I was thinking more about the blind item at Crazy Days And Nights discussed here.
I don’t know how the machine we will confront in the Apocalypse works. But I am good at visualizing potential methods of evolution, and then extrapolating out which are more likely than others. Sometimes it can be a hit, but it can be a miss, so take this post with a grain of salt. This is mainly about visualizing a worst case scenario we might very well face, based on observations today.
Suppose you were going to create a machine that is designed to penetrate every American’s life, for purposes of reinforcing government control. Literally, it was designed to produce a file on every American, or at least as many as possible, with a human assessment of their likelihood to become a problem for government, their attitudes toward authority, their attitudes toward freedom, their willingness to be cowed by authority, their likelihood of committing terrorism, their willingness to betray others to save themselves, their weaknesses, their vulnerabilities, and so on. Literally, a pseudo-government agent looking at their interpersonal interactions that they had when nobody was looking, getting to know them, and giving an honest, direct assessment of who they are, and any threat they pose.
There have been leaders in the past who have strived to create such a system in other countries. Some have even come close, such as in the former East Germany, where one out of 6.5 people were literally reporting on their fellow citizens to government, and not having a file might itself have made you a curiosity to the machine and gotten you attention:
The ratio for the Stasi was one secret policeman per 166 East Germans. When the regular informers are added, these ratios become much higher: In the Stasi’s case, there would have been at least one spy watching every 66 citizens! When one adds in the estimated numbers of part-time snoops, the result is nothing short of monstrous: one informer per 6.5 citizens. It would not have been unreasonable to assume that at least one Stasi informer was present in any party of ten or twelve dinner guests.
(Notice, dedicated ideological leftists usually comprise about 18-20% of a population. Those were not conservatives informing, and psychologies do not change. When the Apocalypse comes, this will happen and the machine will hoover up leftists eager to be given the freedom to attack fellow citizens from behind government authority.)
There in East Germany, listening devices in apartment buildings often all routed to a government-owned apartment/observation-post in the building to allow government spooks to listen to every apartment’s private conversations at will. They tried to recreate that in part already in the US Government, with the TIPS program, which would have created the same informant network as the Stasi fielded, only with even more spies per citizen. The government literally advertised it publically in a government publication. Some say they still may have created that, just in secret due to public outcry.
Imagine what it would be like, when such a machine takes interest in you and every informer in your sphere is turned to actively gather intelligence and report on you, as all of the informers in your vicinity but outside your personal sphere, can be deployed to follow you.
So suppose you wanted to recreate that East German system in America. The resources are certainly there, but America would probably rebel if it came out. So secrecy is paramount. You can’t have somebody file an FOIA request to some government agency for their file, and maybe score a hit by chance, complete with three weeks of transcripts of dinnertime conversations and bedroom pillow talk, and a minute by minute daytime itinerary for weeks on end.
So you privatize it. You create a private company, like a giant private investigations firm, run by government officials who are inside the revolving doors linking the private and public sectors of the intel community. You link up selected private investigative firms. You recruit anybody open to the network who gets access to denied areas like heater-repair guys and plumbers. You have the US Government pay it on contract for “consultations” in matters where the intelligence machine would be used. FBI’s domestic surveillance budget is actually maintained as a black budget, so they could be paying anything to anybody on a fee basis, and nobody would know. And they are just one agency.
If there is a terrorism investigation, you hire the company once to let you see their file on the suspect, and you pay them a ridiculous amount. If say, the FBI, is one day hit with an FOIA for all files relating to your name, nothing would come back responsive, because FBI wouldn’t have your file. But the machine is there, as if it was a government agency.
You could have agents accompany the private sector operators when needed in the field, or even briefly take command of a team of them for an operation, or find a way to construct conditions favorable to their operations using official authority. If they want a listening device installed in an office in a skyscraper owned by a Presidential candidate, you could get a warrant for another investigation in a nearby unit, and install the tech so it would also pick up what they want. The important thing is, the organizations are related, and work together, and cover for each other, but the records would be hidden.
