Foreword to _1984_ "surveillance of ordinary citizens"

[pynchonoid]

[...] surveillance of ordinary citizens has entered
the mainstream of police activity, reasonable search
and seizure is a joke. [...] the internet, a
development that promises social control on a scale
those quaint old 20th-century tyrants with their goofy
moustaches could only dream about.[...]
--Thomas Pynchon, Foreword to _1984_

<http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/news/6211959.htm>
U.S. Develops Urban Surveillance System
MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN
Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon is developing an urban
surveillance system that would use computers and
thousands of cameras to track, record and analyze the
movement of every vehicle in a foreign city.

[...] "Government would have a reasonably good idea of
where everyone is most of the time," said John Pike, a
Global Security.org defense analyst.

[...] James Fyfe, a deputy New York police
commissioner, believes police will be ready customers
for such technologies.

"Police executives are saying, `Shouldn't we just buy
new technology if there's a chance it might help us?'"
Fyfe said. "That's the post-9-11 mentality."

[...] The second-phase software should be able to
analyze the video footage and identify "what is normal
(behavior), what is not" and discover "links between
places, subjects and times of activity," the
contracting documents state.

[...] DARPA told the contractors that 40 million
cameras already are in use around the world, with 300
million expected by 2005. [...] 

DARPA contracting document:
http://dtsn.darpa.mil/ixo/solicitations/CTS/file/BAA_03-15_CTS_PIP.pdf
[...] 




__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com