Got this from Z-D Net ... Personally, I'm all for this, and any other "watchdog" program from the government. Why? Well, a couple of reasons:
1. I'm not a terrorist. I have nothing to hide. I don't care if the collective "they" you refer to has access to who I call, what I watch, listen to, jerk off to, or read.
B. Because I have nothing to hide. (Except that box of porn marked camping supplies).
III. And I know that 99.99999f those in this audience have nothing to hide, either (except their own box of porn, or pot, or both). But let's be serious for a minute here ... those "rights" you bitch that you're losing are rights given to you by, and then protected by, the government.
Who also protects you.
That's what the military, and intelligence agencies do.
Protect America.
Corporate America, rural America, urban America.
All of it.
And for the past 230 years, they've done a damn fine job. After all, people hate us because they ain't us. (See, I gots street cred. I know the hip lingo all you kids are using today in your rap lyrics.)
Besides, answer me this: What is the ACLU going to do when Allah's Airborne Army comes crashing down? Put a briefcase down in front of the sword?
Seriously. If Allah's Merchants of Death had their way ... you'd be a headless corpse, or blown to bits by a car bomb, or dying a slow death from nerve gas, ricin, sarin or uranium. They don't care who you are and what you do ... they just care you're not with them. And while being Muslim may help if they ever get around to asking questions ... just remember, they kill for shock value, not for the sake of killing only their enemy. Ever wonder how many Muslims were killed on September 11th? I'm sure that in those two 110 story buildings there were maybe a couple. Other than the 19 involved. Because those 19 guys crashing the planes didn't care if there were any of their fellow Allah lovers in the buildings. All they cared about was destroying those buildings. And America by proxy.
And I'm not a betting man, but I'd put money on the fact that when they do attack again in America, they won't care who is killed or maimed. Shrapnel from car bombs doesn't do a religious check before embedding itself into your soft tissue. Ricin doesn't stop at the gates of the mosque. Radiation doesn't know who prays to Mecca five times a day.
You like all people of all cultures and races and orientations? That's nice in politically correct America. If the now-room-temperature Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had his way, that wouldn't make a bit of difference. His Islamic Sword would cut your head off without bothering to wipe the blood off the blade after he severs mine.
Why? Because we're not Muslim.
Who you are and what you do for a living doesn't make a bit of difference against an enemy who sees you as an infidel.
Period. So being a person who likes my head attached to the rest of my body, and my body free from the effects of shrapnel, poison gas and dirty nukes ... and would like to keep it that way ... my take on spying on America by our government is this:
Listen to my phone calls.
Read my email.
Peruse my music collection.
Check my video rental records.
Look at my banking transactions.
Read my MySpace profile and blog.
I DON'T CARE. BECAUSE I HAVE NOTHING TO HIDE.
And then find those crazy fuckers who want to ruin my way of o life and do your best to ensure they test out that "72-virgin-in-heaven-plan" so advertised for those who die for Allah.
And for you hippies out there ... don't give me your "losing our civil rights" and "free speech" talking points. I'd rather lose those than my head.
But I'm a thinker.
So, with all that said, here's what else our government is paying attention to these days: Yep - MySpace. The current "evil" in America now that WalMart and McDonalds are off the hook.
New Scientist magazine reveals that the National Security Agency is funding research into how to add information from social networking site MySpace listings to profiles of individuals garnered from banking, retail and property records.
As detailed in a footnote to a paper entitled Semantic Analytics on Social Networks, data from online social networks and other databases can be combined to uncover facts about people. The footnote said the work was part-funded by an organization known as ARDA, which stands for Advanced Research Development Activity.
Published in January by the Congressional Research Service, a report named Data Mining and Homeland Security, noted that part of ARDA's role is to promote integration of heretofore format-incompatible data sets about people- data sets that could be combined to generate more complete profiles of individuals under suspicion for potential terrorist links.
To facilitate this integration, research is believed to be underway on Ressource Description Framework, a way of tagging data in a way that will promote more common uniformity with other data.
"By adding online social networking data to its phone analyses, the NSA could connect people at deeper levels, through shared activities, such as taking flying lessons," writes article author Paul Marks.
Complete integration of such databases with phone calling records now believed to be in the possession of the NSA could be utilized in this manner:
Calls from say, Pakistan to the U.S. could be data-mined, and if the recipients of those calls (identified from their phone numbers) called several other numbers within a few hours after receiving those calls from Pakistan, those other numbers could be checked for suspected terrorist links.
And with a list handy of those who have been called available, it wouldn't take much to go to MySpace (or an archived MySpace repository), and search for MySpace users who have posted personally identifiable information that would indicate the need to explore their backgrounds further. Information such as the "flying lessons" example Marks writes about.
I'll do you one better. I believe that computer facial matching software will soon advance to the point where photos stored on NSA computers of terrorist suspects could then be mapped for similarities to photos on MySpace and other social networking sites.
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