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New NSA Location-Tracking Patent
This is one of those technology items that is only surprising in that it’s only just now being patented. All that means though is that it’s been in use for years already probably.
The National Security Agency has obtained a patent on a method of figuring out an Internet user’s geographic location.
Patent 6,947,978, granted Tuesday, describes a way to discover someone’s physical location by comparing it to a “map” of Internet addresses with known locations.
Actually, this seems like old news for the most part. But here’s the reason I posted it. Remember the other day how I was talking about the government tracking people’s online activity not for social control, but instead to make money, and then everybody flipped out on me and said I was crazy? Well check this out:
The NSA did not respond Wednesday to an interview request, and the patent description talks only generally about the technology’s potential uses. It says the geographic location of Internet users could be used to “measure the effectiveness of advertising across geographic regions” or flag a password that “could be noted or disabled if not used from or near the appropriate location.”
Wait, what? Did you catch that? You read it right: the NSA is working to track advertising effectiveness.
September 28th, 2005 at 10:04 pm
well, they say it’s for advertising, all non-threatening like.
sure, they may well use it to track advertising, just like i can use a pistol as a paperweight.
jeremy’s always saying that technology expands to fill all of its potentialities. i’d be very surprised if it wasn’t used for just about everything.
maybe they’ll use it to coordinate a global mexican wave? heeyyy!!
seriously, social control and making money go hand in hand. it’s pretty obvious that the corporate state will always do both.
September 28th, 2005 at 10:36 pm
i fail to see why the government, at the federal level, is interested in commerce, when they have fiat currency. the government`s interest in our geographic location isn`t about the effectiveness of advertising, unless it`s for voting trends.
September 29th, 2005 at 1:58 am
dude, fiat currency (and hence the g’ment) is controlled by private banks. show me a bank that’s not interested in commerce.
“first you get the money, then you get the power…” notice which is first?
and don’t the words “rich and powerful” go so well together?
the g’ment is in the business of stealing wealth from the people and handing it to the “big business” that funded the g’ments rise to power.
if “big oil” wants the g’ment to use their vast military resources to take iraqi oil, it happens.
if “big advertising” wants g’ment to use their vast military resources to investigate the effectiveness of advertising you can bet your ass the g’ment is gonna do it.
at the expense of the poor and weak, for the benefit of the rich and powerful. government, business, advertising, banking, war, religion, television, etc., all of them merely facilitators of that process.
it’s a pyramid scam, they tell you that quite openly.
and i’d be quite surprised if the nsa gave much of a shit about voting trends. what the hell does it matter who anyone votes for? where you spend your dollar though…
don’t worry though alistair. just because they’re interested in making money doesn’t mean we won’t be rounded up and shot. you are still right about that. it’s just that we’ll only be disappeared if we fuck with the food on the corporate table. if you can prove that your contribution to society is a net increase in corporate profits, you and the system are gonna get along just fine. (of course that means you’ll be robin hood in reverse, but they tell me it’s a dog eat dog world.)
September 29th, 2005 at 2:20 am
I like your style, big spender.
September 29th, 2005 at 9:37 am
This is old news. It’s called an IP address. Just intercept the packets and look for similar login info.
I’m thinking, I’m thinking, I’m thinking….
…That this is old news, but it made the news because… it’s part of the warm-up, sort of a testing-jerking-stretching motion, for the upcoming Internet clamp-down. It is coming; read any business site long enough, and you’ll see that those guys are scrambling ass to figure out a way to control blogs. Particularly, they’re worried about poor product reviews. Sometimes I’ll read an article suggesting that “free internet can’t last forever” and wonder, what the fuck? TV service isn’t free, but the content is, then I realize, they’re after a way to manage content that isn’t theirs. I can’t think of a way to pull this off yet besides require that every site go commercial, but that’s not possible.
I’m thinking, maybe they’ll introduce a new technology, and stop supporting old technology, to effecitvely clamps down, the way the web-browser. Sites will be rated as “cheap” to “exclusive”, with those allowing viewer input being the most expensive, charged by the second, and with cost multiplying exponentially after a short “reading period”; Each keystroke uploaded will be charged. Sites like Little Green Footballs and Free Republic will get special grants to fund users; sites like Alex Jones’s will cost hundreds of dollars per download. But look at the web browser and its overreaching, failed cousins, the pseudointernets like AOL and Compuserve, shut down the usenet, which still resurfaced as the forum and now the blog.
September 29th, 2005 at 12:53 pm
I’d have to say the opposite - that it seems with companies doing Data Mining that they are figuring out how to leverage blogs and use them to their advantage as market research and testing.
September 29th, 2005 at 5:14 pm
I also agree with that sentiment, as well, but I’ve seen it both ways. The DataMining folks are at least working in anticipation of the future, rather than trying to stop it.
September 29th, 2005 at 9:29 pm
Why Futurism Sucks, Exhibit 1. Just so uninspired.