All My Children
Though more different than alike, they do have a lot in common. All are, in some way, progeny of the microprocessor. Some were born in around Silicon Valley, others quite distant. The first generation was born in the US early in the last third of the 20th Century. The second was born near the end of the late 20th — early in the 21st Century. None of them could have been born in an earlier era. Microsoft* 1972, Apple*1976, and Oracle*1977, were instrumental in developing the power of microprocessors either through developments in software, hardware, or both. Amazon*1994, Google*1998, Facebook*2004, and Twitter*2006 were all about utilizing the vast computing power of microprocessor based computers. They grew like weeds. The nation had not seen the likes since Carnegie and Rockefeller of the 19th Century. Now, as then, it didn’t quite know what to do with them. Now, as then, the Nation found itself being jerked about economically, socially, and politically by these new giants. What are to be the standards when all is so new?
Called Technology Companies because they were the children of this Age of Technology; some sold software, some hardware, some both; some provided a service in exchange for the users eyeballs, and personal info, which they then sold to others. Some sold stuff for others until they became so rich they took these others’ business from them, bought others, and did some of everything. One thing they held in common was that they all, excepting Theranos and Twitter, had quickly grown to be very prosperous, and to be very big and powerful. Amazon has enough cash on hand to buy General Motors outright; so does Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Facebook. Another thing held in common; they all started up in an unregulated environment. And another; these Technology Companies were all, with the exception of Theranos, started up by young men, some of whom were very young.
For nigh on fifty years now the US Government hasn’t seemed to know enough about what was going on with this new technology to step up and impose needed regulations. In some cases, those running these companies couldn’t have told you what was going on. It has all been a wild ride. Now, in the early 21stCentury, as in the early 20th, it is clear to most that something must be done. As in 1904, the first step is to break them up. They are so big that no one else can compete. Sound familiar? As with the titans of the Gilded Age, these guys have tremendous influence on national economics, society, and politics and policy. These guys have world-wide influence.
As in the gilded Age: Too big is when a company has its own Representatives and Senators, and writes legislation meant to benefit itself. Too big when, as a result of that legislation, immigrant labor is used to suppress workers wages. In the Gilded Age, Capitalism was next to god; strikers were shot. In Myanmar, Buddhist nationalist beat, raped, and killed Rohingya Muslims because of anti-Muslim hate-speech postings on Facebook. When confronted with this fact, Facebook expressed concern.
As in the Gilded Age, these new Titans of what was now the Technology Age have been hailed as geniuses. Fair to say, some of them are of well above average intelligence. Also fair to say that some of them are not. That some aren’t all that well rounded, or educated. That some are amoral. Wise? We have seen little or no evidence of that.
Microsoft*1972, Apple*1976, and Oracle*1977, were, as noted, instrumental in developing the power of microprocessors either through developments in software, hardware, or both. They each brought some good, some really good, products to market. Even so, we would have been far better off with more competition for such as they should have named it Patches Windows; with two or more each of made in the US Apples and Oracles.
Amazon*1994, first of the second generation, was founded by Jeff Bezos. Bezos understood computers, foresaw the potential of the Web, the significance of data, and the use and power of algorithms. He also understood margins; has exhibited a excellent grasp of economics. While the first generation had envisioned new products and new markets, he saw a fortune in retail margins. He would bring retail to the Web, or vice versa. He could do the same thing the retailers did without the brick and mortar and make a lot of money doing it. Fast forward to 2019: Poor UPS and FedEx never knew what hit them. Should have been one of them instead. Couldn’t see the brass ring? Reached but missed it? UPS had shown a spark with the parts department for hire. Too late, probably couldn’t borrow enough to begin to compete now. Not one to dawdle, Bezos, foreseeing the end of the warehouse, is going to go for The United States Postal Service, USPS, next. The government waited way too long to tackle the Amazon problem. Now, there is no escaping it. Unless something is done, Bezos will soon be the most powerful man in the world. He has already the surpassed John D. Rockefeller. Without doubt, Amazon has been a godsend during the pandemic; poised and ready, led the way. Looking down the road a bit, Amazon will become our worst nightmare.
Google*1998, put computers and the web together and got information; put information and advertising together and got money. Google changed the world forever. Where before, libraries and human brains were the repositories of information, now anyone with access to the web could just google it. In order to pay for this service, Google would sell ads; everyone wants information. Google would charge the advertiser by the clicks of visitors who clicked on the ad. The significance of providing information via the web is truly momentous. Hence Google, knowledge was no longer a personal asset. Going forth, instead of packing heads with knowledge, schools were obliged to focus on teaching students how to think. As for knowledge? Now, anyone can just google up information. In short order, google became a verb, a verb known to all.
