly about black women. AI algorithms are created by psychopaths and fascists like Zuckerberg and Altman, and they reinforce racist stereotypes and views of a few privileged men who live in self-reinforcing bubbles of wealth and paid toadies.
Excellent exposition on the convergence of the post 9/11 damage to our civil liberties with the current racist, xenophobic abuse by the administration.
Information alone won't protect us, but we need it to reclaim our democracy. The administration is working so hard to suppress information, which proves how powerful revealing it is.
The irony is that the administration is gathering information to carry out its fascist aims, while the people are revealing information to protect us from the administration. The key difference is that the information they are seeking is antithetical to democracy while the information that we are seeking is foundational to democracy.
"The danger of ERO ONE is therefore not contained in the contract itself. It lies in what happens when a quarter-century of surveillance authorities, databases, commercial data, biometric systems, and military-derived intelligence practices are brought together and given an institutional mandate to find people. Each component was built at a different moment, under a different rationale, and with a different set of constraints. But as a whole, they constitute something much larger: a system capable of identifying, locating and directing the state’s coercive power toward individuals across the country. ERO ONE would give that system a more permanent analytical function. Once that capability exists, the question will no longer be what information the government possesses. It will be what it chooses to do with it"
I'm sick of being afraid for myself and others. We declared war on Nazis once . When is the roll call?
Osama Bin Laden did far worse than blow up symbolically significant buildings that represented our economy(WTC), military(Pentagon), and- almost- gov’t(White House). He turned our fear of future attacks into a weapon that our own leaders would one day use against whichever of our own people they would decide to. Like Russia, using psychological weapons to destroy America without firing a shot. And our so-called leaders fell for it!
So did a lot of voters.
We live in a time when some people are paying attention and most people are not. Michael Wriston is paying attention, and he has visibility into things that few other people can see with the kind of clarity that he sees things with. Read him. Learn from him what is happening, if you want to know what is happening. But be prepared for what you will learn. If you aren't prepared to be terrified, then you should put your head back in the sand.
So, we are already a police state.
this excerpt sums up much of what is so awry now " I helped write the requirements that put moral injury into career field level training for all intelligence career fields, on the premise that people who do this work will be marked by it and that an institution has an obligation to prepare them for that. ...It is that they do the work more carefully. An analyst who has been taught that a bad call will stay with him treats the call differently, and that is the closest thing to a guardrail that operates when nobody is watching. " Moral injury is a topic never raised in the context of ICE/CBP.
"Julian Go — a sociologist at the University of Chicago — calls this the imperial boomerang, in which methods developed for use on populations abroad ultimately return to be used on populations at home."
This is the endgame. The fascist regime in power now fully intends to start with immigrants and expand arrests to their political opponents and convenient scapegoats. They have classified "the left" and Democrats as terrorists. If we don't stop the Nerd Reich and their unregulated AI and surveillance tools from embedding in our government, we are condemned to slavery and oppression by ruthless tyrants.
A FL woman was arrested and imprisoned for 13 days because a Flock camera incorrectly fingered her for theft; even when presented evidence she did not commit the crime, they said that their AI was "never wrong." Facial recognition is often wrong about black people, and particularly about black women. AI algorithms are created by psychopaths and fascists like Zuckerberg and Altman, and they reinforce racist stereotypes and views of a few privileged men who live in self-reinforcing bubbles of wealth and paid toadies.
Past the point of no return?
Not yet, but without massive, organized effort we soon might be. Until then, I'm following Timothy Snyder's advice: do not obey in advance.
This is absolutely horrifying. I don't see how we stop it, when the roots of the poison tree have already grown so deep.