Monthly Musing

There doesn't appear to be much awareness as to dangers of government surveillance. We are told that this surveillance protects us from terrorists. What we are not told is that it is another method of control.

Again, I am putting forward views that will immediately clash with the vast majority of peoples core beliefs. Logically, this is due to the fact that if everyone had core beliefs similar to mine we wouldn't have too big to fail anything and mass surveillance.

It won't always be this way. Anyway, please allow me to present another 'truth' regarding mass surveillance. Let us assume that without public confidence in the full faith and credit of the United States the dollar crashes in value and that this impacts upon all global trade and currencies in a massively negative manner. That is my stated assumption. The assumption need not be true but based on that assumption I can state, simply, that close monitoring of the public's perception of the dollar is vital.

Now there are two ways of monitoring public perception. There is the method that the British Secret Service taught the American Secret Service, which is through massive data collection and developing the tools to search through this data. This is what is known as miss direction. The system works, in theory only, but in practice over time three important things occur. The first is that more and more data is required, hence the ever increasing mass surveillance. The second is that this gets increasingly more expensive. The third is that regardless of how fast resources flow into such an undertaking, it's effectiveness diminishes. In Engineering terms, it is an utter waste of time and effort. It is a scandalous waste of resources. In the spy world, it is a splendid wheeze.

Regardless, the American Secret Service can now actively monitor their general population and note any special interest in key words, such as explosive. Thus indicating they might be a terrorist. Or they could just be playing a particularly tricky computer game and are asking for tips on defeating the end of level boss. In my example, the key word could be inflation. Or more likely a number of key words. Thus the American Secret Service can produce reams of data that the federal reserve can use to tailor their communications policy.

Thus, we can see that the American public can be carefully managed by those with access to the mass surveillance machinery.

J Edgar Hoover had a much smaller surveillance system but he used it to control key figures not everyone. The much larger surveillance system can easily be used on individuals, in the same way as Hoover used his. Blackmail, coersion and the like but information without someone like Hoover wielding it is just data.

The mass surveillance is believed by those who wield it to be an effective form of control of the general population. It is, up to a point.

A useful analogy would be a kettle. A kettle is turned on to heat some water. Steam starts to be emitted by the kettle. Mass surveillance is a tool that can, initially stop the steam exiting the kettle. Eventually, more and more control is needed to prevent the steam escaping from the kettle. Ultimately, more energy is spent containing the steam than heating the water. BANG, the kettle explodes. Who could possibly see that coming? Well, me and the British Secret Service.

In summary, the three reasons for not allowing mass surveillance are
It is a spectacular waste of finite resources
It is used to both monitor and manage the populations core beliefs
It attempts to control forces that will ultimately overwhelm it in an explosive manner

Here I use the word explosive to refer to a collapsed time frame. In other words, changes that would happen naturally over many years, happen in hours instead.

For the hard of understanding, some major change that impacts upon our core beliefs can readily be accommodated over a number of years. An abrupt change that happens in hours is likely to promote fear and panic that will do more damage than the change itself.

I hope you found this interesting, worthy of additional thought and perhaps something to discuss and develop with a friend over a nice single malt?

Perhaps it is becoming clearer to you as to why I write this blog?

I am on your side, whoever you are.

In the above analogy, I am attempting to be the pressure release valve.

Those of you with flexible minds and advanced reading skills may have noticed that I wrote 'two methods' of monitoring public perception and only wrote about one. The one that wastes hundreds of billions of dollars annually. The other method costs just millions of dollars but does need intelligent intelligence officers with a rare individual, such as myself, at the helm.

Anyway, you might not get what you pay for but you do get what you deserve.