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I think OWS was the real reason for the ramp up in "total information awareness" surveillance. I don't think most people realized how effective it was at bring

I think OWS was the real reason for the ramp up in "total information awareness" surveillance. I don't think most people realized how effective it was at bringing out collective activism and anger, and how much danger that put the establishment in. They were clearly looking at Egypt and back to OWS and thinking "that shit can NOT be allowed to happen here". So, how to stop the next one? Mass surveillance - pick out the seedlings of discontent and crush them before they grow big enough to become threatening again. I'm convinced is also the reason why they considered assassination. They were getting a little desperate.

deleted 13y ago
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DanBC 13y ago
> I think OWS was the real reason for the ramp up in "total information awareness" surveillance. Mass surveillance was in place for many years before OWS existed.
- crdoconnor 13y ago
  >"Ramp up"
  - DanBC 13y ago
    There was no ramping up of mass surveillance because of OWS.
krapp 13y ago
>I'm convinced is also the reason why they considered assassination. worth re-reiterating perhaps... that never actually happened.
- crdoconnor 13y ago
  I wasn't talking about the FBI. I was talking about the group that the FBI refuses the name. Whoever they are I have no doubt that they represent some part of the establishment in the US.
  - krapp 13y ago
    >Whoever they are I have no doubt that they represent some part of the establishment in the US. Maybe? But "the establishment" is a pretty vague and all-encompassing term. That could be anyone from the CIA to a cabal of Tea Partiers to Wall Street bankers. I would hope the government at least would've learned by now that it's smarter to discredit a populist movement or break it from with rather than make obvious martyrs of its leaders...