Theranos*2003 — See the HBO documentary: ‘The Inventor: Out For Blood In Silicon Valley’.
Facebook*2004, is a social media or social networking service that provides users a platform where they can share things about themselves with others and look at what others have posted about themselves. Facebook saw, not a market for products, service, or information, but rather a vanity/networking market. In exchange for this service, Facebook would sell advertising on the site directed at the users. Later on, Facebook would begin collecting data in the form of personal information from its users and sell that information to commercial and political interests. At some point Facebook began using algorithms to separate users into groups according to their psychological profiles and then target those groups with information algorithmically determined to be effective in swaying their opinions on matters commercial, social, and maybe? political. By 2016, sixty-two per cent of Americas got their news via social media such as Facebook; thirty-nine per cent from Facebook alone. Facebook has no reporters, no news room, no editors. Facebook was not really in the news business. Until 2015, any news it provided to its users was provided by other users who likely weren’t reporters, may not have been particularly well informed, and even might have been foreign interests trying to damage the United States. Since 2015, Facebook also posts real news from major news portals along with whatever else gets posted by the users. For years Facebook has maintained that they have no responsibility for the news posted on their platform. If Facebook wants to be in the news business, let them form a separate news division with reporters and editors that abide by the rules of journalism. If they want to sell user information to anyone, let them obtain permission from and pay the user for that information and abide by the law as to whom to sell the info to. In 2016 Facebook user data was used by Russian Intelligence to profile these users and then send them false information they were likely to be susceptible to via Facebook; false information that was meant to help Donald Trump win. From 2016 up to the present, in Myanmar, Buddhist nationalist have beaten, raped, or murdered tens of thousands of Rohingya Muslims because of anti-Muslim hate-speech postings on Facebook. Facebook was used by Philippine President Duterte to organize supporters, smear opponents, and spread hoaxes. Facebook says that it didn’t know about the Cambridge-Analytic Russian operation until it all blew up and says that it has since taken steps to preclude a recurrence. It was warned about the Myanmar Genocide, could have shut it down, but did nothing for at least two years.
Twitter*2006, liked Facebook’s social networking service, added microblogging. Plagiary? Perhaps, although there is some evidence that Jack Dorsey saw it first. That’s how it works. All over the world, minds are thinking about the same, hitting the same walls. ‘Twas a time, a time it was, when all over the world people were thinking their hardest of ways to become the next Jobs, or Gates; when Silicon Valley was chockablock with software start-ups. So far, twitter has, in the main, exhibited responsibility; has not succumbed to egregious privacy violations.
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Starting up a business is both very exciting and difficult. Perhaps even more so when the business is something entirely new. Being relentless, even ruthless, is understandable, maybe even requisite. Believing in the product or service is essential. Fanaticism might well be in order. There are limits. If you want to work yourself to death, that’s acceptable. To work someone else to death in the pursuit of your cause is not. To cause the deaths of others in pursuit of your objective is not. Most of these innovators were very young with little real life experience, knowledge of the world. Weren’t sophisticated enough to foresee the possible bad consequences of their actions. Their own characters were not fully developed. There is evidence that some received excellent mentoring, that some didn’t.
If one starts up a traditional business there are written and unwritten rules of the road; accepted norms in the form of peer pressure, competition, regulations, etc. To be fair, other than acting in their own good faith and high standards, these norms were nonexistent for innovators such as these. The only regulation that applied to Facebook’s news-from-users was Section 230 of the 1996 Communications and Decency Act. Somehow related to keeping porn off the internet; Section 230 generally provides immunity for website publishers from third-party content. Facebook drove their truck right on through.
The establishment of these rules of the road falls perforce to government; something far better done sooner than later. This was known. The need to prevent a business from getting too big was known. Leaving these things up to the forces of the market, and profit and growth motives was known to be insane, immoral. Due to the lack of effective government regulation: the lives of tens of thousands of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, of citizens in the Philippines, were imperiled; what had been weak democracies were weakened even more. Being relentless doesn’t give a business the right to be a party to atrocities, to allow itself to be used to seize power by would be autocrats. Decisions of the gravest consequences were being made by those obviously not up to the task; for all the wrong reasons. Imperialism without bananas. Domestically, too, Facebook contributed to our own political polarization. Maybe, it is better to get a coffee together rather than connect on Facebook.
