[url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-33017310Millions of US government workers hit by data breach[/url

This follow on from from an attack on the IRS that compromised the details of 100,000 US taxpayers.

Is there anyone on here still daft enough to be in favour of the Tories snoopers charter hoovering up data on every aspect of their lives?

I think people must realise this has been going on for a lot longer than a few years. Take the "Data Protection Act" for instance. Ostensibly it sounds like a good idea. Preventing unauthorised disclosure of personal data to individuals or groups who might not be acting in your best interests is a no brainer.

But when you look at the policies and structures underpinning DP at a macro level you quickly realise that it is very much a dual-purpose piece of legislation which conveniently categorises, sub-divides and indexes the entirety of the nation's "protected" data and places it within the easy grasp of government and/or intelligence mandarins who are completely above any and all forms of oversight.

Prior to the creation of DP data was very often invisible to government. It existed in company filing cabinets, card indexes, rudimentary databases etc. If, say, a policeman wanted to conduct an investigation into an individual he'd really struggle. First he'd face the inordinately time-consuming step of establishing whether or not data exists. Largely he'd be dependent on his own imagination and sheer bloody guesswork. Then he'd face the equally difficult task of LOCATING that information. One employee folder in a badly-indexed and maintained archive of thousands might take days or weeks to find. Now repeat these steps for the five or six other jobs the man might have had.

Sure, these paper archives still exist today. But it's far easier for governments to locate and disseminate such data if the record-keepers are forced to register and classify all their information within an over-arching "Data Protection" index.

I mean, there is a good deal of sense in it, too. In times of catastrophe it's important government can gain quick access to information and use such in all our interests. So, let's say there was some kind of nuclear accident and we really needed to mobilise people who have skills and experience in nuclear physics, engineering etc. Prior to DP government would really be guessing on the numbers of skilled personnel living in Britain who could be useful. Today all they need do is cross-reference whatever records match specific search criteria, locate the data and then find their men.

But what happens when the enemy is your own government? Consider what took place in Holland during WWII when the Nazis took over census data which had been collected in good faith and with the best of intentions leading up to the war. Suddenly the Gestapo no longer needed to conduct time-consuming investigations into the ethnicities of Dutch people - they had the information right at their fingertips on punched and tabulated IBM cards! The only issue from therein was requisitioning the trucks and trains to march these poor folk off to Auschwitz or Dachau.

Looking at DP at the micro level it is easy to become frustrated and disillusioned with the sheer bloody inconvenience it causes regular folk. I've lost count of the number of times when what should have been a relatively simple administrative task was turned into spirit-crushing ordeal.

I mean, sure - I GET that just because I'm married to the bill-payer and we share a joint bank account it doesn't automatically follow that she must agree with my decision to alter our Virgin subscription package. But this doesn't stop me from filling the air with expletives every time such a simple request takes on the difficulties of a solo attempt at Everest's north face without oxygen.

George Orwell is masturbating in his grave right now.

Mass spying, intrusion from government and global corporations, and the never ending erosion of personal freedoms..
The continuation Keynesian economic policy, and a criminal, morally bankrupt, 'too big to fail' banking system with the ability to create money out of thin air.

Worst of all we have an apathetic, complacent population oblivious to the walls of totalitarianism closing around them.

We're currently in the final stage of Western dominance, and we're moving towards some form of military conflict with China, and the balance of power is moving East IMO.

None of the above is anything new. I'm a keen student of ancient Roman and Greek history and the issues we face today are not much different to those of antiquity.

However, I really do think we are now entering a truly unprecedented period where we will collide with fundamentally intractable and existential problems.

As stated, increasing government authoritarianism has always been with us. But previously such was successfully counterbalanced by the expansion of unhappy and disillusioned peoples into new territories where they created laws respecting the freedoms and independence they weren't being granted back home.

Unfortunately there's nowhere left to run to these days. Practically every last inch of the planet was measured, mapped and settled over a century ago.

Another novelty is the end of war. Or at least - war as traditionally defined as an armed conflict between states. Today the major powers all know that conflict is unthinkable since such must ultimately escalate to a nuclear confrontation. At which point the entire species exits stage right.

