Tom Burghardt: "Managing" Data and Dissent: Where Big Brother Meets Market Fundamentalism
Repression doesn't come cheap, just ask the FBI.
As the securitization of daily life increase at near exponential rates (all to keep us "safe," mind you) the dark contours of an American police state, like a pilot's last glimpse of an icy peak before a plane crash, wobbles into view.
In the main, such programs include, but are by no means limited to the following: electronic surveillance (call records, internet usage, social media); covert hacking by state operatives; GPS tracking; CCTV cameras linked-in to state databases; "smart" cards; RFID chipped commodities and the spooky "internet of things;" biometrics, and yes, the Pentagon has just stood up a Biometrics Identity Management Agency (BIMA); data-mining; watch listing; on and on it goes.
Pity our poor political minders, snowed-under by a blizzard of data-sets crying out for proper "management"! Or, as sycophantic armchair warrior and New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman, would have it, "The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist--McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the F-15."
So true; yet neither can an aggregate of repressive police and intelligence agencies function without an army of corporate grifters who guide that "hidden hand" and not-so-hidden fist into highly profitable safe harbors. Call it Big Brother meets market fundamentalism.
And so, the heat is on as America's premier political police agency struggles to "modernize" their case file management system.
Continued. . .
William Norman Grigg: We're From the Government; We're Here to "Help" You to Death
They kill not because they want to
Because they think it's right to In some cases
Have mercy on them and someday they may
Have mercy on you
The Mercy Killers
Have mercy on you
The Mercy Killers....
-- Theme to the imaginary TV show "The Mercy Killers," as presented in a 1978 Saturday Night Live sketch.
Susan L. Stuckey was suicidal when the police arrived at her apartment in Prairie Village, Kansas on March 31. When the police arrived to conduct what they dishonestly called a "welfare check," Stuckey refused their offer to "help."
Police had paid several previous visits to Stuckey, who reportedly suffered from severe emotional problems. On this particular occasion, when they materialized shortly after daybreak, they were acting on ulterior motives. "Our intent was to take her to K.U. Med for a mental evaluation," admitted Police Captain Tim Schwartzkopf following the confrontation.
Any day that begins with the arrival of armed strangers on one's doorstep is going to end badly. Despite her afflictions, Stuckey was lucid enough to understand that principle, and she did the entirely rational thing: She bluntly invited the police to direct their unwanted attention elsewhere. Since she wasn't suspected of a crime, that should have ended the matter.
But the police weren't investigating a crime. They were carrying out a much more dangerous function: They were there to "help" Stuckey, whether or not this would be appropriate, and her desires were irrelevant to the matter.
Continued. . .
