I have argued since 2000 that terrorism is a problem of TECHNOLOGY. Technology enables small groups of people that previously were unable to do much damage to do a lot more. And that will only increasez
If you read what I said back then, I said that I see mass surveillance as the inevitable outcome of that. All the political correctness in our countries isn't going to stop this reaction, and its attendant overreactiona, like McCarthy era anticommunist activities.
What I didn't realize back then was the role of computers to sift through massive stores of data, and identify patterns that may or may not be true. The computers will then be used by the few to control the many, using existing systems like voting and jury trials by using parallel construction and reputational attacks (see the revealed NSA slide about that).
We are constructing a zoo in which we humans will live, let's hope the computers running it are programmed to give us enough freedom to enjoy our lives. However, just like a zoo animal can't cause a lot of damage, so each individual human will be watched in the future. The right to privacy is not going to be killed by facebook, but by responses to terrorism.
With the very notable exception of 911, that's simply not true.
The Madrid bombings, the various India and E. Africa attacks, the French attacks from earlier this year and yesterday-all of these could have been carried out with almost exactly the same with planning a century ago, or with ease a half century ago.
9/11 was the only one of all those attacks that truly used technology in a new and frighteningly innovative way. And almost no one thinks that will happen again, because every plane passenger in the world knows that unopposed Islamic radical hijackings are a death sentence, and so will without exception revolt en masse, even if it causes the plane to go down (indeed, there's significant evidence that passengers had adapted to this terrifying reality within an hour of the initial attacks, i.e. United Flight 93).
If you read what I said back then, I said that I see mass surveillance as the inevitable outcome of that. All the political correctness in our countries isn't going to stop this reaction, and its attendant overreactiona, like McCarthy era anticommunist activities.
What I didn't realize back then was the role of computers to sift through massive stores of data, and identify patterns that may or may not be true. The computers will then be used by the few to control the many, using existing systems like voting and jury trials by using parallel construction and reputational attacks (see the revealed NSA slide about that).
We are constructing a zoo in which we humans will live, let's hope the computers running it are programmed to give us enough freedom to enjoy our lives. However, just like a zoo animal can't cause a lot of damage, so each individual human will be watched in the future. The right to privacy is not going to be killed by facebook, but by responses to terrorism.