Flimsy Sanity: Semantic Enhancement

Flimsy Sanity

In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. - Friedrich Nietzsche

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Semantic Enhancement

Lawmakers and privacy advocates are concerned that a powerful new data searching tool being tested by the Department of Homeland Security could pose a threat to Americans' privacy as it sifts through mountains of information for patterns that might reveal terrorists.
Called ADVISE — for Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight and Semantic Enhancement — the program is capable of linking and cross-matching material from websites and blogs to government records and personal data.
Homeland Security has quietly been developing the ADVISE program since 2003, the same year another powerful data mining program at the Pentagon called Total Information Awareness was scuttled over privacy concerns.
Some leading lawmakers believe Congress needs to scrutinize these programs carefully, fearing data analysis capability is advancing so quickly that government oversight can't keep pace with it.
Feds test new data mining program USA Today.
Doublespeak is most reminiscent of Orwell's "newspeak" when it is used by a government agency to cover up something unpleasant. The government may find the need to talk about something that has negative connotations to large portions of the public, and avoids backlash by replacing the term with a new one that most people will not recognize as the same thing. Thus "area denial munitions" means "landmines", "physical persuasion" and "tough questioning" mean "torture", and "operational exhaustion" means "shell shock". The government even employs doublespeak against its own, for example the U.S. Army's recruitment motto is "Be an Army of One." This appeals to rugged individualism, yet the reality of soldiering is that of submission to authority and the following of orders without question. - Wikipedia

6 Comments:

  • At 6:18 AM, Blogger Bart said…

    This comment has been removed by the author.

     
  • At 6:19 AM, Blogger Bart said…

    Freedom isn't free.

    It costs a buck 'o five.

    But in better terms, we aren't all that free anymore. Freedom has always been somewhat of a misnomer, however, we could safely say we had quite a few liberties many other people around the world didn't have. Seems everyday we are about to lose a few more of them.

    It's still not dire straits (MONEY FOR NOTHING!) yet. Checks and balances still do work in a lot of respects.

    January 2009 can't come fast enough, though.

    I expect to get a call from the FBI (or possibly the NSA, or No Such Agency as we joke about it around here since it's right around the corner) about this comment.

    www.bartraeke.com

     
  • At 6:43 AM, Blogger Flimsy Sanity said…

    Ha ha, comment deleted.

     
  • At 3:01 PM, Blogger Bart said…

    Shaddup, it won't let you edit.

     
  • At 3:09 PM, Blogger Flimsy Sanity said…

    Oh, I was confused. I thought some anonymous person changed their mind and was worrying about the govnt spy program.

     
  • At 3:57 AM, Blogger Bart said…

    Heh, sorry, thought you knew it was me, since the deletion and my edit are one minute apart from each other.

     

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