it’s the facebook business model.

Came up out of the dungeon for a minute, saw the post. Don’t even ask me about this fucking election – talk about taking “presumptive” to new heights. Just thought I would chime in on the whole panopticon thing Take TANGRAM and AMI managed by the evangelical angels at the Air Force , you know the place with the flying cross and the proselytizing high command, tie it into a hedge fund or two and you can pretty much herd the sheep any way you want them to go.

that is some serious linky goodness you posted

Have you seen a pony down there?

[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

Nothing to see anyway, duelling press agents and photo ops mostly although one senses a shift in the balance of the Force. Oh, and a press corps that does appear a bit bewildered in the moment, not controlling the narrative so much as having been told by Obama to get in line and do as they’re told. I confess, I am rather enjoying that bit.

Carry on, Xeno, and watch out for mold.

Hello to all. Thanks to everyone. We’ll see how things go in Denver.

Oh wait… shameless self-promotion.

That’s a fine post! And after the PB 2.0 work, I read with with new eyes. Ack! This part I like especially quoting Barney:

Politically, power in the network society is defined as access to networks and control over flows. Being a node in a network is a source of power but one that involves a certain level of affluence to build the relevant infrastructure. In the network society, not all nodes are equal, a core node exercises more power than a semi-peripheral or peripheral node, whether we are talking about countries, firms, regions or individuals. Similarly, financial flows are more powerful than flows of ideas that fuel contemporary social movements (such the environmental or anti-globalization movements).

Of course, the financial flows are flows of ideas too. Especially the “complex,” “innovative” flows…

[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

All of which is downloaded daily by satellite phone to corporate headquarters and stored, where it can be analyzed and shared and handed over to law enforcement and the courts and who knows who else in and out of government.

Not satellite, mobile:

A palm-sized device transmits the data daily by cell network.

(That’s GPRS, EDGE, EV-D0 or UMTS, mostly.)

The mobile operators love this stuff because it lets them charge for bulk always-on services with no churn or customer support needed. Check for an AT&T or Verizon in the woodpile on this proposal.

where everyone knows everyone else’s business.

All the rage in the insurance industry are vehicular “black boxes” that track mileage, speed, acceleration and deceleration, cornering forces and most ominously, location. All of which is downloaded daily by satellite phone cell network to corporate headquarters and stored, where it can be analyzed and shared and handed over to law enforcement and the courts and who knows who else in and out of government. [edited, h/t cenobite, keeping me honest]

They’re being peddled as a means of cost savings for the consumer, discounts being given for tamer driving habits and lower mileage, thus aiming the point of the spear at drivers least able to resist, the ones on the lower end of the economic scale – soon to be most of us. Many promises being made about privacy, but as Richard Hutchinson, a Progressive Insurance manager who heads their program says quite openly:

Hutchinson, of Progressive, said no data from its pay-as-you-drive program have been subpoenaed, but “we all know it’s going to happen at some point. Our position is the data belongs to the consumer and we only release it with their permission. However, subject to a court order, there’s not much we can do.” In any case, the company does not track driver location, he said.

“We can, and we’ve elected not to. For a lot of consumers, that would make them very nervous about all this,” he said.

Indeed. Far better to get the boxes in place and then turn on the tracking option. So very disruptive if the consumers were to get nervous during the implant stage. (What is pissing me off the most is that there isn’t even a pretense of deceit anymore. I felt more respected when they were all lying to me.)

As always, a way to drive a wedge between the various special interests on the Left has been found:

The issue has chiseled an odd political split. Environmental groups have lined up with insurance companies in support of a bill to allow pricing based on voluntary mileage verification, while the prospect of insurers gauging not just miles, but mileage “quality,” has some consumer and privacy rights groups howling. Their fears include industry abuses, hackers and the likelihood that driver records will wind up in court. The Times last year reported that toll officials regularly turn over FasTrak [a pre-paid drive-through black-box bridge toll system] data under subpoena in divorce cases, lawsuits and criminal investigations.

But are the Greenies really so cavalier about giving up privacy rights to meet their environmental goals?

Marcy Greenhut of Berkeley likes the sound of pay-as-you-drive. She mostly cycles or takes public transportation, and she has seen consumers drive less as gas prices have skyrocketed. Better to feel the pinch of every mile, she said.

“Anything that can incentivize people to think twice before they drive, to put a little more thoughtfulness into our routine, I’m in favor of.”

Anything, Marcie? Well, nice to have you on our side.

