This interesting program on NOVA aired today - any thoughts?

NOVA | The Spy Factory | PBS

has someone tapped your account?

Pardon me??:stunned: Oh, probably long ago, no doubt! But then they've got all our accounts, Ian; so many so, that it's a blizzard of information that so-far has kept us somewhat safe from Big Brother. Although, new software is being developed/resurrected - artificial intelligence programs to sift the mountains of data for connections, and thought patterns. Soon, they'll be able to steal all our oatmeal cookie recipes, and guess who's getting the cookies!:P

All to an agency that's literally unaccountable; lovely, isn't it!;) I think, and this it just my bias, but living here in a nation that has never experienced Orwellian control like a Soviet state under Stalin, or China under Mao, we just haven't a clue why this is wrong. McCarthy should have given us an incling of what goes wrong when a demagogue gets ahold of everyone's personal information for political use (as in destroying people's lives); more recently, Nixon and his xenophobic tendencies. Yet, every time something bad goes wrong, it takes decades to undo the lost rights. Which leads to the question of "why if the agency knew everything ahead of time, did it not pass the information on, or act on it??" "why did the 9-11 commission not investigate our own intelligence failures?". And it's not the fault of the employees - it's the bosses. I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but I can see how people can get caught up in the idea of one!!

Bill (a former employee of CARNIVORE/ESCHELON) tells me that he thinks it's for growing the agency's bureaucracy; but he's spooked. A more likely scenario is turf wars over credit for the big case to be won. All the chiefs wanted to be the ones to break the case and nab the conspirators, so nobody would share information. Cruel to think they would choose petty cap feathers over preventing shockingly deadly acts of violence, but this is unfortuantely one of the failings of power. But who holds them accountable? Historians? McCarthy died before justice was served. Rumsfeld will probably perish before his decision to use torture will ever cause him to face justice. I think stemming the problem at the source is the only answer, and that requires a better system of checks and balances, and more accountability of officeholders to we citizens, lest they simply brush off their duties because campaign cash and old alliances have blinded them to the needs of justice.

So, has someone tapped my account? No doubt, but probably just for laughs!:lol:

[ame=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5464625623984168940]nineteen eighty-four 1984[/ame]

^Don't forget the song of the same name by Eurythmics.:D

Was there one?;) Actually, that's the name of the music used in the movie!:stunned: (I think they must have drawn inspiration from the movie or something.. would be fascinated to know.) Use the latest edition - the 9th edition of Newspeak.

Also reminds me of the Sigur Ros song Njosnavelin which translates into "Secret Spy Machine" :D

Interesting patterns:cool:... I'll be informing the NSA.. oops, they already know!:laugh3: They know everything, but can't sort it for the sheer volume of information, so keep spamming - it keeps clogging their computers!;)