War - as we once knew it - ended with the atomic detonation over Hiroshima. Since then warfare has largely been fought not with guns and bombs but "Credit Default Swaps", "Derivatives" and such.

With rising population, dwindling fossil fuel, food and water reserves and an existential threat to the planet we really are sitting in a pressure cooker with the heat rising steadily.

We are continually being told that there is a high chance that terrorists want to kill us and we are always at risk. Personally I don't feel threatened at all. Whenever our puppet government want to introduce new laws to limit our personal freedoms they disguise it as a way to prevent terrorism or child abuse. The general public lap it up.

They say 'If you've got nothing to fear you've got nothing to hide' but if the government can build up a cache of information on you which may not necessarily be illegal but things you'd rather keep private then they have ammunition to use against you.

The next "major conflict" will be over fresh water!

If you look around the world, it's not as crazy as you might think.

There are large populations living in areas of the Middle East which only one generation ago were considered uninhabitable due to a complete lack of fresh water - they seem to be managing quite well now to the extent where they produce enough water to spray it on golf courses rather than drink the stuff.

Its never a problem when a population is inventive enough to want to exist where water naturally doesn't.

But to answer the topic question my concern over Government and private data banks is not so much what they know about me, but what they think they know about me and just how out of date and downright inaccurate that can be.

For instance two weeks ago I finally got my new tax code for the company car I was given last December, out of the four pieces of information the Inland Revenue were given to calculate my benefit in kind they entered every one incorrectly despite filling in the forms online they still then manually type the details and they got it so wrong that I was rated at £16,100 benefit in kind instead of £3300, in other words without earning a penny this year I would have still owed them the tax on £5500 of benefit.

To correct this appalling assessment you have to register with their web site and in this new age of privatisation of services they have seconded the security checks to Equifax, went through their procedures which were extensive and involved passport and driving licence details until I got to a security question that involved entering the full bank account number from the current one they held on record for me, they gave me the last three digits as a hint. I don't own a bank account with that number.

After two days of searching I finally found an old bank account number that was closed in 2007 and which actually was in a Ltd Company name with me as a signatory (ie it wasn't my personal account and it certainly wasn't current) - this however, according to the UKs leading credit reference agency and HM Governments preferred citizen security checker is my main bank account, presumably they have no details at all of the actual accounts that I use daily.

Talking of daft security checks - I've banked with NatWest since 1976. About 2 years or less ago I failed a security check to execute a transaction because "I" got my date of birth wrong. The idiot I was speaking to could not conceive that I might know my dob and another idiot at NatWest might have input it wrong when entering it onto a computer system some years back! It's not hard to see why they almost (and arguably have) bankrupt the UK!

I was surprised to discover that within 24 hours of leaving my last company Facebook had changed my employment status.

It makes me wonder what other personal details are changed by outside forces completely beyond one's control.

Quote ="JerryChicken"There are large populations living in areas of the Middle East which only one generation ago were considered uninhabitable due to a complete lack of fresh water - they seem to be managing quite well now to the extent where they produce enough water to spray it on golf courses rather than drink the stuff. Its never a problem when a population is inventive enough to want to exist where water naturally doesn't.'" Indeed, they're OK for now, but they're running out of water pretty rapidly. I don't dispute that they have the money to do something about it, I mean, if you can run an oil pipeline through several continents, then why can't you do the same with water? But I doubt they could complete something on that scale in the time frame needed. Similarly, in the South West US, they can't build the reservoirs required in time to prevent a catastrophic crisis. thewaterproject.org/water-in-crisis-middle-east

Quote ="JerryChicken"There are large populations living in areas of the Middle East which only one generation ago were considered uninhabitable due to a complete lack of fresh water - they seem to be managing quite well now to the extent where they produce enough water to spray it on golf courses rather than drink the stuff. Its never a problem when a population is inventive enough to want to exist where water naturally doesn't.'" Indeed, they're OK for now, but they're running out of water pretty rapidly. I don't dispute that they have the money to do something about it, I mean, if you can run an oil pipeline through several continents, then why can't you do the same with water? But I doubt they could complete something on that scale in the time frame needed. Similarly, in the South West US, they can't build the reservoirs required in time to prevent a catastrophic crisis. thewaterproject.org/water-in-crisis-middle-east

