A Dogwalk Look Into The Future

A while back a reader, who works for a government agency, told me to be careful.  I was being watched.  For what? This blog? I find that hard to believe.

However, with the recent news, which really isn't "news", of phone record surveillance and now computer content oversight, I guess maybe I am.  Not the way the pundits were worrying themselves over on all the shows last evening.  Governmental data mining isn't looking for me personally, but rather whether or not the patterns of my activity might indicate I am a terror threat.

I doubt it.  I'm just an aging malcontent that is having trouble adjusting to a changing country.  Heck, every time I turn on my computer the information from the time  I sign on to the sites I visit go into someones data bank.  Why is everyone so surprised the government is doing it?  Are we more afraid of our government knowing as much about us as Google or Facebook?  I'll leave that as a question.

I will suggest this is nothing new.  It just gets massaged different ways depending what they want to know.  Since the President has told us the war on terror is no more, it's curious why this continues, but then we know the truth about that war, now don't we.

So what's down the road?  My crystal ball shows me something like the identity chip that was in my dog.  I expect before the next generation gets to be my age, similar chips will be placed in all of us at birth with the history of every preceding relative of the new born embedded in it.  "They" will be able to track every move we make from that point until death.  Unless we figure out how to disable it but there will be technology to prevent that from happening.  Just think what fun hackers will have when they figure out how to alter those chips to make us all electronic age Manchurian candidates.

Before that I wouldn't be surprised to see the national identity card become a reality.  After all the government already has access to the information we so fear them getting. Okay, if they make those cards a national driver's license I'd not mind.

I understand and don't disagree with a certain amount of flexibility to search data for patterns that might lead to a national security risk.  The problem is any such activity is open to abuse which is why it's making headlines now.  When we're told the government is so large and unwieldy at this point that the President can't possibly know what's going on I wonder why we need him?

Obviously we can't depend on our government officials - either hired, elected or appointed to act responsibly.  That being the case it seems a pretty good arguement for shrinking government back to a size of which the President can keep track.

Unfortunately that idea isn't appearing in my crystal ball no matter which party is controlling the computers.  I wonder what are adversaries are doing with their electronic skills. Are they ahead of us or behind us?  If they have their secret organizations and courts and permissions like or better than ours I wonder if they can make us switch our mind set?  Nah.  That won't come until the chips do.