Rules of the road can be written so as to enhance innovation. Encouraging competition is one such way. We would have had wound up with something better than Windows if Microsoft had not been allowed to stifle competition. Amazon well understood monopoly and monopsony; actively sought to be unimpeded by competition, to impose monopsony. Many a small business would have been better off if Amazon had been forced to compete. We would have been better off with two, three, or maybe four Amazons.
We the world have been recipient a progression of innovative products and services that were never before existent. Wow! Facebook was prelude to, has given the world a glimpse into, the future. A future of the likes of Uber and Lyft, and belatedly, Theranos? As with any new art form, and Hollywood, it is all coming to be variations on a theme. The now third generation is looking more like scam artists than innovators. From Bezos’ working the margins to scabbing in fifteen years; from Zuckerberg selling face time in five.
We have gone from shoe leather market surveys to psychological profiling based on user data (whether or not the user knew of and/or agreed to this usage) and proprietary algorithms; a long way in a short period of time. The idea of using algorithms and psychological profiling in combo is almost too much to think about; but think we must. It is extremely important that nations and their citizenry engage in this discourse. Artificial Intelligence, AI, is another consequence of this era of innovation that demands our immediate attention.
Kudos with much appreciation to documentaries like PBS’s Frontline series:
The Facebook Dilemma, Parts I and II
https://www.pbs.org/video/the-facebook-dilemma-part-one-s43cuc/
https://www.pbs.org/video/the-facebook-dilemma-part-two-iev1xh/ ;
and their:
Amazon Empire, The Rise and Reign of Jeff Bezos
https://www.pbs.org/video/amazon-empire-the-rise-and-reign-of-jeff-bezos-xpco5j/ ;
to Netflix’s documentary – The Social Dilemma;
and to HBO’s documentary about Theranos – The Inventor: Out For Blood In Silicon Valley.
These important works have each made significant contributions to this much needed discourse; much appreciated all.
That’s pretty naive take on the subject.
For example Microsoft success was by the large part determined its alliance with IBM in the creation of PC and then exploiting IBM ineptness to ride this via shred marketing and alliances and “natural monopoly” tendencies in IT. MS DOS was a clone of CP/M that was bought, extended and skillfully marketed. Zero innovation here.
Both Microsoft and Apple rely of research labs in other companies to produce innovation which they then then produced and marketed. Even Steve Jobs smartphone was not an innovation per se: it was just a slick form factor that was the most successful in the market. All functionality existed in other products.
From pure technical POV Facebook is mostly junk. It is a tremendous database of user information which user supply themselves due to cultivated exhibitionism. Kind of private intelligence company. The mere fact that software was written in PHP tells you something about real Zuckerberg level.
Amazon created a usable interface for shopping via internet (creating comments infrastructure and a usable user account database ) but this is not innovation in any sense of the word. It prospered by stealing large part of Wall Mart logistic software (and people) and using Wall Mart tricks with suppliers. So Bezos model was Wall Mart clone on the Internet.
People like Bezos, Google founders, Zuckerberg to a certain extent are part of intelligence agencies infrastructure. Remember Prism. So implicitly we can assume that they all report to the head of CIA.
There is very little intelligence in artificial intelligence :-). Intelligent behavior of robots in mostly an illusion created by First Clark law:
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws
Most of amazing things that we see are the net result of tremendous raise of computing power of Neumann architecture machines.
At some point quantity turns into quality.
[Except for the CIA part then gotta go with Likbez. Being an antique computer geek myself then I got stuff to add.]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_data_computer
The gun data computer was a series of artillery computers used by the U.S. Army for coastal artillery, field artillery and anti-aircraft artillery applications. In antiaircraft applications they were used in conjunction with a director.
Variations
M1: This was used by seacoast artillery for major-caliber seacoast guns. It computed continuous firing data for a battery of two guns that were separated by not more than 1,000 feet (300 m). It utilised the same type of input data furnished by a range section with the then-current (1940) types of position-finding and fire-control equipment…
…M18: FADAC (Field Artillery Digital Automatic Computer),[1][2] an all-transistorized general-purpose digital computer[3] manufactured by Amelco (Teledyne Systems, Inc.,)[4] and North American—Autonetics.[5] FADAC was first fielded in 1960,[6][7] and was the first semiconductor-based digital electronics field-artillery computer…
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_4004
The Intel 4004 is a 4-bit central processing unit (CPU) released by Intel Corporation in 1971. It was the first commercially produced microprocessor,[2] and the first in a long line of Intel CPUs.