If you thought 9/11 was a potent driver for intrusion into privacy and suspension of Constitutional rights, just you wait and see what gets done in the name of saving the planet, and how eager folks are to fall in line once they are starving in the dark.

From a performance in Germany. Sometimes these YouTube clips are just spot-on perfect, aren’t they?

i have been mulling over a post in my mind for weeks, related. its terrifying. it is here. firstly, what google doesn’t own shrinks every day. google has already rolled over for USGOV, they all have. AT&T has this beautiful thingie “the cloud.” all your data goes vrooom up to THE CLOUD and then back down to your computer. YAY! connects everything! and…on the CLOUD, of course, the government is sitting bloated sucking up all the data! sweeeeeeet.

everything connected. twitter, facebook, ooVoo, iPhone bank account credit card camera phone videoconference voice comments. we are there big time, the grid.

we claimed prescience with the fiction device of the telescreen. we thought it would be forced on us! how silly. we never guessed that we’d be begging to buy one, camping out in line to buy one, saving up to buy one and urging our friends to use theirs all the time.

___________________________
.delusions of un mundo mejor.

I bookmarked it the first time around and then didn’t get to it. So much matter can be daunting. My favorite part is the conclusion

Is it time to re-define totalitarianism yet? Let me make the guess that one of the latest forms of social inequalities will the power and capacity to avoid extensive surveillance, that is where privacy will become a possession of the upper classes.

Reading through the essay more quickly than I really should, I noticed that in the background of my response to it was an awareness that I derive a small but real satisfaction from noticing that Netflix and Amazon (for instance) don’t really do a very good job of predicting my tastes. I think I probably put things in my Netflix queue a little bit randomly just for the sake of screwing with their algorithm.

People in general seem to have a deep primitive evasive response to these things. There’s a satisfaction in telling lies to pollsters far beyond mere vandalism.

The surveillance system is one reason I live under a rock. But I know there’s no hiding place down here.

Are there smaller ISP providers (for example) who provide more privacy rights either because that’s their niche or because they’re too small for the govt. to care about. I understand any data they have can be subpoenaed (it’s like anyone else’s data), but are there ISP and other service providers who limit what data they collect?

I think I probably put things in my Netflix queue a little bit randomly just for the sake of screwing with their algorithm.

I saw a presentation from someone from the Natl Defense U. who said that one of the reasons to protect privacy and not gather excessive data is that people begin to protect themselves by lying.

He also said that lack of privacy is itself a security vulnerability.

… into their Cloud, they’re insane (though I imagine plenty will be less paranoid, or realistic, than I am).

Since we can’t assume that the Dems won’t sell us out on Net Neutrality, given how they serviced the telcos on FISA, with complete disregard for public opinion, what we are going to need, IMNSHO, is a low-bandwidth and encrypted system of P2P communication (including search). I realize that doesn’t fit the business model of an ever-increasing pipe…

But there you are.

[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

This burst of new technology cuts both ways. In one aspect as a means of interpersonal communication that lets people understand in unprecedented ways that they are not alone, and facilitates their organizing and beginning to bring about pressure and focuses it more pointedly and productively than ever before.

That in turn threatens established power, of all sorts, and so those established structures will try and use the technology to their own ends, to monitor, manipulate, deceive and control.

The key, it seems to me, is to keep the infrastructure in the public interest. As discarding the Fairness Doctrine and rescinding media concentration controls have led to corruption of the MSM into a tool of the corporatist elite, a failure to sustain Net Neutrality will tilt the balance in favor of established power continuity and away from populist opportunity.

The internet will either be the most individually empowering, progressive development in all of human history or the strongest tool of authoritarian control ever constructed. Someone more clever than I needs to figure out how to communicate that to the masses, so they begin to care instead of facilitate.

Is similar to utility or grid computing.

Traditionally internet services are provisioned by clusters of servers where different servers do different parts of the job, e.g. “database server” or “web server” or “application server”, etc, etc.

It’s not efficient in terms of servers, power, air and rackspace. And it’s hard to scale up and down based on the number of users you have to serve.

The cloud or grid or whatever is a kind of computing platform made of many many servers that are shared by many applications, one of which is yours. Scaling up or down just means renting more or less capacity, and provisioning and operation are mostly Someone Else’s Problem.

You can already get grid services from Amazon and Google, and I’m sure all new exciting kinds of abuse will happen, but surveillance is not a driver for the architecture, efficiency is.

FrenchDoc, I’m all for self promotion, but did you check the dates on the linky goodness.

Strong encryption and media liberalization. Before that, secure the vote and restore the constitution.

… was addressing me, Xenophon. And rightly so.

Back to your basement!