[noir_lord]

The depressing part for me is that I've started to consider what I search for on a daily basis and how that might look...essentially they are starting to make me paranoid.

Over the last few months I've googled

Numerous Weapon Systems (I have a fascination with WW1, WWII and Cold War history - stuff like Black Arrow etc).

Insurgencies during the British Empire

Electronics (want to get back into and saw a fun project to make on reddit the other day) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=movVFYWheGM

Linux stuff (settings, security, the usual stuff a developer/system administrator would look at).

Programming stuff (relating to security, encryption etc)

NSA related material (following the story closely).

Setting up a VPN (so I can access Netflix US because Netflix UK is basically crap).

The US constitution and some case law.

NSA Report: "User noir_lord has an interest in privacy, weapons, insurgencies and excellent technical skills, user noir_lord should be monitored"

Where in reality I'm a 34 year old web developer from the North of England who enjoys history, techy stuff and playing with my cats.

[rdtsc]

That is one way that thought control works.

Religion uses this, "don't think naughty thoughts, God will record it and you'll pay for it later". NSA is God except that NSA exists and is real.

Here your search is a bit like your thoughts. Any of those things you listed, possibly could have landed you on the "naughty list". So now you start to really worry about what you search for. If you can't research or find info about, well might as well not think about things at all at some point.

Before you used to go to the library. Except that they can monitor that too and it is terribly inefficient.

I grew up in Soviet Union and I remember being told by my parents not to mention or talk about certain things (criticizing the party, telling jokes about politics around strangers, ..., and so on). But at least you knew, if you are in the country side with your family you could crack jokes at the stupidity of bureaucracy. And then when I came here the big "selling" point of the country was "you have all this freedom, and this is something you really need, want and is the best thing in the world". But just like you, I started in the last 3-5 years to kind of think for a second before searching for things. Or when I write an email to a friend, I am careful if I am a bit too sarcastic or making a joke about the president or whatnot.

Not saying we'll end up in a labor camp anytime soon, but the tragedy is that this kind of control and monitoring so disturbing vis-a-vis propaganda and the expectations of what this country should be. In totalitarian regimes at least it is clear and understandable what is going on and what is expected of people. Here it is "freedom, dreams, realize yourself, pursue your happiness" but effectively what we think about is restricted.

[noir_lord]

Thanks for the interesting post, as I mentioned in the first post I have a fascination for 19th and 20th century history and the parallels to some of it are horribly stark (so stark in fact I can't believe that the people in power haven't spotted them which leaves me with "this is what they want").

Secret courts, no right to due process, no right to face your accuser, the presumption of guilt on political grounds, secret warrants, an out of control security apparatus, extra judicial killings, curtailing on the right to free protest, right to free speech...

Thanks to our reliance on modern communications and technology the state apparatus can assemble data warehouses that the most optimistic of STASI operatives wouldn't have even dreamed possible and we seem to be sleep walking into a police state more pervasive and insidious than anything we've ever seen.

"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever."

[throwawaykf05]

But if you delve into that history even more, you'll note that it was accompanied by a pervasive sense of dread and fear even amongst those who were not being persecuted. In Nazi Germany, for instance, it was not just the Jews who lived in terror of the Stasi (edit: mixed up my history, not Stasi, but the "death squads" -- the Stasi came after the war, but even more feared), but all German citizens in general. The reason was probably that the Stasi made no attempts to hide their activities, just as the various Islamic groups and Mexican drug gangs don't today. Publicity of their acts to spread terror is the very tool these folks rely on to exert their control.

People who draw parallels between the actions of today's intelligence agencies and the agencies of oppression of yesteryear uniformly miss out on this key difference.

[polymatter]

The time to stop a totalitarian police state is _before_ it becomes a totalitarian police state. It gets a lot harder to stop afterwards.

[gaius]

As Bruce Schneieir says, it is poor civic hygiene to even let the systems be built in the first place. Unfortunately we are well past that point.

[noir_lord]

> People who draw parallels between the actions of today's intelligence agencies and the agencies of oppression of yesteryear uniformly miss out on this key difference.

