[Puke]

meh. its not like they dont have access to all that **** anyway, and its not like they dont use it to profile people. this just means that they can use that information in official court cases.

I have known people that have been denied government contracts because the feds had them flagged as political activists. They were of course NOT any sort of political ANYTHING, and had never been a part of any protest, or even had anything to do with protesters or activism. What they did do was give an interview to cnn about 5 years before, and talk about technology that was being used for political purposes.

if you think you have any privacy, you're just wrong - and you should get over it. Id really like this to be a topic for debate, but its not. its a one sided coin. no privacy. its a myth. you dont have any. sorry. effort will be better spent if you try to make sure that the information is used responsibly, because effort spent to conceal or protect the information is just being wasted.

The other day, i was talking to a researcher in the genetics / biotech industry. her orginization relied heavily on government funding, and involved stem cells. nothing had been published describing their work, so it was all 'officially' in the dark. about thirty minutes (yes, 30 minutes, one half of an hour) after their first paper was published, they received a call withdrawing their government funding.

"sorry, because right wing politics in the US are identified with religious concervitism, it is our duty to cancel all funding for research involving stem cells, evolution, or other scientific progress. try again during another administration."

Its really quite silly. I dont mean to start a debate about absurd partisan politics and the two party system as a sociological institution that we are better off without. the point is, that they got the call in THIRTY MINUTES after a paper was published. Do you have any idea how many HUNDREDS of papers are published EVERY DAY?

Now, you really have two choices here on what to believe, wither or not you agree or disagree with the policy:

First, you can assume that they had been watching the project, and were just waiting for an opportunity to cut the funding. I am told that this is a virtual impossibility, and that the research team would be able to launch babies out of cannons without anyone knowing about it, unless they published a paper. im somewhat skeptical of this, but who knows.

Second, you can assume that no one knew what was going on until the paper was published, and some sort of system, akin to the Echelon System, detected key words or phrases in the paper, and flagged it.

Option one reaffirms your lack of privacy. Option two tells us that vast and unfathomable resources within the NSA are being spent to slow down scientific progress for political gain, instead of for important things like securing US global economic supremacy, committing industrial espionage against other nations, or engaging in inteligence / counter inteligence activities.

Either way, im not too happy with it.

edit: I realize that at the begining of this post, I instruct you not to waste your time griping. Then in the rest of the post, I procede to gripe. Please pay no heede to me, and continue about your regular business.

[ February 11, 2004, 05:02: Message edited by: Puke ]