The Dark Web Project (For Our Replicants)

Terrorists and extremists have set up shop on the Internet, using it to recruit new members, spread propaganda and plan attacks across the world. -National Science Foundation press release

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation released today a witness list for a full Committee hearing on Protecting Children on the Internet. -Commerce Committee Chairman Daniel K. Inouye Press Release

These two items relate to the previous post in ominous ways. When they start trotting out terrorists and the children, watch out. Our fine tradition of rugged individualism and government for the people by the people is fast fading into the past.

These are stories that are going around, though I'm not yet seeing many attempts to connect the threads, nor do threats to freedom raise an eyebrow these days. Most of the coverage you will see carries on the venerable old tradition of an editor or writer slapping their name on the press release and publishing the story as sent.

Ok, the latest announcement:

The AI Lab terrorism research projects aim to develop and evaluate scalable techniques for collecting and analyzing terrorism information, modeling terrorist behavior and terrorist networks, and disseminating information to the terrorized (victims and citizens) groups. Various approaches and portals of these projects contribute to advancing the field of intelligence and security informatics. Such advancements will help related stakeholders to counter terrorism and promote national security.

Now, how they go about their stated purpose without reference to dilemmas as outlined in the pioneering work of Yehoshua Bar-Hillel, I can't imagine. I find it interesting that the name of the project is "Dark Web". Could this be an indication of what they're looking to take out of the picture? Better put dynamite in your robot.txt files, folks. I don't think for a moment they're looking to find terrorists, or even to harrass citizens en masse who write about topics the powers that be would rather have silenced. This is a hideous, but deceptive pulic mask for a much more diabolical undertaking. Remember, the Devil hates you.

The ongoing cant that rallies the soccer moms and big government "conservatives":

US senators today made a bipartisan call for the universal implementation of filtering and monitoring technologies on the Internet in order to protect children at the end of a Senate hearing for which civil liberties groups were not invited.

Commerce Committee Chairman Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii) and Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee Vice Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) both argued that Internet was a dangerous place where parents alone will not be able to protect their children.

They are talking filters a la China and similar predator-hunting webcrawlers to the above mentioned Dark Web project. Now I know these institutions are no longer our actual government, but none of these actions are sanctioned without a reason. We know they've been at this game for decades, so why do they want the devolution to be televised? And one wonders idly if the technology involved is leading towards the inevitable singularity...