181–190 of 229 posts
It is amazing how prescient the movie "Enemy of the State" (with Will Smith, Gene Hackman) was. And how it holds up to a second viewing even today.
I recommend you watch Coppola's The Conversation as well, which is what originally inspired EotS. It's far more atmospheric and psychologically tense.
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I'd love to hear ideas on this. I am dismayed, nay, infuriated that we waste taxpayer dollars in such a manner when the returns have been found to be non-existent. Yet, I read about atrocities committed every day by ISIS and the US government sits back and does little. This is not the world I want to live in, and I have no idea how to solve these non-technical problems. EDIT: Regarding downvotes and the replies as of…
> If ISIS wants us to engage them, we just sit back and allow them to rape whole villages and sell women into the sex trade? ISIS are an insignificant mock army of goat herders with guns. They could be eradicated in an afternoon. It's presense though helps with strategic goals of instability for the region. > You don't go to war for oil. You go to war for human rights and to prevent the slaughter and abuse of innocen…
This is true, if you omit the 'all'.
> That has never happened in the history of modern war.
This is not true.
A state may go to war for both human rights and self-interests; these are not always contradictory. One casus belli does not preclude others, and it is better that a state have more than one reason to go to war. It might be rare for there to be a war that is actually fought for humanitarian means, but I would argue than one modern example is the Cambodian-Vietnamese War [0]. A Cynic might say that this war was for solidifying Vietnam's influence in the region, and the international reaction was to view the war as such, but perhaps there was a hint of sincerity in the Vietnamese propaganda claiming one reason for the war was to stop Khmer Rouge's domestic terror.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian%E2%80%93Vietnamese_Wa...
Honestly, unlike what the NSA is doing, this doesn't outrage me. Surveillance aircraft only see what is visible from the air—primarily public spaces. When I'm in a public space, I don't have any expectation of privacy. Heck, a single private citizen intent on tracking my every move could easily "surveil" me in this way. If the FBI is only exercising techniques which a private citizen could deploy, I really don't care…
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I think it sounds scary anyway. I mean, I'd know everything about you -- where you lived, where you shopped, where you worked, where you ate out, where your friends lived, what you did with your friends, when you did it, etc. I could even get further than you might imagine: I probably have a really good guess (>0.99) what you do at your work, given your activities outside of work and the people you associate with. I…
People for the first million years, lived in one anothers pockets. There was no anonymity. Arguably we're designed to be social because of that. The modern tendency toward outbursts of antisocial behavior might be a product of anonymity.
First, it's apples-to-oranges, because we lived in smaller groups.
Second, our cultural-programming changes at a much faster rate than genetic-programming.
Honestly, unlike what the NSA is doing, this doesn't outrage me. Surveillance aircraft only see what is visible from the air—primarily public spaces. When I'm in a public space, I don't have any expectation of privacy. Heck, a single private citizen intent on tracking my every move could easily "surveil" me in this way. If the FBI is only exercising techniques which a private citizen could deploy, I really don't care…
"Some of the aircraft can also be equipped with technology that can identify thousands of people below through the cellphones they carry, even if they are not making a call or in public. Officials said that practice, which mimics cell towers into coughing up basic subscriber information, is rare."
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Yet, I read about atrocities committed every day by ISIS and the US government sits back and does little. Perhaps this is venturing into political territory, but what "returns" would you expect from an expedition into Syria to engage ISIS?
Yeah, consider that ISIS is a product of the last time the US decided it needed to do more to rearrange the political situation in the region.
I think this is our future, whether it's dystopian or not. Technology is eventually going to make it impossible to really prevent "Persistent aerial surveillance". What requires an expensive small blimp today might become the size of a ping pong ball (or wide area flock of them) and come out of a 3D printer tomorrow. So who will be using such tech? Governments and private entities alike - we can try to legislate agai…
I think it sounds scary anyway. I mean, I'd know everything about you -- where you lived, where you shopped, where you worked, where you ate out, where your friends lived, what you did with your friends, when you did it, etc. I could even get further than you might imagine: I probably have a really good guess (>0.99) what you do at your work, given your activities outside of work and the people you associate with. I…
Challenges of advancement is nothing new for humans. Just like when cave men discovered how to make fire. It's incredibly beneficial when used well. It's incredibly harmful if used without control.
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Yes, but I did it the other way around: I found the aircraft that were using the transponder code, then looked up who they were owned by and what other aircraft they had. That's how I was able to identify potential front companies that don't fit the "XYZ Aviation w/ PO Box in VA" template.
you do understand that flightaware data is crowdsourced, yes? the data format is trivial to fake, and subsequently upload. i am not saying thats the case here, but implicitly trusting user input makes me skeptical about the entire conclusion.
tldr: I didn't use Flightaware; I observed these aircraft directly using my own receiver, decoding their callsigns and squawk codes, and correlated with FAA records and the company confirmed by the FBI itself to be a front.
But it's true, most of this evidence is still circumstantial. Just because a company with an odd name and no internet presence has the same PO Box as the DOJ doesn't prove it's a front company; but it's pretty suggestive.
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Someone on reddit claims they got a close up photo of the camera. http://postimg.org/image/hm861sw61/
Do you have a link to the reddit discussion?