The Spy Factory: The New Thought Police 'The National Security Agency is developing a tool that George Orwell's Thought Police might have found useful: an artificial intelligence system designed to gain insight into what people are thinking. With the entire Internet and thousands of databases for a brain, the device will be able to respond almost instantaneously to complex questions posed by intelligence analysts. As more and more data is collected-through phone calls, credit card receipts, social networks like Facebook and MySpace, GPS tracks, cell phone geolocation, Internet searches, Amazon book purchases, even E-Z Pass toll records-it may one day be possible to know not just where people are and what they are doing, but what and how they think. The system is so potentially intrusive that at least one researcher has quit, citing concerns over the dangers in placing such a powerful weapon in the hands of a top-secret agency with little accountability.' A Concealed Assault on Privacy 'NO2ID has been warning since at least 2006/2007 about the stated intentions of government "to overcome current barriers to information sharing within the public sector". Now the Ministry of Justice has launched an extraordinary coup. It wants to convert the Data Protection Act into its exact opposite, into a means for any government department to obtain and use any information however it likes.'
Sunday, 15 February 2009
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