Are Google & the CIA in partnership? Without a doubt says Former CIA agent Robert David Steele.

While I'm reluctant to sign on to such an extreme accusation without further evidence, I think it highlights some real concerns about the potential abuse within a company of Google's magnitude.

Do No Evil

The trust we have for google is steeped in the "Page/Brin" public face, and their Orwellian "Do no Evil" slogan. Personally, I trust those two guys, but board members, stockholders, employed CEO's - These are people I have no reason to trust (and every reason to distrust).

It's nice to have a personable trust with your friends, but when we have:
•All our emails
•Chat logs
•Private information/Logins
•Calendar details
•Documents
•Spreadsheets
•Search history
•& Personal website stats/analytics.

...all overseen by Google, I want to see this trust written in law, and want to know how they will be held accountable if that privacy is not upheld 100%

It's happened before (as we are all to aware) and it will happen again. Each time the amount of information leaked grows exponentially as the technology matures, but I don't think people will even comprehend the kind of cross referenced information google keeps on their servers until it leaks.

Benevolent souls

People should also be aware of why google offer all these nice services. They are primarily an advertising company. They are able to target people with pinpoint accuracy because they have an unmatched & incomprehensible amount of cross referenced information at hand. The kind of information people have avoided handing over to telemarketters and market research surveys for years, people have started blindly handing to the likes of google and myspace.

They operate essentially as information farms to deliver consumables to consumers. It's a very cynical point of view, as google also offers very useful services, but there's a real

September 11 saw a tragedy unleashed unlike any before seen by the American people. Unfortunately they have not been alone, and the history of this planet has been plagued by atrocoties committed, not by countries, but by individuals who lie and manipulate others for their own selfish gain. The cycle continues to this day as we as a species seek not to rebuild with hope, peace and understanding, but to perpetuate hatred, and spread destruction to those the priveleged few demonise.

Every nation declares it's own enemies, but in every nation the enemy is the same - The Grey Murder.

(60 seconds. Vision: Bitcloud. Music: Children in the Game - "Magdalena" ©2006 Unreleased)

News Headline: Georgia corporate pilot Bob Smith has a soaring sideline: helping couples join the infamous "mile-high club." For $299, he'll take a frisky twosome past 5,280 feet in a Piper Cherokee 6 fitted with a mattress.

Get this mother fuckin sex... off this mother fuckin plane! I declare the rules of the Mile High club are hereby being re-written to stop this kind of atrocity. The Mile High Club will not officially recognise as members, those who "buy" their way in via a $299 comfy, cozy, cabin cuddle. The Mile High Club is a long time, well respected community of individuals who have sullied the cabin toilets with their sexual deviancies. If you claim to be in the Mile High Club and you don't recall an incident of discomfort, embarrassment and suspicious glances, realise this: You are not in the Mile High Club.

Your membership is hereby null and void.
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An "undercover investigator asks for a complaint form and gets his head smashed into a plexi-glass partition in the police station lobby."

This is a typical abuse of power, and unfortunately not an uncommon story. Excuse this long winded rant, but this echo's a little close to home as I was once violently arrested in similarly bizarre circumstances & can say that it is a frightening experience. You're lucky if you get told *why* you're being arrested, and if you do, it's likely in abstract terminology designed to provoke you into committing a real crime.

People have used the term "Power Corrupts" in the past, and in the last 5 years we've seen more examples of officials being corrupted by power than I personally would like. There seems little recourse for individuals against this type of corruption. I would personally like to see more people excercising their freedoms in a display of civil disobedience. We should all request complaint forms & we should all film police. They have demonstrated that they cannot be trusted, politicians have demonstrated that they cannot resist the urge to "vote whore" by attempting to be seen as "addressing terrorism", commisioners have demonstrated they are incapable of employing police officers with any kind of intellect or ability to use discression, so it is left in the hands of the people to make sure that an eye is kept on Big Brother.

I appreciate the police & everything they do for our society. I think as well as doing away with "quota systems", a solution can be reached by dividing the police force up into divisions. For example, security cameras should watch for bashings & that particular arm of the force would be on the look out for violence and violence alone. If someone abusing drugs gets beaten up,

Some people may be aware of recent documents which have come to light in the EFF vs AT&T issue.

Ahem. I mean the recent "US Government vs the Citizens of the world" issue.

Their aim is to build a system that can automatically identify threats based upon a collection of data, and allow humans to act accordingly. The trouble with the system is that while a human can act with discression & humility, humans can not. They fall over each other in a beaurocratic orgy of "care about the issue". Every single person in a room cares more than the next about any given issue, because every single person deserves more money or more votes than the next. Thus the beurocratic system becomes a binary machine when faced with such data and the end result is "Cmon, lets move on out!"

An efficient computerised system could just as easily replace the human reaction, taking "pre-emtive strikes" against such threats, and automatically counter any 'threats', leaving us humans to do what we do best (argue and debate the issues politicians dupe us into caring about)

It's been a while since i've seen Terminator 2, but I remember in the first incarnation, The Governator was a bad guy. Now that's not to say that "Total Information Awareness" is skynet, but I for one am already looking for a kid with an Atari & a crazy mother.

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A new House bill seeks to protect the interests of those who bribe them.

I can't begin to imagine how these things land on the agenda of Senators. Recently Australia passed some incredibly bizarre laws that make it legal to copy in a limited sense, but essentially say that you can record a TV program to tape freely, but once you watch it you must delete the copy. Your brain is now a storage device.

I'd like to think I could store it on a device with slightly less redundancy than my brain, but who am I to argue?

It is incredibly difficult for podcasters to get permission to play music as there is a 'conspiracy' (ok ok, its called a business arrangement, much like how bribery is now called lobbying) between the major record companies, and the major radio station(s). Imagine how you would feel if you invested huge amounts of time and money on creating an 'artist', photoshots, media releases, cover design, sponsoring/manufacturing subcultures only to find your artist makes 46 on the charts and was beaten out by the "Arctic Monkeys". Fuck that! Thats why you'd get Mcdonalds to buy a truck load of albums thus enabling you to DEBUT at number 1. They always talk about how artists debut at number one - they are so upfront about their corruption, yet people continue to lap it up.

The difficulties podcasters face is an attempt to turn podcasting into "another stupid DIY phase", but it is fortunately having the opposite result. It is exposing the underground, unsigned and independent artists & ignoring the mass marketted photoshopped trite. It is obliterating the means to which the few cyphen all of the funds from the many.

The smarter folk will work out how to make money out of the emerging infrastructure