Video Future Attribute Screening Technology -- more voodoo

Check this out. In February 2009 the Ministry of Homeland Security gave Draper Labs $2.6 million of corporate welfare to product "Future Attribute Screening Technology" (that is, mind reading). Just takes a couple big white trailers and some taxpayer money:



And here's a partial transcript

 

I wrote about this at Cogitamus last year (or maybe it was earlier this year, can't remember). Of course, it got the predictable howls-of-disbelief-you're-paranoid-you're-just-hysterical response from the naysayers. And yes, the amount of money -- our money -- being spent on this (expletive deleted) is obscene.

These people are so deep in denial they won't get it until Uncle Sam is sticking his fingers up their a*ses. Even then, they'll tell themselves and everyone else that "it's for our own good."

 

There are a number of creepy things about this, beyond the fact that it was produced with taxpayer dollars:
* The people line up on a ramp
* The ramp goes into a large window-less trailer.
* Exit from the trailer is impossible without the permission of the interrogators.
* The proposed system is to be used for non-transportation land venues, and for enforcement of non-safety regulations, such as copyright laws.

 

It's sinister from A to Z. There is nothing about this scenario that is good. Nothing. It's abuse writ large.

 

I LOL at those. Looks like employees who were probably bribed with free coffee inside just to make the shot.
It is super-creepy. But what's creepier to me is, where are the champions of civil rights?
Just a deafening echo of silence. I hope I'm wrong.

 

Immediately, it made me think of people being loaded into boxcars.....

 

I've said it another post, and I'll say it again. We need the equivalent of a Dr. Strangelove produced. The MAD SAC was never taken as seriously again after that film.

Exactly. Human cattle to be biometrically scanned and sorted. As a mental defective, I'm sure my outcome is not a good one under this regime. Just side by side shots of Nazi images and TSA would be a start, (all you graphic artists out there). This one just begs for comparison.

 

This scares me. This is the squishy Patriot Act meets MS territory. MS really went the extra mile to see that those environmental protestors in Russia got slammed last year. I'm sure you all caught this, but for those that did not: Baikal Wave was aware of potential scrutiny so were extra careful to keep the little Windows stickies on their computers, only to have them scraped off by those seizing their equipment. http://www.liquida.com/focus/2010/09/12/microsoft-russia-ios/
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2010...6/russia-s-opposition-faces-piracy-raids.html I hadn't seen this video.

Brazen, open dissident-crushing is the sort of thing that always made you proud and grateful to be an American. Cointelpro was secret for a reason. But DHS raids--targeting nice white folks like me-- seem right around the corner, thanks to this neo-fascism/corporatism or whatever you'd call it, in league with a brotherhood of thieves-- as employed at the airport. Maybe the thieves trade in information as well as stolen property.

 

This is the way oppression has always worked -- the weakest people in a society are targeted first, and everyone else ignores it, because, hey, it's "those" people, "other" people, not "us." Then another group gets targeted. Then another. Until pretty soon, it's everyone.

Every tactic and technique that has been used against The Other always ends up, eventually, being used against Us. It's a classic technique. In all sorts of societies. It's just that Americans cling to this myth that they're "special," so depredations that have been visited on other people in other places can never be visited on us. Which is bunk.

In this case, unwarranted search and seizure -- and assault, and molestation, and other forms of brutality -- have always been visited upon the poor in this country. But because they don't have a voice, and certainly no political clout, they could be ignored. How many times have you heard, for instance, "well, they must've done something wrong; otherwise, why would the police be doing that??"

Now that same attitude has come to the population at large. You're presumed guilty, or at least suspect, just by existing. Setting foot in an airport puts you in a targeted class, just a far larger one than other targeted classes in the past. Now, when you're harassed, or bullied, or assaulted, or molested, it must be because you did something. Otherwise, why would the TSA be singling you out??

Unfortunately, it's easy to get people to go along with this train of thought, no matter how upstanding or principled or "smart" or brave they might think they are.

 

LOL. People used to say that I was crazy for saying the things I said about TSA. My own father sadly shook his head years ago when I first started complaining. Now, not so much. He's in agreement. The frequent travelers should have been listened to years ago.

 

And it's patently obvious reading more and more of these stories. The more stories of TSA abuse come out, there's always a common theme: 1) I'm a frequent flyer and I never see these things, 2) OMG! these TSA people are insane! They stuck their hands in the waistband of my pants and touched my genitals!, 3) to which the pithy comments following the articles come in the tone of a) just shut up and follow the rules, b) you must have done something to single yourself out, or c) you had it coming for being a whiny frequent flyer.

There's a small part of me that hopes this police state just goes all-out one day and gets it over with already. I'm already dealing with it, so what's another couple of interactions? It's a lot easier to say, "I told you so" when you have something to tell people so.

 

Correct! Our worst enemy now is not the Government (aka, DHS/TSA/FBI/IRS, etc.); our worst enemy now is APATHY!

 

I used to believe that "I told you so" was nasty and counterproductive. Not anymore. Age and experience have taught me that it is, in fact, the only way some people learn. They have to be smacked in the face by life. And sooner or later, they'll get that smack.

