“noah takes a photo of himself” [#4 on MyWebSearch]

The really odd thing is that, while MyWebSearch’s excerpt alleges that this phrase exists as shown, it’s nowhere at all in the archives. Only one post uses the word “Noah”, and it doesn’t have the phrase.

Moral of the story: Don’t use MyWebSearch.

Technorati Tags: MyWebSearch

The Village Voice has an article by Noah Shachtman describing a system called “Combat Zones that See” or CTS. It’s a surveillance system using off-the-shelf parts that would be used for urban warfare and the like, but the folks bidding on creating it (and it ain’t that far off) say that there’s definite homeland security applications, and in fact that may be the intended ultimate use of it.

As currently configured, the old-line cameras speckled throughout every major city aren’t that much of a privacy concern. Yes, there are lenses everywhere-several thousand just in Manhattan. But they see so much, it’s almost impossible for snoops to sift through all the footage and find what’s important.

CTS would coordinate the cameras, gathering their views in a single information storehouse. The goal, according to a recent Pentagon presentation to defense contractors, is to “track everything that moves.”

“This gives the U.S. government capabilities Big Brother only pretended to have,” said John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org, a defense think tank. “Before, we said Big Brother’s watching. But he really wasn’t, because there was too much to watch.”

Is this supposed to make me feel more secure in my own country? We’re continuing to see the truth to the statement that those who give up a little liberty for a little security will wind up with neither.