[lbo-talk] The NSA Can Read This E-Mail, Unfortunately

[Arthur Maisel]

There's the old saying that to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a
nail. I think the problem with the NSA approach (and stop and frisk as
practiced in NYC, i.e., with a quota for stops; and high-stakes testing in
schools as a way of rating teacher performance; and the way medicine is
practiced in the US; and...) is that it is dumb. The replacement of
knowledge gained through experience, and the ability to make judgments that
comes with it, by checklists and algorithms is a plague. It seems likely
that some innocent people will be swept up and their lives made miserable
or even destroyed, and just as likely that some malefactors will escape
detection. Of course, the last will bring calls for even more elaborate
examination of more massive collections of data---say, why don't we just
insert a chip in everyone so that we can track them every second? And of
course, the improved system will have the same failure rate. (Wouldn't
surprise me to learn that it's somehow related to the Second Law of
Thermodynamics.)

And to spare others the trouble I will acknowledge that yes, I'm a
hopelessly romantic idiot for thinking that what we need is a more humane
economic system (and the more humane social structure that would accompany
it).

On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 11:28 AM, Wojtek S <wsoko52 at gmail.com> wrote:


> This whole debate reminds me of an old joke.  A stagecoach traveling
> through the Wild West is stopped by bandits.  The bandit leader yells to
> the passengers "Everybody out!"  A little girl sticks her head out of the
> window and asks "Grandma too?"  "Grandma too!" replies the bandit.  After
> the passengers got out, the bandit says "All men to the right, all women to
> the left!"  "Grandma too?"  asks the little girl.  "Grandma too!" replies
> the bandit.  After the passengers complied, the bandit says "Now every man
> will be robed and every woman will be raped."  "Grandma too?" asks the
> little girl.  The Grandma pulls the little girl by the hand and whispers
> "Shut up!  Everyone means everyone."
>
> It seems that many of those barking at Obama wish they were that important
> that the spooks would want to spy on them.
>
>
> --
> Wojtek
>
> "An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>