The second I believe we are in a world of sh*t is the moment I cancel my involvement with the Internet and cell phone services. I’ll keep the Internet as far as it stays on for reading purposes, but I won’t be posting anywhere on unsecured web sites. I have other means of communications past cell phones that would be much more beneficial.
I imagine that down in the fusion centers, they have intersting algorithms for flagging persons of interest.
A simple matter of assigning a “risk coefficient” to all of us, and all websites and cell phones. Then, when a “risky” individual contacts another, or visits “problem” websites, the multiplied “high risk coefficients” trigger little alarms.
The alarms might be in real time, as in, “Oh, look at this, this right wing nut job Joe Blow in Florida is learning all about making silencers today.”
Or it might be long term and cumulative, assigning us all a “weighted risk number,” for the Night of Long Knives when a purge could be carried out, with the intention of decapitating the potential leadership of the opposition.
I think a lot of lessons are being learned in Libya, Egypt and Syria about using the internet to target state enemies and enemy groups. Many a sad mother in Syria is telling the same tearful story about how her son was grabbed in the night from his bed by State Security arrest teams.
Picked up to be tortured and killed, based on his data-mined internet and cell phone use.
You don’t think our DHS could do the same? Eventually? At least, they have the technical capability to do so.