Cryptogon is a blog on surveillance, government and corporate power, and civil liberties, including license-plate readers and drones.
HN links it in surveillance threads; commenters cite it on drone video feeds and quote its view that governments and corporations are out of control.
the problem with pitching Flock as "the triumph of technology over criminality" is that because of all the bogus edicts, an average american commits three felonies every single day. and whoever picks who gets prosecuted for what, is the owner running the plantation.
Three Felonies a Day
http://www.harveysilverglate.com/books/
In 2006, the Code of Laws of the United States of America: 200000 pages (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Code)
with 500 pages/week it's about 10 years just to read it, i.e. to have a chance not breaking it (but this wrongly assumes that it's not growing meanwhile).
In 2012: Federal Code: 75000 pages, Tax Code: 72000 pages.
The Criminalization of Everyday Life
http://www.cryptogon.com/?p=42372
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175781/
John Stossel's Illegal Everything
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBiJB8YuDBQ
John Stossel - Technically, That's Illegal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mf-uPAItVtM
“There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for me to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed or enforced nor objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt.”
— Ayn Rand…
Yeah, the things they are up to are bad. There's another thread on HN right now about Palantir's involvement with mobile license plate readers and the extent to which these are photographing and tracking the movements of tens of millions of people without warrant or cause and feeding the results into intelligence fusion centers. The article below notes the case of a security consultant who filed a request for his own info and found he had been photographed 112 times by just one of these programs, including one photo that was a photo of his daughters in the driveway of his own house, apparently taken by cameras installed on randomly passing police cars which just scan in everything they see and feed it to computers for analysis.
http://www.cryptogon.com/?p=35851
http://cironline.org/reports/license-plate-readers-let-police-collect-millions-records-drivers-4883
Anonymous got a lucky break and found out about what was really going on at a few of these firms. There are a lot more firms and it isn't going to be so easy for grey hats to break in and release documents in the future. This doesn't mean that these firms aren't still engaging in widespread programs that make the Stasi look like a child's birthday game.
crypto adj. Secret; covert.
gon suff. A figure having a specified kind or number of angles.
Governments, Corporations and Media are out of control.
These prominent components of our society are increasingly driven by hypocrisy, corruption and greed. They have never been more powerful than they are today, and their ability to shape the outcome of events goes mostly unnoticed by the public at large.
The Cryptogon refers to the hidden structure underlying and interconnecting the political, economic and perception management systems currently in operation on this planet. When John Ralston Saul states that, “In reality, we are today in the midst of a theology of pure power—power born of structure, not of dynasty or arms,” the “structure” he is referring to is what I am calling the Cryptogon.
http://www.cryptogon.com/?page_id=2
"But do consider that in Eastern Germany, for instance, it was the fear of a machine of surveillance that people believed watched them at all times — rather than the machine itself — that drove compliance and passivity. From the standpoint of the police state and its interests — why have a giant Big Brother apparatus spying on us at all times — unless we know about it?"
-Naomi Wolf
http://www.cryptogon.com/?p=35659
These drones were compliant
https://www.cryptogon.com/?p=12669
I can't find the link, but I recall that the video feeds were unencrypted because there was no approved encryption system for the use, so the contractor was not allowed to just use commercially available solutions and left the links unencrypted.
see for the leaked messages here:
http://privatepaste.com/f9dd332518/weqwewqesada
https://privatepaste.com/942ba3fa3d/asdasdwqe
(source: http://cryptogon.com/?p=30775)