Oldspeak: “‘You wait, in five years, the technology is getting better, they’ll be cameras everyplace . . . whether you like it or not. The argument against using automation is just this craziness that ‘Oh, it’s Big Brother.’ Get used to it!’ -Michael Bloomberg. Coming soon to a city and town near you: Total Information Awareness! All your movements, communications and activities, constantly observed, analyzed and assessed by parties unknown. This little story in the News documenting a chilling moment of candor managed to pass without much notice. When tech billionaires start telling you that you should get used to a life where Big Brother is always watching it is significant, especially when he sees it as sure to come as “you can’t keep the tides from coming in.” This man is brazen enough to say omnipresent, constant surveillance is a going to be an unavoidable part of a brave new and “different world, uncharted“. There are already 2 of the same cameras shown above on the main thoroughfare in my neighborhood not more than a couple blocks from each other. This will be our 1984 world. Where drones surreptitiously peep into people’s windows. Where your DVR watches and listens you via “ambient action” technology and all cameras use face recognition. Face recognition is already being marketed as something cool.It’s already being used to sell you shit you don’t need. Now it will be used to keep track of you. Your privacy be damned. This is how the surveillance state protects the interests of the rich and ignores the interests of everyone else. Unless of course your interest is to by something from them.” “Ignorance Is Strength”, “Profit Is Paramount”.
Envisioning a future where privacy is a thing of the past, Mayor Bloomberg said Friday it will soon be impossible to escape the watchful eyes of surveillance cameras and even drones in the city.
He acknowledged privacy concerns, but said “you can’t keep the tides from coming in.”
“You wait, in five years, the technology is getting better, they’ll be cameras everyplace . . . whether you like it or not,” Bloomberg said.
The security measures have drawn scorn from some civil libertarians — but Bloomberg scoffed at privacy concerns on his Friday morning program on WOR-AM.
“The argument against using automation is just this craziness that ‘Oh, it’s Big Brother,’” Bloomberg said. “Get used to it!”
The New York Civil Liberties Union has documented nearly 2,400 surveillance cameras fixed on public spaces in Manhattan alone. Many are operated by the police, others by poroperty owners.
In Lower Manhattan, an initiative developed after 9/11 known as the “Ring of Steel” integrates the NYPD’s cameras with those of banks and other institutions.
But in the future, the cameras won’t just be planted on buildings and utility poles. Some of them will be able to fly, the mayor pointed out.
“It’s scary,” Bloomberg said. “But what’s the difference whether the drone is up in the air or on the building? I mean intellectually I have trouble making a distinction. And you know you’re gonna have face recognition software. People are working on that.”
Bloomberg warned that drones would be able to peep into private residences – but that Peeping Tom legislation could help maintain some privacy.
“It’s just we’re going into a different world, unchartered,” he said.
“We’re going to have more visibility and less privacy. I don’t see how you stop that. And it’s not a question of whether I think it’s good or bad. I just don’t see how you could stop that because we’re going to have them.”
Oldspeak:“The Department of Homeland Security monitors your updates on social networks, including Facebook and Twitter, to uncover “Items Of Interest”. That’s catchy, in a Orwellian kinna way. “Items Of Interest” really? “Cloud” is an “item of interest? Consider the irony. In an era of unprecedented safety in the U.S., under the guise of ‘national security’, the U.S. is prosecuting a perpetual and nebulous “War On Terror”, Numerous civil liberties have been shredded via the “USA Patriot Act” and secretly negotiated treaties like ACTA, while Americans are being surveiled and spied on more than ever. We’re being encouraged to “Go Digital” and transition most of our lives from the physical world to a ‘more convenient’ virtual world, that is easier to monitor and control. We’ve created a culture of fear unmatched since the days of the “Red Scare”. While words like “freedom” and “democracy” and “liberty” and flung about like so much red white and blue confetti. It is the insidious brilliance of inverted totalitarianism. You’re taught to love your farm, while you’re kept, spiritually, mentally and nutritionally deprived. Perpetually generating revenue for the corporocratic elite. Entertained in a world of screens, constantly bombarded with messages from a formidable propaganda system, telling you what to buy, think, eat, feel and know. We can only be kept in the cages we do not see. And we’re taught to love our cages. “To See The Farm Is To Leave It.”
The Department of Homeland Security monitors your updates on social networks, including Facebook and Twitter, to uncover “Items Of Interest” (IOI), according to an internal DHS document released by the EPIC. That document happens to include a list of the baseline terms for which the DHS–or more specifically, a DHS subcontractor hired to monitor social networks–use to generate real-time IOI reports. (Although the released PDF is generally all reader-selectable text, the list of names was curiously embedded as an image of text, preventing simple indexing. We’ve fixed that below.)
To be fair, the DHS does have an internal privacy policy that attempts to strip your “PII”–Personally Identifiable Information–from the aggregated tweets and status updates, with some broad exceptions:
1) U.S. and foreign individuals in extremis situations involving potential life or death circumstances; (this is no change)
2) Senior U.S. and foreign government officials who make public statements or provide public updates;
3) U.S. and foreign government spokespersons who make public statements or provide public updates;
4) U.S. and foreign private sector officials and spokespersons who make public statements or provide public updates;
5) Names of anchors, newscasters, or on-scene reporters who are known or identified as reporters in their post or article or who use traditional and/or social media in real time to keep their audience situationally aware and informed;
6) Current and former public officials who are victims of incidents or activities related to Homeland Security; and
7) Terrorists, drug cartel leaders or other persons known to have been involved in major crimes of Homeland Security interest, (e.g., mass shooters such as those at Virginia Tech or Ft. Hood) who are killed or found dead.
In addition, the Media Monitoring Capability team can transmit personal information to the DHS National Operations Center over the phone as deemed necessary.
The MMC watch may provide the name, position, or other information considered to be PII to the NOC over the telephone when approved by the appropriate DHS OPS authority. But that information must not be stored in a database that could be searched by an individual’s PII.
In addition to the following list of terms, the DHS can also add additional search terms circumstantially as deemed necessary.
DHS Media Monitoring Terms

2.13 Key Words & Search TermsThis is a current list of terms that will be used by the NOC when monitoring social media sites to provide situational awareness and establish a common operating picture. As natural or manmade disasters occur, new search terms may be added.
The new search terms will not use PII in searching for relevant
mission-related information.
Oldspeak: “‘You wait, in five years, the technology is getting better, they’ll be cameras everyplace . . . whether you like it or not. The argument against using automation is just this craziness that ‘Oh, it’s Big Brother.’ Get used to it!’ -Michael Bloomberg. Coming soon to a city and town near you: Total Information Awareness! All your movements, communications and activities, constantly observed, analyzed and assessed by parties unknown. This little story in the News documenting a chilling moment of candor managed to pass without much notice. When tech billionaires start telling you that you should get used to a life where Big Brother is always watching it is significant, especially when he sees it as sure to come as “you can’t keep the tides from coming in.” This man is brazen enough to say omnipresent, constant surveillance is a going to be an unavoidable part of a brave new and “different world, uncharted“. There are already 2 of the same cameras shown above on the main thoroughfare in my neighborhood not more than a couple blocks from each other. This will be our 1984 world. Where drones surreptitiously peep into people’s windows. Where your DVR watches and listens you via “ambient action” technology and all cameras use face recognition. Face recognition is already being marketed as something cool. It’s already being used to sell you shit you don’t need. Now it will be used to keep track of you. Your privacy be damned. This is how the surveillance state protects the interests of the rich and ignores the interests of everyone else. Unless of course your interest is to by something from them.” “Ignorance Is Strength”, “Profit Is Paramount”.
