…and I’m not talking about me. I’m talking about government agencies that cultivate an inherent mistrust of its citizens.
I wrote yesterday (and many times in the past) about infrastructures of control built-in to modern computers, and the relationship between this form of social control and proprietary software (and hardware) companies. This is a big problem, and has been on my mind for some time.
Today, HP and Microsoft announced that they are collaborating on “the HP National Identity System (NIS) solution on the Microsoft® .NET platform.” Fresh spin:
“The need to securely identify people moving across national and international borders has never been more important than it is today,” said Jim Ganthier, worldwide leader, Defense, Intelligence and Public Safety, HP. “HP and Microsoft are working together to provide government agencies the ability to access the integrated data streams needed to securely identify people both in the physical and virtual worlds.”
Note the similarity in language between this Corporate Master(tm) and the BuShites. They are poising themselves to profit from fascist tyranny. Which is, after all, the point of this particular mode of fascist tyranny: profit over people. This is of course a sweepingly broad statement, but this particular instance of social control is one facet of the story.