The less people know about me the better. As convenient as it may appear having adverts for things related to things I looked for on the internet magically appear on my browser sends a shiver down my spine. It's bad enought that I get 5-6 phone calls a day relating to records of my non fault accident or PPI that I need to claim and 5 or 6 emails a day from people trying to talk to me about payrol or CRM services I badly need (as I "unsubscribe" to one another commences).

They want us to perform all our financial transactions on line and at the same time open up as much access to what we do on line to almost anyone who wants to sell us (or at least say they want to sell to us) something - for our own benefit of course - because they are just responding to what "we" have asked for. It's like walking into a shop and putting your wallet stuffed full of all your money on the counter by the till while you browse the store.

Well, depending on whom you believe. A huge, global currency collapse is being engineered, so the banks, and their governments can implement a global electronic currency, thus, giving them access to every piece of information on everybody.

Really? Have you checked what international bodies such as the UN say on fresh water depletion and its likely consequences? Or that well known font of eco-hysteria - The Pentagon? [iParts of[/i the Middle East get by because they can afford to blow huge amounts of cheap fossil fuels on technologies such as water desalinisation. But the costs of running of such are prohibitive and many countries just can't afford the investment.

In the United States cities such as Las Vegas are on the point of drying up and withering away. The local reservoirs linked to the Rocky Mountains are practically exhausted. The last time I checked they were trying to secure water rights from as far afield as Washington state.

The agricultural belt of America (not to mention all but the South-Eastern tip of Australia) is entirely dependent on fresh water pumped from subterranean aquifers which are also close to the point of exhaustion. Once this water is gone it's gone for good. Or at least - for the next few hundred thousand years which is around the time it takes to replenish them naturally. Certainly no amount of water desalinisation can even hope to compensate for the loss.

Take the total agricultural yield of Mid-Western America and Australia out of the annual food chain. That's starvation - on a massive scale.

Of course, this is nothing compared to the calamity which will befall us once we reach the point of Peak Oil. No amount of "human invention" will be able to cope with the cold realities of fossil fuel depletion. Even if you could fit a nuclear fission reactor or hydrogen fuel cell to a car - where are you going to get the resources from to make all the components derived from fossil fuels (i.e. plastics, rubber etc.)

Where will the fertilisers or the pesticides we are now entirely dependent upon to cobble together the world's annual food requirements come from? Ditto medicines. And nobody will be squandering what precious little reserves they have left on ludicrously positioned urban developments such as Vegas or the host which have sprung up in the Arab Peninsula just so the inhabitants can all continue enjoying their splendid swimming pools.

When you say "can't afford" you really mean "won't afford just yet", but as can be seen in the Arabian states when they [iabsolutely need[/i desalination then its affordable, your two examples of the USA and Australia aren't really examples of two nations who will not be able to afford more imaginative methods when and if the time comes, for now there is a less expensive option, thats all.

Or are we saying that within a few decades a doomsday scenario will make the developments in the Arabian states turn in to ghost towns of a Mad Max style and those populations will be clamoring to get into the UK where it es water out of the sky for 250 days a year ?

That's assuming that the US, and Aus will be able to afford it when the time comes, and it won't be too late to renew the supply.
If you take a look at the US economy, and all the other debt based, consumer economies in more detail, it's clear that debt levels can't be maintained and the bubble will burst, and it will get very messy indeed.

Hey, take it up with the UN. I'm only voicing a small subset of the serious concerns they (and other groups) have been ringing the alarm bell on for many years now.

Your argument seems to go something like ...[i "everything will be ok, because human beings are smart and we'll invent some technological fix which will be able to supply all our needs at an affordable price".