The problem we would face is there would be this massive government-sized machine out there, like a gigantic government intelligence agency, and it would be private sector. Which means, sooner or later those powerful and wealthy people in the know who find out about it might try to hire it off the books to do stuff for the private sector. With enough money, anything is possible, so now you have a private machine, set up with government authority and government resources, with access to a government-funded network of operatives in non-official cover positions in society, and government-level technology, penetrating the entire nation, or at least the populous areas, and it can do anything to anyone if the price is right.
The leaders of the machine, presented with a target like Eleanor Mondale might just see a simple equation with an over the hill bimbo like Eleanor Mondale, who banged Bill Clinton on one side, and ten million dollars to flesh out their covert infiltration networks even more, so they might better stop a terrorist attack that would kill thousands, on the other side of the equation. And helping things along is the fact that any rich and powerful person who knows about it could amass the ability to expose it, so they will want to keep those people on their side. Remember Huma’s laptop that had files detailing FBI Special Access Programs that would trigger an uprising if they were made public? Think such a machine will blow off Hillary, with her FBI connections, or turn away her Clinton Foundation millions?
In principle it is horrific to those who place faith in the spirit of freedom, but crunch the numbers, and maybe it is a gray area when you are given the problem yourself. What is one round-heeled leftist bimbo who would sleep with Bill vs thousands of innocent Americans? But the gray area, whatever the shade, is a slippery slope and nothing says that machine will be run by white hats, once the left figures out it is out there.
One thing which hit me is McCain was intimately involved in the dossier operation, handing it off to the FBI so they could use it in the FISA courts. Like Eleanor, he too suddenly came down with brain cancer, something which seems to be going around on a bipartisan basis in politics of late, from Robert Novak, to Ted Kennedy, to Joe Biden’s kid, to Jimmy Carter. And the benefit of brain cancer is once it hits, anything the person says is unbelievable, because the disease is degrading their actual brain, where their memories are formed.
And like Eleanor, if Hillary was behind a misuse of our domestic intelligence infrastructure to attack President Donald J. Trump and McCain was used at one point to hand the dossier off to the FBI, he would have been a loose end. Who gave him the dossier? What did they tell him? Was there more to the story than he has said, that he knew? Had he been approached by “US Intelligence” to be part of some domestic information-gathering network and do favors for them occasionally? Did he report to someone? Was he a part of a machine? Might he, finding out he almost corrupted a US election because of the machine, been upset and have been a threat?
We will likely never know. Unless in a rage at his betrayal, he genuinely passed documents to Crazy Days And Nights, like they allege. But even then, my guess is that site would be in hopelessly over their head faced with this machine, unless they had extensive experience. They would either fail or be dead in a month. Exposure is not an option.
The goal of this site is to strengthen the readers for the trials that are coming. So in that vein, the takeaway from this post is, don’t get a flu vaccine, don’t trust anyone, and never think you are too paranoid.
Tell everyone about r/K Theory, because you are never too paranoid these days
Now We Know Why Googling ‘Pressure Cookers’ Gets a Visit from Cops – Philip Bump – The Atlantic Wire
http://adam.curry.com/art/1375427252_fkVzVXMk.html
The survailance state in eastern germany was human intelligence driven, not so much technology. And in regards to this there exists a healthy “don’t snitch” culture in america among a certain demographic.
Humint is the worry. Tech means nothing to me.
A system/network that big has to be unwieldy. It probably attacks itself all the time- of course a process like that is Darwinian. But what’s to stop a forward thinking part of the machine to preserve itself and ditch the rif-raf? Only time will tell.
I am telling you, you can’t assume your extrapolations will allow you to model this system. Assume there is something you don’t know which makes extrapolations unreliable, because as far as I can tell, there is.
I’m going to be avoiding doctors for the foreseeable future, no shit. And I won’t be at all surprised if I come down with cancer in the future.
I’d advise anyone active in the movement to do the same, at least until we see what happens with Trump.