NSA To Datamine Social Networking Sites 346
An anonymous reader writes "New Scientist has discovered that the NSA is funding research into the mass harvesting of the information that people post about themselves on social networks. And it could harness advances in Internet technology -- specifically the forthcoming 'semantic web' championed by the Web standards organisation W3C -- to combine data from social networking websites with details such as banking, retail and property records, allowing the NSA to build extensive, all-embracing personal profiles of individuals."
Re:This is why we're fighting against REAL ID (Score:3, Informative)
We had a wide range of supporters, Left and Right, Atheist and Christian, all working together to help stop this....
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=830740502
Re:Standard Waste of Our Tax $ (Score:3, Informative)
From various objective standards the US is in decline relative to not only Europe, but also Japan and China. China is a less desireable place to live, but they are changing in a positive direction, while the US is changing in a negative direction. Will the qualities meet? Will China become superior? This is partially determined by choices that we and our governmental entities make NOW.
We are discussing one such choice here. This one appears to be one that will make the US a less desireable country to live in, though possibly not "to rule over". I.e., the benefit to the citizenry is not equivalent to the benefit to the government. They are frequently opposites.
Re:Standard Waste of Our Tax $ (Score:3, Informative)
I'll agree with you about the proportion of male children in China being a significant negative factor, and raise you that it will decrease social stability over the next few decades. China is still improving as a place to live.
A declining population is not a negative sign, not as long as a civilization is above the long term carrying capacity of it's area. How it gets dealt with is a significant problem. (But do note that the birthrate of US born citizens is below replacement, also.)
Death spiral? My, you do take a temporary decline seriously. I'll worry when the population gets below the permanent carrying capacity, and not until them. OTOH, because of their negative attitudes towards foreign immigrants, Japan is experiencing a much steeper decline in population than the rest of the urbanized world. (Is this a purely urban phenomena, or is it based around industrial pollution, as some studies appear to show? It seems "civilization"-wide, concentrated in technical and urbanized areas, but I haven't seen any conclusive studies. At any rate, I'm not worried. We've got a long way to go before we reach a sane population level, and a declining birth-rate seems the most humane possible way to achieve it.
Remember that more than 95% or our productivity is the result of invested and shared intellectual property of our common ancestors world-wide. Don't be too quick to believe that you have some special right to much more than the average salary, or to claim that someone else should be left to starve. Now it's possible that you DO earn about what is reasonable, many people do. But many, also, take advantage of unfair laws to unfairly monopolize knowledge and resources developed by our common ancestors.
Human nature being such as it is I will grant the need for a stratified rewards system, but I really doubt that the wealthiest should be rewarded at a rate higher then 1000 times the rate of the poorest. I would consider a rate in the range of 100-200 to be much more reasonable. Welfare? What is the subsidies given to corporations but welfare for the rich and powerful? If you want to, I believe that you could make a good case that no government should be trusted with the right of preventing others from issuing competing curriencies. It would be difficult to find a less honest banker.