Total Information Awareness...Take 2

Oy...

Check out this Wall Street Journal (of all sources!) article on how Total Information Awareness is being resuscitated:

The rules now allow the little-known National Counterterrorism Center to examine the government files of U.S. citizens for possible criminal behavior, even if there is no reason to suspect them.

And

The agency's best-known product is a database called TIDE, which stands for the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment. TIDE contains more than 500,000 identities suspected of terror links. Some names are known or suspected terrorists; others are terrorists' friends and families; still more are people with some loose affiliation to a terrorist.  

Yeah, that means you, you threat to national security peace activists. 

Facebook and Pinterest posts not included.  

Yet.

Good piece on the importance of locally grown food.

The notion of importing fruits and vegetables, the idea of having everything “fresh” all the time, was until recently inconceivable and is likely to become so again, as production and transportation costs rise and the absurdity of the “system” becomes evident even to those who now profit from it. When we ignore large-scale production of local food we invite apocalypse, or at least food shortages.

I always wonder about those $1.79 strawberry specials in December.

Prophetic vision

Bruce Schneier calls out someone else's call out of a 1956 Asimov short story, "Let's Get Together". Hard to believe the old man died nearly a decade before 2001.

"Consider further that this news will leak out as more and more people become involved in our countermeasures and more and more people begin to guess what we're doing. Then what? The panic might do us more harm than any one TC bomb."

The Presidential Assistant said irritably, "In Heaven's name, man, what do you suggest we do, then?"

"Nothing," said Lynn. "Call their bluff. Live as we have lived and gamble that They won't dare break the stalemate for the sake of a one-bomb head start."

"Impossible!" said Jeffreys. "Completely impossible. The welfare of all of Us is very largely in my hands, and doing nothing is the one thing I cannot do. I agree with you, perhaps, that X-ray machines at sports arenas are a kind of skin-deep measure that won't be effective, but it has to be done so that people, in the aftermath, do not come to the bitter conclusion that we tossed our country away for the sake of a subtle line of reasoning that encouraged donothingism."

Special police? Really?

Am I the only one who thinks this is a terrible idea? First heard about it on WBGO, in a segment on Newark Journal, called Life After the Newark PD.

Apparently there is an organization, known as the Newark Special Police Association, "whose members are trained at the Newark Police Academy and certified by the state training commission. The group has traditionally arranged work for officers with the city’s housing authority, schools and hospitals." However, through this organization, unemployed cops are now getting hired by PSE&G, to essentially do security guard duty. I'm ok with that. What alarms me is that these guys have "full police powers to make arrests on the job."

Don't get me wrong. I'm all in favor of giving unemployed folks gainful employment, especially in their areas of expertise. And it's kind of PSE&G to pick up the tab. But really? Giving police powers to what is essentially a security guard or mercenary? Even assuming that PSE&G does its job and never abuses its authority, aren't we going down an incredibly steep and slippery slope? Full police powers are generally reserved for the government, where, in a democracy, the government can be held accountable. If one of these guys goes bad, who's accountable?

Name of Blackwater ring a bell?

Watching New York

Here's some real news: New York City is planning to waste a whole bunch of money. Building a large surveillance network in midtown Manhattan. To stop terrorism.

Let's get one thing clear. Surveillance cannot prevent terrorism. At best it can (maybe) help track down whodunit. Which is rarely a question in true terrorism. The whole point of terrorism is publicity. The only thing that mass surveillance achieves is a chilling effect on the populace. Surveillance is best left to very well-defined, limited applications (say, the Mona Lisa).