Now the Justice Department wants millions of Americans to become
informants (from
Plastic):
The Bush Administration aims to recruit millions of United States citizens as domestic informants in a program likely to alarm civil liberties groups.
The Terrorism Information and Prevention System, or TIPS, means the US will have a higher percentage of citizen informants than the former East Germany through the infamous Stasi secret police. The program would use a minimum of 4 per cent of Americans to report "suspicious activity".
In other words, we'll become
one nation, under surveillance. That's also unconstitutional, which the Justice Department doesn't mind. To become an informant, just sign up
on-line.
Actually, this reminds me of Nightwatch from Babylon 5. You can easily picture John Ashcroft with the menacing Babylon 5 music in the background.
posted by Julian at 7:06 AM
We installed a
Tivo system this weekend. It's one of the three significant innovations in television technology that I've experienced. The other two, if you're curious, are cable TV and VCRs.
Here are the features that I'm most excited about:
- Ability to pause, rewind, or fast-forward live TV. In other words, I can start watching a TV show 20 minutes after it starts and fast-forward through the ads.
- An automatically loaded listing of available TV programs, updated every night.
- Easy-to-use method of specifying which shows to record, either once, whenever the show is on, new episodes only, or by general category.
- Immediate access to all recorded programs, without having to switch tapes or scan through a tape.
- Suggestions of other shows that might appeal to me, based on my earlier preferences.
My only concern is that I'll end up watching more television, now that it's more convenient to do so. However, maintaining a reasonable balance should be feasible. I'll simply restrict my television-watching to times when I'm too tired to do something more stimulating.
posted by Julian at 7:48 PM
