Food for thought indeed, Lawrence.  But on balance I don’t agree with your analysis.

My key disagreement concerns your point about the inability to use such large volumes of video and audio and text data.  True, it would be near-impossible today.  But not tomorrow.  Intelligent agents are developing at incredible speed.  Soon it will be entirely realistic to search a huge Europe-wide database with a query such as ‘who was Marc Fresko speaking to over the last two days, where, and what did they speak about’?  We’re already seeing early signs of this kind of search ability – need I say ‘Siri’?  There’s no doubt in my mind that (a) this sort of software already exists and is in daily use in security establishments not frequented by most of us; and (b) it will get much, much, better in the next few years.

Which is why this is not completely off-topic.  Good search engines are already exerting pressure on the disciplined management of information.  That pressure will grow.  Possibly the pressure will grow to be irresistible, at which point we’ll find that search engines really can be used instead of records management disciplines, though that is still some years away.

To finish with your last point (and this is off-topic):  You maintain that information-rich repressive regimes such as those in Libya and East Germany ‘do not work’.  Not so.  try telling the survivors of the tens of thousands of victims of repression in those countries.  They certainly did ‘work’, for many decades in each case, for long enough to cause misery and death on an untold scale.  That they ultimately failed, in a way that our open democracies have yet to fail, is another point entirely.

Marc Fresko

A fascinating article that shows the technological possibility of a world state. If this were to occur, then it would be the rise of a world state, which would end politics. At least this is how the ancient political philosophers saw it. However, they never appreciated technology and its potential.  As a result, the world state has been a utopian dream (as well as a dystopian nightmare) within the minds of modern philosophers.

However, there are a couple of tendencies that will limit this development that need to be considered.

First, we may record everything, but even with super computers can governments extract it, analyze it, understand it and then act on it?

Second, monitoring does not mean control.  Even the most repressive and strict regimes have been unable to keep their people suppressed.  Over time, the political philosophical question emerges about the best way to live and the authoritarian regimes change (perhaps not as fast as one would like (also assumes if not  Hegelian world view at least a cyclical nature of regimes) (still open to debate)

Third, all the recording assumes a benign target. So far, we have not seen any concerted efforts by citizens or subjects to subvert this surveillance. I would imagine a couple of things will develop pretty quickly over the next few years.

1.    Individual devices that create an electromagnetic field to blur someone’s identity from cctv.

2.    Electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attacks either through specific weapons or specific services.  The theoretical specifications are out there and one only needs to create a directed one. (By the way governments are way ahead on this with shielding their hardware in bunkers and other secure locations. 

3.    Hactivists corrupting databases and seeking to subvert from within. Look at Bradley Manning and he was not very motivated nor was he trained in what he did. He simply downloaded a lot of files.

4.    Storage is notoriously fragile. How long does this stuff need to be kept? Who will upgrade formats? Governments, especially local, rarely invest in the cutting edge material and those seeking to resist will have an incentive to produce the countermeasures effectively and inexpensively.

5.    The politicians will resist, to some extent, so regimes will realize that if the average citizen is surveilled so are they.

Fourth, from a records management point of view, will this really work?  Getting people to follow a paper based records management system, let alone one as complex and vast as an electronic one envisioned by a panopticon state, suggests a near superhuman records management capacity.  To put it differently, but directly, governments are not designed to be efficient. Who says they are going to be efficient or even effective in the use of these technologies?

Fifth, they do not work. Libya fell despite having such a system. East Germany collapsed and it had a huge informant system.

In any case, a very interesting and thought provoking paper which suggests we do need bigger buckets and better search engines.

Best,

Lawrence

--
Peter Kurilecz CRM CA
[log in to unmask]
Richmond, Va
http://twitter.com/RAINbyte
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/RAINbyte/
http://paper.li/RAINbyte/rainbyte
Information not relevant for my reply has been deleted to reduce the electronic footprint and to save the sanity of digest subscribers
For any technical queries re JISC please email [log in to unmask] For any content based queries, please email [log in to unmask]

Help protect our environment by only printing this email if absolutely necessary. The information it contains and any files transmitted with it are confidential and are only intended for the person or organisation to whom it is addressed. It may be unlawful for you to use, share or copy the information, if you are not authorised to do so. If you receive this email by mistake, please inform the person who sent it at the above address and then delete the email from your system. Durham County Council takes reasonable precautions to ensure that its emails are virus free. However, we do not accept responsibility for any losses incurred as a result of viruses we might transmit and recommend that you should use your own virus checking procedures.

For any technical queries re JISC please email [log in to unmask] For any content based queries, please email [log in to unmask]