A Few Thoughts on Data Aggregation
Big Brother on the Make….or perhaps, the take….
Outside of specific and targeted investigational contexts for law enforcement and intelligence, the Federal government really does not need to know what products we buy at the grocery store, what books we buy or check out at the library, the magazines to which we subscribe, our car payments, what kind of food we eat, the websites we visit, how we use our credit cards and where. It’s not actually the government’s business, and presumably, the 4th Amendment indicates they need a compelling interest before they are allowed to snoop.
Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn) is working hard….to make sure the Feds are watching your every move. Unless you are an illegal alien of course.
What passes for Liberalism these days is a strange ideology – American citizens are to be treated as criminals to be kept under continuous government surveillance but if you are a foreigner who enters the country illegally, you should get special dispensations from police questioning. Or unless you are a foreign terrorist overseas or in communication with one. WTF?
May 17th, 2010 at 3:41 am
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May 17th, 2010 at 3:50 am
I heard an interesting podcast – I forget if it was via Bloomberg or Lexis – about the immigration law. The gist of it was that this is not something that police can pull a car over for. Rather, it is something that they might ask occupants about if the car is pulled over for some other reason. Furthermore, even if they ask someone for documentation and it is not produced, then what? The law isn’t clear. A lawyer who opposed the law in principle was pretty clear in stating his opinion that the law would have no practical effect other than stirring people up.
May 17th, 2010 at 4:04 am
On that note, it has been a success. 🙂
May 17th, 2010 at 11:47 am
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May 17th, 2010 at 10:03 pm
Dodd is a vagabond without shame who may yet singlehandedly destroy our economy via the next crash he helped to cheerlead on with his pathetic hack work for his future employers. That said, I’m with the Dems (and a good share of the police and any number of sane Republicans/conservatives, not to mention libertarians) that the AZ bill, incubated by known consorts of white supremacists and Neo-Nazis, is a mess that will only make the job of the police harder, push illegal immigrants further into the shadows (thank you Ronald Reagan for that amnesty and thank you to the wealthy and the business classes who employ illegals because they like something close to slave labor), and is dubious legally because of the overreach implied by the law as to the responsibilities and the powers of the police.Plus, in case you haven’t noticed, its political suicide amongst this nation’s Hispanic community, especially Hispanic conservatives who know they are being blamed and targeted for a non-existent crime wave (which defies known patterns anyway, illegals have nowhere near the propensity to commit crimes as common citizens) used to deflect attention away from the federal government’s failures and those of the state as well.
May 18th, 2010 at 12:26 am
The immigration divide in the U.S. is the future political divide of North America. From the 1930’s -70’s it was between management and labor. From the 80’s to the "age of Obama"(2009) it was liberal and Conservative. Today, (in the age of Obama) its turning into a political battle between a transnational elite/multicultural alliance vs. "Middle America."
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The immigration enthusiasts (transnational elite/multi-cult alliance)can range from Carl Rove to George Soros, ethnic activists to the board of directors of transnational corporations, neocons to socialists, and anyone hoping to build a social welfare superstructure that solves "problems" such as intolerance or education test score outcomes.
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The immigration skeptics (Middle America) tend to be the white working and middle classes (WWAMC) who apparently, don’t share the same vision of the future as the transnational elite/multi-cult alliance?
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It is from this new Middle American Right where we find the true radicals of today, as they are in fact anti-authority in the true sense of the word. These people oppose the transnational elites’ program of forced diversity and demographic displacement. They therefore are extremely dangerous in the eyes of the transnational elite. This is why its perfectly acceptable for congresspeople or media pundits to use sexually violent imagery (teabaggers) when insulting one of the friendlier political manifestations of Middle America (The Tea Party Movement).
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So don’t be surprised that we’re being watched. In fact, its going to get worse (or better depending on the point of view) if/when the transnational elite start to feel it slip away. I would say without a shadow of doubt that Internet censorship and "hate speech" laws are likely. There is true revolution occurring in "Middle America" (white people are getting uppity) and the transnational elites must be expected to react to it.
May 18th, 2010 at 12:30 am
Eddie,
I spent a fair amount of time in a popular haven for undocumented Mexican migrants. It was northern Virginia. The common type of work that they performed was day labor for small businessmen who did contract work, hourly labor for small franchise chains owned by local small businessmen (mostly fast food), and odd jobs by locals looking for cheap lawn care or handyman type tasks. They were hardly "slave labor" for "the wealthy and the business classes" unless you consider small business owners who have incomes and assets similar to you and I to be part of the "business class." It’s also a bit absurd to characterize any of their labor as "slave labor" when you consider what obstacles they overcame to migrate here, what laws they dodge to remain here, and what lengths they go to in order to seek out the labor. Slaves generally flee from their circumstances, rather than going to extraordinary lengths to put themselves in bondage.
May 18th, 2010 at 2:06 am
Schmedlap,
First, I consider small business owners part of the business classes. Some of them make considerably more than you or I do, usually because they’re cheating the system one way or another (especially if they can pay under the table and pay far less than the market wage for citizen labor).
As well, for Arizona and parts of the SW at large, something akin to slave labor (better called an American form of debt bondage) does exist. Work in the lettuce fields, house cleaning, construction, etc. are often done by migrants getting paid much, much less than what you or I would consider a living wage and they have no say in the matter because only an idiot pays an actual value wage to an illegal, because its a one-sided economic relationship where a new sucker pops in every week to get ripped off again, often out of desperation to provide funds back home.
