Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Morning Mail - 08.11.09

Thomas Reynolds: We never dealt with domestic. With us, it was always war. We won the war. Now we're fighting the peace. It's a lot more volatile. Now we've got ten million crackpots out there with sniper scopes, sarin gas and C-4. Ten-year-olds go on the Net, downloading encryption we can barely break, not to mention instructions on how to make a low-yield nuclear device. Privacy's been dead for years because we can't risk it. The only privacy that's left is the inside of your head. Maybe that's enough. You think we're the enemy of democracy, you and I? I think we're democracy's last hope.

Brill: Fort Meade has 18 acres of mainframe computers underground. You're talking to your wife on the phone and you use the word "bomb", "president", "Allah", any of a hundred keywords, the computer recognizes it, automatically records it, red-flags it for analysis. That was 20 years ago.
Brill: In the old days, we actually had to tap a wire into your phone line. Now with calls bouncing off satellites, they snatch'em right out of the air.


(Source: Enemy of the State)

1 comment:

Kat S.W. said...

Best Will Smith movie. My father and I still watch it every time it comes on TV.