Fear

4 Comments

1. 

   19-07-2002

   Richard says:

   No, things started getting weird scary some time ago – it’s just becoming more evident now. I wish getting out of here was just that simple. Though I would miss California, I wouldn’t mind being an ex-pat.

2. 

   20-07-2002

   jo says:

   that’s amazing. In a horrible sort of way.

3. 

   20-07-2002

   yhbc says:

   It’s not an official logo, people. Scrolling through the archives, it seems that each month, the webmonkeys who do the webwork for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (which is not that security-sensitive a place) site put a matching pair of oddball .gif’s in the same location – here’s an interesting bit of commentary that was in the November, 2001 edition, for example. The “roving eyeball” thing is spooky-wooky, but it’s more likely attributable to bored, but clever and lightly-supervised, webmasters just goofing off a bit than to a real “here comes big brother NOW, damnit!” attitude at the USPTO.

4. 

   20-07-2002

   stavrosthewonderchicken says:

   yhbc, just because it’s not an official logo makes it no less scary an image. It’s a government website, regardless. To me it’s equally terrifying that imagery like that, in the context of what’s happening in America to civil liberties, can be presented on a government website, even intended in jest, and pushes the envelope a little further as to what can be acceptable and pass without comment.
   It brings to mind, for me, the fact that the last time I was in London, about 12 years ago, there was little to no video surveillance. Now, the average Londoner has their picture taken by surveillance cameras up to 300 times a day, by the more than 150,000 cameras in place already. It has been shown that these cameras do little to nothing to stop crime, but they’re there, and they’re proliferating. Things like this, wihtout our constant vigilance, including ‘goofing off’ with images like the one above (if that’s what it is, and it’s a separate discussion as to how and why a government website can allow ‘gooofing off’) become commonplace, and we stop noticing.
   Meanwhile, our lives are curtailed, circumscribed, and diminished.
   Not a fucking chance I’m going to stop yelling and pointing when I see this kind of thing. Even if it’s over the top and histrionic to do so, it’s better than staying silent and then complaining when we suddenly wake up and wonder when it started to be normal to have to present our papers at the armed checkpoints (or wave our tracking implant) at every street corner.