Identifying the thought criminals

commenter mettle pointed me to a post in a - new-to-me - online news resource that i almost wish i hadn't read...

kevin, the mind behind cryptogon, posts on Simulex Inc.’s Synthetic Environments for Analysis and Simulation system...

There’s really no way to know how many ways this system is already being used against us. I tried to think about it for a few minutes and it’s mind boggling. “How isn’t it being used?” is probably a more interesting question. If the Architect was interested in tools that could help him more effectively run the Matrix, he’d have Simulex reps on the phone ASAP.

[...]

We must assume that They are using the full spectrum of surveillance information to try to PREDICT HOW EACH OF US IS LIKELY TO BEHAVE ON A DAY TO DAY BASIS. Where we go. What we buy. Where we travel. Which routes we take. Etc. All of these things can be broken down into a kind of moving average that wiggles around between an upper band and a lower band, kind of like a standard deviation from a mean. Stay within the bands, and the Magic 8 Ball probably won’t bother to flag your profile for closer analysis by some genius at the Terrorist Screening Center.

Obviously, most of us aren’t worth the attention of a human analyst, and They know it. Most of the sheep just go with the herd. They do what they’re told, shop at WalMart, pay their taxes, go to church, the end. More educated sheep read Business Week or the New York Times, etc. Within a fairly wide range of activities, it’s no more complicated, for the vast majority of the people out there, than the way pool balls behave as they bounce around the table and each other.

This is a key point, so I’m going to emphasize it:

These systems would excel at finding the artifacts, the outliers, the people who haven’t internalized the programming, but continue to act “normal.”

It would identify the thought criminals.

this is part of the comment i posted on mettle's comment...

it's not that i haven't been on the same wavelength, albeit intuitively, for a long time, but it's another experience entirely to read someone who is so obviously intelligent and - seemingly - playing with a full deck, spell it out so clearly... i've got cold chills down my back...

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