Under the NSA’s “three-hop analysis” policy, they mine the records of 2.5 million Americans for each suspected terrorist. It’s the miracle of math!
Arrest Them All, Let the NSA Sort Them Out
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication, WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "The Stringer."
19 Comments. Leave new
Brilliant take on yet another bit of good news for we, the people! I don’t really think they understand how absurd they seem to us.
Great system. When the taxpayer subsidized private prisons need to expand or a quick profit boost, just increase the number of “hops.”
As George “the twit” Bush, put it, “uniquely American.”
Yikes! This is like the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Degrees_of_Kevin_Bacon
[…] Here’s Ted Rall: […]
They’ve taken guilt by association in their nightmarish tentacles of our own Orwellian dystopia!
Umm.. 40^3 = 64,000
Unless there’s a fourth ring. Then it is 2.5 million.
I think they call it three-ring because the first ring of 40 is the base ring of suspects. But yeah, that’s right.
The universal dragnet
in my expert experience (and by that, I mean a lifetime of drinking beer), anything triple hopped is better….therefore, I support this.
“NSA Deputy Director John C. Inglis disclosed that his organization is collecting data on persons in the United States using what they call “three hop analysis.” Using this form of spying the NSA has been looking at the phone data of a suspected terrorists right along side the data of all of their contacts, then all of those people’s contacts, and all of those people’s contacts. If each person in this chain of contacts calls 40 unique people, three-hop analysis could allow the NSA to monitor and record 2.5 million Americans when investigating one suspected terrorist.”
.
My understanding from this is that the original “suspect” is not one of the “hops”; here’s the link:
http://www.reddit.com/r/restorethefourth/comments/1ilq78/nsa_admits_to_expansive_spying_using_three_hop/?sort=confidence
I often wonder why we haven’t all been arrested yet.
Wait.
Here it is: the elephant in the room. In the discussion of the dire problems of our country, of our desperate search for solutions, is not the obvious question, has the Great American Experiment been a failure?
Is not republican government a flawed idea? Has not representative democracy proven to be wholly inadequate?
Are we not here today because people have lived DOWN to what so many thinkers throughout history believed of them?
Have not people shown themselves to be every bit as fickle, ignorant, irrational, gullible, inattentive, shallow, and selfish as our worst fears?
Is there any other conclusion than that the people have let THEMSELVES down in not rising to the challenge of self-governance?
If enough people hadn’t been clueless, the ‘ruling class’ never could have pulled off our collective waking nightmare.
As George Leroy Tirebiter once said, “People are just no damn good!” Does anyone remember George?… He ran for public office with the line “Vote for me, because I’m always right, and I’m never wrong!” Doesn’t that suspiciously sound like some of our leaders now?
To answer the question of what can we do … And of course I’m going to ramble.
First, I’m going to rephrase it slightly. The question to ask is “What will eventually occur?”
Second, in “The Shining” (SPOILER!) a crucial event driving the plot is that the hotel’s boiler is old. The pressure “creeps.” One of Jack Torrance’s jobs is to dump the pressure twice a day. If he doesn’t, the pressure builds. Eventually, Jack forgets and the boiler explodes.
Third, here’s an article I just ran across.
Fourth, currently, the government is sharpening the spikes to crucify Bradley Manning. Even his supporters do not seem to grasp what’s coming. The Bradley Manning Support Network mentioned, in a somewhat optimistic tone, that his maximum sentence had been reduced to 90 years from 146 years after several charges were combined. He’s 25. Technically, he could make it to 115, but I wouldn’t take the bet. His sentencing is following classic Nuremberg patterns, which tended toward a 50/50 approach. So, from his initial 146 years, now down to 90, he’ll probably get 45 (and might have some reasonable chance of being let out in about 30).
Now, let me put all those points together:
The current system has, pretty much in all realistic ways, eliminated the pressure releases. Whistleblowers are auto-stripped of their citizenship and chased out of the country or arrested, tortured, and run through sham trials while a tame media provided minimal coverage. The laws have been adjusted, under the guise of “keeping us safe forever and ever,” to allow all this. Protests are either dispersed by local police dependent on the federal government for large segments of their budgets or are relegated to “free speech zones.” In metro regions, your bags can be searched, for no clearly defined reason. At airports, undereducated goons get to feel you up (or your kids) under the “excuse” of national security, and they do it while your fellow citizens just stand there, like Kitty Genovese’s neighbors, watching it go on.
What will eventually occur? Someone of similar training to Edward Snowden will have a relative who is murdered by the police at a protest. Or perhaps a friend will be traumatized by the TSA. Grandma might put up an argument about having her bag searched at the subway entrance, and the cops will break her arm and hip while throwing her to the floor.
And the Snowden-oid will sit down at his computer. And the lights will start going out. Systems will crash. Shit will start to explode. People will die (much like they did during the snowstorm a few years back in New York City where ambulances couldn’t get down city streets to reach the ill — Bloomberg’s advice by the way was to take it easy, go see a Broadway show).
And, having made his point, the Snowden-oid, will simply keep going …
I don’t particularly enjoy the Prepper mindset of equal parts Bible and Crazy, but I, in all seriousness, think that anyone who doesn’t start putting aside canned goods and bottled water sufficient for at least one month, is just as dumb as the person who doesn’t put batteries in the smoke detectors.
Uh, here’s the math, I guess:
You tap one person’s phone, you’re recording 40 people’s voices, that’s zero hops.
You tap 40 people’s phones, you’re recording 1600 people’s voices, that’s one hop.
You tap 1600 people’s phones, you’re recording 64,000 people’s voices, that’s two hops.
You tap 64,000 people’s phones, you’re recording 2,560,000 people’s voices, that’s three hops.
… or something like that.
Jack, I don’t think The Great American Experiment has been a failure….I don’t really believe it’s possible to qualify the presence of a nation of millions in such terms. However, I do believe that our basic institutions of decision-making are being tested by the circumstances granted us by our technology, and there are significant failures within that. Humanity is always ever in transition, it’s not a win-lose…we march along.
@ Jack Heart –
“If enough people hadn’t been clueless, the ‘ruling class’ never could have pulled off our collective waking nightmare.”
.
You are exactly right. For example, I have believed for decades that the government could get the drug problem in the U.S. under control if it so desired. It doesn’t, because it keeps a great portion of the People stupefied. Hell, “Operation Fast and Furious” proved that the government is supplying weapons to the Mexican drug cartels to help with this objective!
.
The same is true of “reality” TV and sit-coms. Keep the People entertained and isolated from Truth and they will be easily controlled.
.
Likewise, the People are manipulated by U.S. main-stream media to keep them ignorant (which is why I prefer international news sources: British, Canadian, and German).
————-
@ drooling zombies everywhere –
“Uh, here’s the math, I guess….”
.
What I said!
Please, Ted, promise me that when «your» president talks to «my» prime minister next month, he won’t propose this «… and let go the ones without bikes» method as a solution to the pressing problem of cycle theft here in Stockholm. You’ve really got me worried….
Henri