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Saturday, November 22, 2014

More CitizenFour: "the fearlessness and the f**k you"

"There are a number of loopholes for putting people onto the watchlists even if reasonable suspicion cannot be met.
One is clearly defined: The immediate family of suspected terrorists—their spouses, children, parents, or siblings—may be watchlisted without any suspicion that they themselves are engaged in terrorist activity. But another loophole is quite broad—”associates” who have a defined relationship with a suspected terrorist, but whose involvement in terrorist activity is not known. A third loophole is broader still—individuals with “a possible nexus” to terrorism, but for whom there is not enough “derogatory information” to meet the reasonable suspicion standard."
from The Intercept Scahill and Devereaux, "THE SECRET GOVERNMENT RULEBOOK FOR LABELING YOU A TERRORIST
My second watching of CitizenFour at The Pickford Cinema Limelight Theater in Bellingham, WA proved as enjoyable and challenging as the first. Whatever we are learning from the efforts of Greenwald, Poitras, Snowden is simply pointing in the direction of truth more deep and dark than I think it is possible for most of us to conceive.

As regards to the film's ending: It is improbable that there is only one watch list, albeit a supposed 1.5M citizens in length.  It is more probable that there is a query or point scale that defines each individual as a potential threat; something akin to "credit score" with additional categories or labels for specific threat descriptions. These are numbers that could be queried per sample subset to help define "security risk" or threat for particular communities, cities, states, etc. The value of such data for social network analysis and behavioral prediction/infiltration/persuasion would be incalculable  Such numbers could literally drive media markets, federal funding, election efforts or DHS and JTTF outreach to local law enforcement among other critical.

Imagine how you could profile individuals and communities if you could simply rank their aggregate Google searches on the basis of activism or threat? You could literally create a heat map of queries the state found threatening at any level: to state security, commerce, industrial production, etc. What colors would portray Bellingham, WA ?

1 comment:

Wendy Harris said...

Is there a color for blank? Bellingham is brain dead to the worst forms of abuse by their own city government. The waterfront was nothing more than an attempt to transfer public assets to the private sector, and this is the new policy behind everything. I guess Hamsters would rather be polite than free. As long as they can keep doing the outdoor recreational they love, it is all good.