The chip design, implemented with the MOS silicon gate technology, started in April 1970, and was created by Federico Faggin who led the project from beginning to completion in 1971. Marcian Hoff formulated and led the architectural proposal in 1969, and Masatoshi Shima contributed to the architecture and later to the logic design. The first delivery of a fully operational 4004 occurred in March 1971 to Busicom Corp. of Japan for its 141-PF printing calculator engineering prototype (now displayed in the Computer History Museum – Mountain View, Ca) [1]. This calculator for which the 4004 was originally designed and built as a custom chip [3] was first commercially available in July 1971.
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[Note the distinction between military and commercial application.]
The 4004 was the first random logic circuit integrated in one chip using the MOS (metal–oxide–semiconductor) silicon gate technology (SGT). It was the most advanced integrated circuit (IC) design undertaken up until then…
@Ron,
Bad comment editing of excerpt from Wiki.
commenters seem to have missed the point.
it;s not whether or not the Big Names were real innovators.
It’s that the computer has created a potential for concentrated power in government or private “enterprisw” (it doesn’t matter which) that we don’t know how to deal with.
just for fun: i was told (i think) by the people who tell us thsee things that Andrew Jackson was just an ignoramus who did not understand banking so his “war on the national bank” was a stupid mistake. Lately it came to my attention that Jackson probably understood the danger of the Bank better than the people who write histories. Bigness has the power to control politics.. or whatever it is politics is supposed to decide for us.
we understood this a bit with the fight against monopolies, but somehow we never saw it coming with computers… and billionaire vast right wing conspiracies, and international free trade agreements.
time to get out of Egypt.
@Coberly,
Money, guns, and sex did not need computers, but did find them useful. Computers may efficiently disperse disinformation, but the usefulness of that depends entirely upon the susceptibility of the users. I am not at all susceptible to Facebook because I only ever used it a few minutes, found it to be crude and useless, and years later had my account deleted by Facebook due to inactivity. I have never tweeted. I have not yet bought anything myself from Amazon, but my wife is a Prime member and has bought a few things for me. My wife is active on Facebook, but never tweets. In both cases our politics remain as they have been since our parents raised us. I am still a commie sympathizing New Deal progressive and my wife is still a Republican with an Episcopal conscience. She voted for Obama in 2008 and Romney in 2012.
I worked in IT for 47 years. Computers are not the only useful tools that our masters use in their attempt to control us. I have known a lot of useful tools in my life. However, a Smith and Wesson still beats four aces.
@Coberly – part deux,
Central banking was not necessary for JP Morgan, rather its absence aided his own accumulation of wealth and power by squeezing out the competition. My limited knowledge of Jackson paints him as anti-state rather than anti-private power monger. Trail of Tears is my Jackson story inherited from my father’s mother’s mother.
My politics is pro-competition and anti-big, so although I might be theoretically sympathetic to anti-trust then what bothers me is that the dividends tax credit was rescinded in 1954 (after being rescinded in 1936 only to be reinstated in 1939) which made the capital gains tax preference a game changer. The first two LBOs were in 1955. Look it up – it’s in Wikipedia.
So, I find our problem not to be that computers keep getting smarter but rather that people keep getting dumber.
“…I might be theoretically sympathetic to anti-trust…”
[Preventing mergers is not quite so bad, but regulators can be either naturally subjective (e.g., how can big banks or big oil possibly be bad) or cheaply bought. OTOH, breaking up too big firms after the fact can be very disruptive for labor as well as capital. A better approach is to make tax preferences favor long term investment over selling securities for a windfall. IOW, tax earnings from holding securities at a much lower rate than capital gains from selling those same securities. Losses are not taxed, so rescue mergers would remain unaffected. People knew that from 1913 until 1936, remembered again in 1939, but forgot it altogether in 1954. Big is beautiful until it isn’t. Innovation is faster and wages lower. We love economies of scale more than jobs or choices. Most of all we admire the wealthy because we would love to be like them. ]
We made coupon clipping a demeaning term so we could have old age income insecurity and monopolies.
