Sci-fi movies like Minority
Report, with a trio of psychics called “recogs” who can see “pre-visions”
of crimes yet to be committed, setting in motion a Pre Crime Unit, came to mind
when reading about China’s effort to detect “pre-crime.”
Bloomberg Business
is reporting that “The Communist Party has directed one of the country’s
largest state-run defense contractors, China Electronics Technology Group, to
develop software to collect data on jobs, hobbies, consumption habits, and
other behavior of ordinary citizens to predict terrorist acts before they
occur.” http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-03/china-tries-its-hand-at-pre-crime
It was reported that the DOD’s Office of Naval Research
(ONR) called for research proposals to study social media and how it could
facilitate insights into people’s real thoughts, emotions and beliefs, and thus
predict behavior.
It is obvious that Facebook is collecting data on people’s
beliefs, likes and dislikes, often prompting them to play silly personal
discovery games that yield a score after ten questions are asked which may seem
random to the average person but they are cleverly designed to mine data and
information on that person.
Algorithms are said to “accurately detect key features of
speech linked to structural patterns such as humor, metaphor, emotion, language
innovations, and subtle non-verbal elements of communication such as pitch,
posture, gesture, from text, audio, and visual media.”
Measuring cognitive behavior, it is alleged
that a software called ‘Beware’ is already being used to analyze social media
activity, property records, records of friends and associates, assigning a “threat
score.” Police might use such a “threat score” to pre-judge if a person is
dangerous. http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-03-08/the-crime-you-have-not-yet-committed
Can computers accurately predict the
future? Amazon uses algorithms to guess what you are likely to purchase,
meteorologists make short-term accurate weather forecasts, and Facebook pop up
ads from companies you liked or offering similar items you have purchased on
line from various vendors; videos of movies you may like to watch may pop up on
the screen as suggestions based on your past viewing. In certain cases
computers have made strides in “predicting who will commit a violent crime.”
Controlling someone’s life, whether
through data-mining or medical breakthroughs that involve DNA typing, does not
stop with intrusive research and computer manipulation. Overt government
control of our children is promoted by many on the left, including presidential
hopeful Hillary Clinton. She is of the opinion that parents are secondary in raising
their child, the state comes first in its job to teach, train, and raise a
child in order to better influence who they are, what they become, and where
their loyalties reside.
I still remember the wife of the
socialist dictator Ceausescu, Elena, who told the soldiers who arrested her in
1989 that she raised them, how dare they put handcuffs on her? We were to refer
to her as our mother and the mother of the country, that our biological parents
were just caretakers entrusted by the state.
Ambry Genetics, a prominent DNA-testing firm located in
Orange County, CA, revealed a new database that contains the aggregated genetic
information of 10,000 patients with hereditary breast and ovarian cancer. With
the explanation that insights may lead to better medicines and a healthier
future for everybody, the company welcomes “collaboration with pharmaceutical
companies to speed the discovery of new diagnostic targets, treatments, and
cures to save more lives, sooner.” Ambry Genetics “hopes to expand the database
by adding genetic information from 20,000 individuals each year.”
Drug Discovery and
Development magazine interviewed Ambry CEO Charlie Dunlop who said, “Based
on the sheer volume of the data we have released, we have already close to 200
new genes implicated in breast and ovarian cancer. This is about 10 times more
genes than was publicly known yesterday, broadening understanding and
potentially opening up more drug targets than from any single data release in
history.” http://www.dddmag.com/articles/2016/03/massive-genetic-database-opens-public
But certain risk factors do not necessarily mean that a
patient typed with such risk will actually get the disease. Are such genetic
banks only about “preventing” genetic diseases? Might they have culling
implications? Is playing God a good idea? Doing in vitro fertilization,
screening the embryos, discarding the imperfect ones, creating 3-parent
embryos, where will it stop? If you have changes in BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes, might
insurance be refused to you, or perhaps a birth permit will be denied if it
goes that far.
Might life imitate art eventually? In the 1997 movie “Gattaca,”
the main character, Vincent Freeman, cannot travel into outer space because he
is genetically inferior, an “in-valid.” In order to pursue his dream, he must
purchase the genes of a laboratory-engineered “valid.”
From an unclassified document released in January, Money Morning is reporting that “the
FBI’s Office of Partner Engagement revealed a new agency initiative based on
Britain’s ‘anti-terror’ mass surveillance program.” This agency “requests that
high school educators across the country inform on students who express ‘anti-government’
or ‘anarchist’ political beliefs.” Upon their observations, teachers report
behaviors that they think might lead to violence, including persons who believe
in conspiracy theories such as global government, police state, are those who believe
in “libertarianism or constitutionalism.” http://moneymorning.com/2016/03/10/fbi-recruits-u-s-educators-to-inform-on-your-childs-political-affilliations/
Is Brave New World,
Aldous Huxley’s vision of a dystopian future in which “humans were genetically
bred and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively serve a ruling order” still
just his dark fiction that has frightened readers since 1931?
In our new and highly computerized world, “the lives of
others” can be effortlessly watched and dissected to the DNA level and then
lovingly controlled in order to preserve them the right way.
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