That’s not so bad but what is worse is the use of blackmail (i.e. a businessman chooses not to pay them or pays them only half of what was promised and says, "I will call the police to take you away if you don’t leave now"). To share my own anecdotal consideration, I’m in central NC and have talked to people in construction about this and they will tell you this is why so many recent houses are built so poorly; not only shoddy materials but terrible workmanship credited to site overseers ripping these migrants off every step of the way and blackmailing them the whole time through it. Police here (and in Charlotte, Raleigh, and Greensboro) will tell you about assaults and robberies that have occurred at the instigation of citizens here who half-paid these guys to work for them and then wanted to get their money back too.
Now why do I call it a peculiar form of debt bondage (aka an acknowledged form of slavery)? Many recent migrants here have had to do so through Mexican criminal networks that now violently demand more than a not so reasonable upfront payment and threaten the families of the migrants back home if continued payments aren’t forthcoming. Some migrants are caught between the people screwing them over here and the people threatening their lives and their families lives back home.
This goes back to a fundamental misunderstanding of the very nature of slavery because people seem wrapped around the concept of slavery as akin to what we experienced in our own history in the South. Slavery can be many other things. I used to recoil from using the phrase myself, but conversations with law enforcement, charity operators and migrants themselves had led me to reconsider, especially after ethnographic fieldwork done for the past twenty years throughout America has shown it to be the case in a near-majority of migrant worker situations.
As well, the work of human trafficking organizations around the world has shown slavery can be much more than direct bondage. There are complex factors involved in shaping and determining the behavior of the "slaves".
However, I don’t mean (and should have been more clear) to say all of the migrants are slaves… this is an accurate description of perhaps a near majority in some areas though, especially in the SW.
May 18th, 2010 at 2:12 am
Seerov,
To a good extent I can agree with what you write about.
Though I have to say it seems that the white middle-class in particular doesn’t realize their great experiences prior to the past few years were an aberration, not a new norm of society. The world is a much more competitive place than it was 30-50 years ago. I doubt we are going back to those times when we lived so much better than 90% of the world.
Their inability to reconcile this and their own sucking of the government’s teat (via Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, unemployment, and tolerated under the table tax evasions) amidst their intense loathing of non-whites who get government benefits and support is despairing but not surprising.
May 18th, 2010 at 7:09 pm
Eddie, government transfer payments are not really the source of the loathing you write about. Instead, Middle America sees these people as in conflict with its interests. When they see on the news that the President of the United States came from a church that incited racial hatred against whites for 20 years, they get resentful because the next day their supposed to so say "diversity is strength." When they give up tax money, community safety, institutions, and historical narratives for the good of a "multicultural nation," they get resentful because regardless of their sacrifices, they’re still called "racist" and still insulted and mocked. They’re reminded everyday in the popular media, news, and education systems that the society that their forefathers had built was evil, but then told if they don’t accept open borders, that they’re Nazis who want to kill non-whites.
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The problem with Middle America is not their loathing; its who they loath. Instead of loathing non-whites, they should loath the white transnational elites who created the conditions that they’re currently living in. The non-whites (that Middle America loathes) are only tools, and have no real power. Much of Western history is about one group of Europeans competing with other groups of Europeans. The Europeans will then recruit some non-whites (Indians, Africans, etc) to help then defeat the other Europeans they’re competing with.
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I see the current situation in North America as being similar. The white transnational elites have their faithful colored companion Army to help them defeat Middle America. Therefore, Middle America shouldn’t waste its time getting mad about the percentages of blacks/hispanics on welfare (welfare spending is less than 1% of GDP). Instead, I predict that they will take two actions.
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1) Test the major assumptions that the transnational elites are building their order upon (diversity is strength, all people are equal, economic growth is sustainable under the current model for commerce) and present the findings in a responsible, respectful, educational, and entertaining fashion.
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2) Present a better, almost Utopian vision for the future that benefits Middle America along with everyone who assists Middle America in attaining its goals. And just like above, its important to do this in a responsible, respectful, educational, and entertaining manner.
May 18th, 2010 at 8:33 pm
Data aggregation is a sharp little ball of razor blades. Cuts all kinds of ways. Same thing that maintains a no-fly list as maintains an e-check for right to work to replace i-9 forms that businesses misuse to exploit cheap immigrant labor. What about pedophile lists? Terrorist watch lists? We all have our faves and our scary dangerous ones. Should the government and the clowns in Congress be allowed to have any list they want, and are they even competent to make them? A timeless debate. But more interesting is what should companies be able to aggregate? If you think that Google or yahoo or Amazon or even Apple doesn’t know who you are and track you online then I have a big red bridge out here in Cal-e-fornia to sell ya. Oh, I left out Facebook, AOL, Myspace, . . . . . . Your browser configuration is unique and traceable. Any website can do it and keep track of you. Not just the "do no evil" guys who take pictures of your house for their maps and put your phone number into reverse phonebooks on their site. Cookies not required. The Devil you know and have some control over is the Gov. The Devil you don’t know and have no control over at all is all the electronic breadcrumbs you leave that a private company can aggregate and use just about any way they want to.