ron
Jackson was anti national bank because it was big enough to corrupt politics. so not anti bank as such, but anti-big, in his time it was the bank. in later times it was Morgan, in our times it is Big Finance including the World Bank. it is also Big Government, though the Left can’t bring itself to admit that,
I don’t mind Amazon of Facebook because they steal my dats (I don’t deal with them)… though i should, because of what they do with the data, CAN do with the data, they steal from others. I don’t think it would be possible anymore for there to be a “resistance” to any power, private or government, because of what computers can do to keep track of us in ways we wouldn’t even imagine.
as for the trail of tears… hate to sound like a we-feel-your-pain politician… lthe trail of tears was a crime and Jackson enabled it. But the crime was inevitable from the day Europeans landed in America with the intent to stay. Thus it become a Trageday… the conflict of two peoples over the same land. By your and my ideas, the Indians had a right to the land… they came first. and certainly many individual acts of in-person real evil crime were committed. but Jackson could claim, if he thought about it, that removing the indians prevented a real genocide which would have obliterated them the way “natives” have been obliterated since time began by stronger tribes that moved in. me, i have trouble forgiving the bank for cheating me out of 30 bucks, so I don’t imagine you are going to forgive Jackson, but i feel sort of an obligatiom to point out that what happened was a “force of history” just as the invention of the computer is now a force of history shaping out times… which begin to look like forcing all of us off out land, also known as the “earth,” (well, i think the automobile or just unstoppable “progress” and reproduction would do the same thing, computers being just one of agencies making it possible, like the gun in its time.
me, i have no desire to be like them. but i would probably have to be like them to have a decent chance of stopping them from hurting me.
Coberly,
I guess you know or maybe you do not know that most Cherokees that were rounded up for the forced march to Oklahoma had taken up living like white men, learned to write, and some were even lawyers. They had regular trades and used money. They lived in the same kinds of homes as whites and followed the same laws. A few more were hunted down in the Appalachians, but my GGM was born from native families that had hid out in the mountains surrounding the Shenandoah Valley. The only difference between them and whites was race. Many had intermarried with whites.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ross_(Cherokee_chief)
“…John Ross was the son of a Cherokee mother and a Scottish father. His mother and maternal grandmother were of mixed Scots-Cherokee ancestry, since his maternal grandfather was another Scottish immigrant. At the time among the matrilineal Cherokee, anyone born of a Cherokee mother was counted as a Cherokee, and a member of her clan. As a result, young John (in modern times counted as one-eighth Cherokee by blood quantum) grew up bilingual and bicultural, an experience that served him well when his parents decided to send him to schools that served other mixed-race Cherokee.
After graduation, he was appointed an Indian agent in 1811. During the War of 1812, he served as adjutant of a Cherokee regiment under the command of Andrew Jackson. After the Red Stick War ended, Ross demonstrated his business acumen by starting a tobacco plantation in Tennessee. In 1816, he built a warehouse and trading post on the Tennessee River north of the mouth of Chattanooga Creek, and started a ferry service that carried passengers from the south side of the river (Cherokee Nation) to the north side (USA). His businesses served as the start of a community known as Ross’s Landing on the Tennessee River (now modern-day Chattanooga, Tennessee)…”
@Coberly,
I probably indulged myself too much over the native relocation issue, but I have found that most people are not much familiar with the facts. Not being a fan of totalitarian states or empire in general then I can share your concern about big, even big government, but Jackson is still a pill too big for me to swallow.
Back to central banking though, a central bank is a condition neither necessary nor sufficient for the maintenance of powerful private banks. Central banks control the value of currency exchange rates and the cost of lending when they exist as well as maintain inflation rate targets. I cannot imagine an industrial sovereign without one these days.
OTOH, if we are not going to have small local banks and smaller firms constrained by competition then we would be better to nationalize the entire FIRE sector. It won’t happen here within the foreseeable future. There are a lot of possible choices, each with its own consequences.
Computers can store a lot of information and if one interacts with programs that collect personal data then they can learn only what you expose to them. However, business partners can cross pollinate the information that they collect to grow a bigger, clearer picture. That said, then exactly what about all that data am I supposed to be afraid? The usual BS is that they will target me with political misinformation or a scam. How would that work? I don’t use Facebook, Twitter, or any other social networking. Before Angry Bear, I used Economist View. That has been the limit of social networking for me. I delete all SPAM without ever reading any of it other than the subject line just in case the filter snagged some legitimate business E-mail. I rarely shop online. If others behave differently then that would be their personal problem.
I worked in IT for 47 years before getting laid off from my state of VA salaried IT job by the outsource management, Northrop Grumman in 2015. My work in large systems capacity planning and performance management exposed me to current technology in every aspect of large data center network and computer system infrastructure. Thank for schooling me on the dangers of computers.