Also, I wouldn't be so inclined to say it if I hadn't had to put up with so much derision and ridicule. It's one thing to say you genuinely don't know what's going on (though not a lot of sympathy for ignorance, either); it's quite another to see what's going on, yet refuse to admit it, and, worse, to belittle and mock those who are trying to fight it.

 

Oh, my, I've just had a chance to actually watch this video. WTF?

"It's ground level and so easily accessible!" You mean, they can harass those who are both able bodied and those with disabilities equally? That's awesome! Since they aren't discriminating against any one class, well then it's ok.

The fact that many of their projects don't seem to take this very real culturally embedded image into account says everything we need to know about DHS.

 

Things like this and those portable guard towers to be put into public places may just end up being nothing more than targets. SP just downgraded US debt to AA plus, with a negative outlook. That will go to AA minus, then down to B, on the way to junk. Borrowing costs will go up, sucking up huge amounts of budget just to service debt. There won't be money for squat. The whole sorry mass is ice-calving into the ocean. Do you really think there will be money for things like this? The people's patience is wearing veeeeerry thin. Do you think they will put up with stuff like this? When they have less and less to lose?

 

I saw this awhile back but don't recall whether it was on a forum or just googling around. Anyway, I spotted two of these parked inside a fenced area at an office park just south of Frederick MD (Buckeystown). They had large DHS emblems painted in the sides. lots of doors and were easily visible from the adjacent parking lot less than a hundred feet away. I'm sure thousands of people drive past them every day and don't even notice them.

My question is how could these possibly be realistically be used? It is inconceivable that they could herd a stadium full of folks through even three or four of these things in time to make a game, the process takes to long. For a stadium of 80,000 people at one minute each one trailer with four lanes would still require 20,000 minutes or 333 hours! Even with ten of these that is a day and a half. Cut the screening time to 30 seconds and its still 16 hours. The numbers are overwhelmingly against this being even remotely viable for any major event. The best they could handle would be a Wednesday night poker game or book club meeting.

This simply doesn't compute.

 

Don't you want to be safe?!?!?!?!?! We should all be prepared to show up to events TWO DAYS prior for appropriate screening! This is America! You must have something to hide, Fisher1949...

 

Becoming more and more like the old Soviet Union where people queued up for days to get stuff. The security apparatchiks are clueless. Don't try using numbers with them. Anything over 20 and they get lost.

 

Nachtnebel, another million-dollar question. How much will people put up with? Will they rebel? So far, the signs aren't good. But I'm prepared to be surprised.

I've been saying for two years now that another Great Depression is coming, one that will make the 1930s look like a practice run. More people will lose their jobs, more will be thrown out of their homes, the rich will increase their wealth, put up more security gates, and buy more guard dogs (big story already), crime will go up, civil unrest will ensue. But the only growing sector of the economy is now and will be then, I believe, the National Security State. Rather than backing down, our overlords will become emboldened. Look at what we're throwing money at now -- endless war, at home and abroad -- while people in need are going without.

Whether these vans are ever put into practical use, wide use, I have no idea. The question of scale, as outlined by Fisher1949 above, is indeed problematic. To me the more worrisome point is the fact that these prototypes -- these ideas -- even exist. They can take other forms, be implemented in other ways. They already are by the mere existence of the TSA and its increasing, gross abuses. For every Yukari Miyamae and Andrea Fornella Abbott and Phil Mocek and John Tyner and Nadine Kay Hays, there are millions of people who just put up with it. AND who get pissed when the non-sheep "inconvenience" them or "hold up the line" by not blindly acquiescing.

Quoting Chris Hedges: "No system of total control, including corporate control, exhibits its extreme forms at the beginning. These forms expand as they fail to encounter resistance."

 

I think the reason people don't rebel is because the frequent traveler is both a) a very, very tiny subset of the population and b) hated because those who don't see business travel as glamorous. The vast majority of Americans simultaneously hate and envy those of us who are dealing with this nonsense head on. They don't want to hear about it, and at the same time it sounds so outrageous it sounds like conspiracy theory if you haven't encountered it yourself.

I, too, am troubled that these ideas even exist, but am wholly unsurprised. America the corporate state needs an enemy, it always has. This nonsense is going to grow until it comes home to roost, meaning when the next Great Depression comes, and the People finally rebel, all of the pieces will already be in place to expand the Security State into the Homeland.

However, I wonder how this is all ultimately going to work. Not trying to go too far off track here, but people have postulated that 2012 is the end of the world. I've heard arguments that the Mayan calendar ends in 2012 only because they couldn't understand the world after that point, that it would be unlike anything any of us has known. Through all of this time we have been a culture of increasing commerce. Maybe once the bottom finally falls out we won't be.

Regardless, most people just want to "get through the day" and not cause trouble. That's why they'll line up and go through this stuff without a fuss, and that's why it continues, and grows. That people vehemently argue for it is they think we're conspiracy theorist nuts. Maybe when they start seeing this stuff on buses, and trains, and stadiums, maybe then they'll understand we were right all along. Of course, then it will be too late.