> By the 1970s, the Stasi had decided that methods of overt persecution which had been employed up to that time, such as arrest and torture, were too crude and obvious. It was realised that psychological harassment was far less likely to be recognised for what it was, so its victims, and their supporters, were less likely to be provoked into active resistance, given that they would often not be aware of the source of their problems, or even its exact nature. Zersetzung was designed to side-track and "switch off" perceived enemies so that they would lose the will to continue any "inappropriate" activities.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi#Zersetzung
Data mining is extremely useful and a significant technological leap, but data manipulation on a massive scale is definitely something to marvel at.
Facebook is already impersonating your friends and family by showing fraudulent "likes" (but hiding them from their owners so as to prevent discovery), now imagine that the people you respond to on reddit and HN aren't actually people but instead they're trojan horses -- bots meant to influence society by manipulating it. MSM will no longer be the only domain that our elite overlords encroach upon.
Do you have a source for that?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2267575/Is-Fa...
Some of that isn't new, but the ability to use vast computing resources to map behavior prediction of 300 million people to an accurate degree, is.
They no longer need your friends, family and neighbors to rat you out as a traitor (terrorist sympathizer?). They already know everything you have said, everywhere you have been, and everything you've done.
ARGUS is very new. And it's a required cornerstone of behavior control. They'll have a hard time dictating who you are, if they don't know where you are at all times.
The ideal fascist state is one of total compliance. A step forward for them would be to accomplish that with even less bloodshed, by essentially brain washing an entire culture toward a new way of thinking (war is peace, slavery is freedom). Not just empty slogans, posters, and fear, but actual belief across an entire culture.
When you look at the near complete lack of protest against the rise of the fascist state in America, you can see they're already well on their way to having accomplished that.
Here is an interesting cue for how social network information can be used to control the spread of unwanted ideologies & behaviours through a population: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZNrOzgNWf4&feature=share
If anything like this was going on (and I am making no accusations; this is all speculation), then I suspect that it would work using mechanisms similar to those described in the above video.
No implausible high-technology mind control would be required, just the simple & conventional tools of the marketing/advertising/targeted-persuasion industry, directed towards a relatively small group of people, identified through the very surveillance mechanisms that have so recently been revealed to the world.
It is a pretty cool concept really, and (if we trust the people pulling the trigger), infinitely preferable to violent conflict. Better to counter the spread of hostile, dangerous and violent ideologies before there is loss of life, damage to property, economic disruption etc...
The key thing here is trust. Weirdly enough, I am normally* inclined to trust (the majority of) NSA & GCHQ staffers. My main concerns normally revolve around the proliferation of such technologies to groups and individuals with less noble aims.
* (Sometimes I get a bit depressed and cynical. At times like these I tend to reflect on the worst aspects of human nature, and the level of trust that I am capable of mustering drops in a corresponding manner).
What USA is having is the possibility of devolving into totalitarian state, but what ideology will rule it is yet to be seen IF that happens.
The moment when a drone kills US citizen on US soil without judicial oversight you will know that that danger is real. But you are still far far away from that.
What, six months? Three years? What can be done, will. It's possible it's already happened but isn't yet deemed appropriate for public knowledge. When it is, either for the intimidation factor or because it's become so widespread it can't be hidden, the copfan broadcast media will celebrate it rather than question it.
They later grow to encompass international commerce, as that too related to national defense. Knowing where, how, and who are able to transport material in and out of countries is paramount in successful wars between nations. Of course, having access to private information in the international market, they were also able to start supporting their own nations companies and improve the nations ability to commercial out compete foreign companies.
Afterward, the next step was to encompass everyone in ubiquitous surveillance. Having a working social graph of their own citizen, as well as anyone else can very much relate to national defense, now called nation security. Knowing who might in 10 years become the next President of the United States is important, as otherwise the wrong candidate might get elected. Surveillance of news papers is also of paramount importance, as otherwise state officials won't have time to react to the fast pace of inquiries that otherwise might happen. Documents destined to be shredded could be laying around for just anyone to read.[¹]
The next step they took was a bit more bloody. Secret indefinitely incarceration, torture, and kill lists (The renamed Deathsquad of old). Using military force in targeting journalists, and publications.
I wish I know what the next stage is. The insight from the old big leaders of west Germany, USSR and China has not made any new innovations on this front. At most, they were better at scaling the last step up and increasing the size of the kill lists, torture chambers, and the nastiness of the military force against journalists. I wonder if the national security agency feel a need to go one up on this, and innovate further. The virtual strip search by massive radiation machines are a nice touch, but they surely can do more.
[¹]: http://snowdenandthefuture.info/