Ron
well, thanks for schooling me. i don’t thnk i added much to your knowledge about the power fo computers in controlling populations.
but it will take me a little time to catch up with you.
as for jackson and the cherokees, i would not expect you to forgive jackson.
but since you mention it, i am aware the Cherokee were well adapted to white civilization. they even had slaves. but they may not have been well enough adapted to withstand the force of greed… which i say was inevitable, but i don’t forgive it either. perfectly white georgians got displaced… and bankrupted… by other perfectly white fich folk (some named Dodge)… so while being the wrong race is a definite handicap, don’t expect any kindness from being the right race.
Coberly,
Well it is all in the course of the ruminating dialectic. Computers are better at targeting direct marketing at individuals with high credit scores than they are at herding cats. Speaking of cats, they are close to the top on my wife’s online viewing categories, second only to infants although she really gravitates to kittens more than cats. Politics online upsets her because opinionated people are not usually nice. Yet, she married me.
Jackson can sleep well without my love. OTOH, the Cherokees had made a mistake in trusting the whites. If they had been more like the South Island Maoris then they might have ended up better off.
Coberly,
BTW, both my wife and I have watched every episode of “Person of Interest” several times. We liked the characters and the general ideas despite the implausibility of the underpinning technological advances. There is a great deal of artificial intelligence in existence, but it has nothing to do with computers.
Coberly,
OK, I still got some time. So, let’s talk about controlling people, both individuals and populations.
The mechanisms of control are human fears, sex, money, drugs, and guns – never forget the guns. Up thread I mentioned FADAC (Field Artillery Digital Automatic Computer), the first solid state computer which was used for artillery targeting. I first met one in RSVN.
Like the NSA surveillance systems developed to ferret out terrorist, computers are useful when it comes to selecting individual dissidents out of larger populations, if and only if, they are dumb enough to reveal themselves to computers. Surely, N Korea uses computer surveillance against their own people, but never forget the guns.
Guns are the secret sauce for any police state. Your police, military, and most trusted party members need to be the only people allowed to have guns. Our Neanderthal gun nuts are not wrong about everything as much as that pains me considering my liberal allies just cannot give credit where credit is due.
In politics it is important to have a world view that has nothing to do with reality. That is what makes our two party political system work. Unrealistic world views package and sell far better than realism.
@Ron,
“… I first met one in RSVN…”
[I keep forgetting that Vietnam is one word. We just called it Nam.]
Recalling the starting situation with respect to computers, the question was posited as to how we could regulate BIT (Big IT), in a context that seemed to presuppose that we can regulate big finance, big oil, big auto, big steel, etc. just fine.
Ron
interesting (to me) that i agree with you almost entirely about people. and guns.
but the problem with computers and a police state is not that they can sell you stuff you don’t need, or target you with political misinfomraton, its that they know who you are and where to find you and who you talk to,
of course with the political misinformation they don’t have to worry too much about most people’s political activities. but they do have guns.
they already know that i’m no threat. but when a Great Leader gets too much power, he starts to see traitors under every bed.
Coberly,
“…they know who you are and where to find you and who you talk to…”
Al Capone learned the importance of paying his taxes the hard way. Bank records need to be clean, no income and spending not taxed. As far as the rest, professional criminals know how to dodge the surveillance state with burner phones and cash transactions, which I prefer to bitcoin. If I were active then they would know where to find me, but they would not know what I had been doing or who I was doing it with.
I liken this to the 2nd amendment worriers. If the government is taken over or the country invaded then I would need NO assault weapons for counter insurgency, but rather a high caliber sniper rifle with an assortment of (3) high quality scopes for different times of day and circumstances, and lots of rounds or the stuff to make my own. If one intends to be a subversive militant then one should intend to be a very capable subversive militant and not just a hobbyist.
The results and aftermath of the Tiananmen Square protests provide a good example of how things go after overt subversion under conditions of authoritarian rule. We should not take our Bill of Rights for granted nor the blood spilled to obtain such privileges. Our Founding Fathers might have been less generous if not for their debt to the Continental Army.
Coberly,
Your concerns about the surveillance state are understood. The Al-Qaeda terrorist organization underestimated NSA surveillance capabilities, but I am glad of that. The Al-Qaeda organizational model was excellent at preventing infiltration of their organization, but they did not know how to use phones properly to avoid electronic surveillance. I am just glad they are not that smart.