Except that sense of dread doesn't come into place instantly it will lag behind the apparatus that causes the dread.

[throwawaykf05]

The flaw in the "thought control" premise is that the NSA never intended their monitoring to be revealed, so you'd never restrict your thoughts.

Unless... Snowden is an NSA operation to subtly begin exerting thought control! Brilliant! Now that I think about it, "Snowden" even sounds like a codename for an NSA operation.

[rdtsc]

I didn't say it is conspiratorial and intentional. Of course they don't want those they monitor to know they are being monitored. The thought control element is a byproduct of constraints, rewards, and bureaucratic setup. So nobody probably sat down or met on some secret island to set this, but nevertheless that effect is there.

[gaius]

"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." -- Cardinal Richelieu

[brerlapn]

That quote, and the mentality behind it, used to drive me to obsessively parse my language to avoid having something twisted out of context. Since then I've realized those efforts are largely for naught: anyone who would judge you based on six lines lacks the compassion or wisdom that would merit giving any weight to their judgment, anyone who twists your words and is powerful enough to do so won't be hindered by your care in trying to avoid it.

I think the real lesson in there is to be slow to judge and not let others suck you into joining the outrage mob based on thin arguments or weak evidence.

[Create]

An institution directed at the control of thought in the European world, based around weekly surveillance of the conduct and thoughts of every human being. Based around the censorship of all reading material and in the end based upon the ability to predict and to punish unorthodox thought.

http://benjamin.sonntag.fr/Moglen-at-Re-Publica-Freedom-of-t...

We begin therefore where they are determined not to end, with the question whether any form of democratic self-government, anywhere, is consistent with the kind of massive, pervasive, surveillance into which the Unites States government has led not only us but the world.

This should not actually be a complicated inquiry.

http://snowdenandthefuture.info/events.html

Surveillance is not an end toward totalitarianism, it is totalitarianism itself.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/democracylive/europe-24385999

[pling]

Well you're in the same club as most of us.

Reminds me of: http://youtu.be/-PSeAfSKQe4

[noir_lord]

That video is amazing, I've always liked Pink Floyd's "The Wall" so I'm a bit ashamed I've never seen the full video version.

The imagery is chill inducingly powerful.

[ekianjo]

> NSA Report: "User noir_lord has an interest in privacy, weapons, insurgencies and excellent technical skills, user noir_lord should be monitored"

You've got the right profile to be a "collateral damage" in case something goes wrong around you.

[stordoff]

A few months ago, I spend a good hour or so googling and reading about Anthrax strains, dispersal, etc. after seeing something about it on TV and getting curious.

I realised afterwards it might look a tad suspicious if NSA/GCHQ/etc. picked up on it. Oh well.

[drdaeman]

Well, a good side of it - the more false positives they have, the worse for them.

[noir_lord]

If you assume their goal is to do what they claim it is.

If not then false positives are largely irrelevant.

[thibauts]

This is censorship by terror.

[GHFigs]

You're nuts if you think there's significant overlap between yours and the activities of the people responsible for things like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents,_20...

[busterarm]

So the NSA is nuts then? Because that's what this leak seems to be implying.

I have some pretty strange internet searches as well, but the cat is already out of the bag on that one I guess.

[GHFigs]

Because that's what this leak seems to be implying.

Are you looking at the evidence or the articles written about it? Because the evidence is simply that there exists a method to select Tor-related traffic out of a stream. That alone is nothing. You know very little about what the input is or where the output goes, or what conclusions are drawn by the people analyzing it.

To reach the paranoid conclusions that are getting such traction around here one has to presume that the same institution competent enough to construct this collection apparatus is so fantastically braindead as to make, on a continuing basis, elementary mistakes of analysis on the data that would undermine both their avowed purpose and whatever totalitarian scheming one wishes to imagine is "really" going on. Mistakes which, somehow, miraculously, every single reader with the slightest bit of understanding of the subject matter detects and avoids! I don't buy it.

[noir_lord]

Don't tell me, tell the intelligence services as they are the ones who don't know that.

[GHFigs]

I'm telling you because you're the one that thinks you're a target.