PRISM, etc.

Musings on US431

Road Trip to Santa Rosa Beach

It always amazes me how an unfocused mind can go in all directions. On the way to Santa Rosa Beach FL , after Eufaula AL, where your eyes delight in its main street lined with charming Victorian cottages and mansions,  there isn't much to see on the road except a long  unrelieved stretch of McAdam concrete, I find my mind wandering along with the boring scenery. This wandering thoughts also occur during my enforced 3-mile walks around Atlantic Station and the GA Tech campus. The walks however had been productive of creative ideas when I am involved with projects like fundraising or planning a trip or a party, or when I have some problem to analyze and solve. I am thinking that this same  process  is applicable to a mind plotting horrible acts of terror, criminal activities or reckless behavior during idle moments when there is nothing exciting to focus on. And so while driving on this long boring stretch of road I am mulling over this US government surveillance program expose by the Guardian and  Snowden that's all over the news and the Comedy Central show with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert last night. The media and Fox news are in a tizzy and having almost orgasmic excitement about this most recent scandal in the Obama administration. JayJay is driving and I am listening to Mack update us on the progress of the tennis semifinals match at Roland Garros between Nadal and the Djoker. Rah is hooked to her iPod and periodically annoys Mack and there is a brief good natured poking between the 2 in the rear of the car, and my thoughts are held up temporarily. It appears the cyber surveillance is approved by Congress and the Justice department during the Bush years, designed to hunt down terrorists after the 9/11 attack, continued by Obama, and said to be successful in thwarting several terroristic plots. And Snowden exposed this whole plan by publishing the powerpoint data about this program, code name PRISM. This involves  monitoring any citizen through sophisticated analysis of huge amounts of data from internet sites such as  Google Facebook YouTube Yahoo etc. essentially prying into each and every citizen business without its consent or knowledge. This came in the recent revelation of the administration also seizing the emails of AP correspondents after the leak of security information after the Boston shooting. The ACLU is now suing the government for breach of free speech and unlawful surveillance.  It is very gray. On the one hand I recall the witch hunt for communists during the McCarthy era and the paranoia that's connected with Edgar Hoover's term in the early days of the FBI. Meanwhile there was the endangerment of government secret agents with the blowing of their covers in the Valerie Plame case, compromising their mission and ending Valerie’s career as a CIA agent. And now I just learned how tiny Estonia is all cyber connected, and does its governing pretty much through the internet, and the citizenry carry their ID in computer chips, pay their parking via smart phones, etc. Mind boggling, efficient, requires less government employees, therefore financially sustainable, but also vulnerable to cyber attacks and the whole system is paralyzed. This is like an apocalyptic scenario from a FX movie. This cyber technology and  communication the internet and social media is just awesome. The PRISM technology is incredible. As I’m in the car and could not type much on my iPhone to put my musings down, I am dictating using my Dragon app, then I will send it to myself via email, save it to my Pages app, then edit and finalize the whole article when I get to my desktop. I use Facebook for the facility and convenience of exchanging information and sharing in the activities of friends and family . Is there infringement of citizens’ rights if the government monitors patterns of activities analyzed from terrorist patterns to identify individuals for surveillance, to protect the nation? Do journalists violate national interests by publicizing classified information? How is that different from providing national secret to enemies, which is treason? Are journalist in it to inform the public, and how do they decide what’s good for the public to know, or are they seeking the Pulitzer or Peabody? or increasing circulation and prestige for their papers? I wish I could consult Solomon to resolve this dilemma.

So here’s Mack to update us that the Djoker lost to Nadal, and he’s not amused, and we’re making the turn to Calypso Pointe, in Santa Rosa beach, and it’s sunny and the warm Gulf is beckoning.