[/iUnfortunately, as the popular science writer and anthropologist, Jared Diamond, points out - there are any number of human civilisations throughout history which faced resource crises of all descriptions and simply collapsed.

This reminds me of the argument I regularly used to hear in the seventies which claimed we'd be producing unlimited quantities of free energy from nuclear fusion by the turn of the century. Now, I don't know precisely how many kilowatts of juice fusion has churned out in total by 2015 - but I doubt it would supply one small town with enough to last a week. At best a workable, affordable fusion reactor seems the best part of a century away. Meanwhile serious resource depletion is hitting us RIGHT NOW.

The point is - unless you can actually point to an even halfway usable technology which can replace the colossal quantities of fresh water we've just frittered away you'll forgive me for retaining my scepticism.

I see the problem as less to do with debt than resources and growth. With unlimited quantities of resources (specifically energy) it's theoretically possible to carry on with a debt-based economic model indefinitely. Western economies are entirely dependent on growth - unlimited growth. But in a resource-finite environment it's only a matter of time before the upward momentum of growth hits the intractable downward spiral of resources and their depletion.

You only need look at the population statistics over the last few hundred thousand years to quickly gain an appreciation of this truism. For many thousands of years population seemed fixed to a few million inhabitants with the number of deaths broadly matching the number of births per annum. It's only around the Renaissance period when the trend began its ever-quickening acceleration to what we see today. It was at that period when we first began to really see the benefits from cheap, condensed forms of carbon-rich energy laid down during archaic periods of the earth's history. Go back a hundred years or so when petroleum products really hit the market and population growth really does kick into hyperdrive.

Population is no different to any other inflationary bubble. Take away the fuelling agent (literally and figuratively) and it'll burst.

I'm a child of the 50s, when I was 10 years old I confidently expected to have been obliterated by a Russian nuke by now, so forgive me but its not in my nature to be pessimistic.

Dwindling resources, will eventually be our downfall. However, I see the collapse in our economy to be the catalyst that initially sets the house of cards alight. It's how we've managed to expand to breaking point for so long - because we've had the ability to pay to keep the wheels in motion, to transport food, fuel, materials and labour to anywhere in the world. But, when those wheels stop turning, just how long will it take for everything to fall apart? It's not as if we have a solid manufacturing base to be able to produce our way out of trouble, and it's not as if we are self sufficient in terms of our resources.

Regarding energy, if we're not going to throw all our efforts into wind and solar energy, then we have to pursue nuclear power. It goes against the general consensus, but the facts are that it's more efficient than other renewables, and it's safer than we're led to believe by the media.
Either way, if we don't change course now both, environmentally, and economically, then our age of decadence will be over, and we'll suffer the same fate as every other empire in history.

Quote ="JerryChicken"I'm a child of the 50s, when I was 10 years old I confidently expected to have been obliterated by a Russian nuke by now, so forgive me but its not in my nature to be pessimistic.'" Patience, squire www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-33151125

Quote ="JerryChicken"I'm a child of the 50s, when I was 10 years old I confidently expected to have been obliterated by a Russian nuke by now, so forgive me but its not in my nature to be pessimistic.'" Patience, squire www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-33151125

Quote ="Charlie Sheen"Patience, squire www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-33151125'" A Republican will be along soon with some Star Wars stories to put them back in their box.

Quote ="Charlie Sheen"Patience, squire www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-33151125'" A Republican will be along soon with some Star Wars stories to put them back in their box.

Bearing in mind that the United States Congress passed legislation in 2002/3 which grants a three star general authorisation to both deploy and use nuclear weapons WITHOUT approval from the President you are probably more likely to be obliterated right now. Given that another Bush is likely to occupy the White House at some point in the near future and the best alternative the Democrats can currently muster is the wife of the world's biggest arms dealer and self described "Best Friend of Israel" it might be time to start rehearsing your "Duck & Cover" preparedness.



In any case, natural optimism is about as irrational as natural pessimism. No amount of it will conjure new reserves of fresh water or fossil fuels. But you are welcome to stand over an empty bucket and mentally project waves of such in its direction.

Let me know how you get on.