Land of the Stupid and First World Problems

Inspired by “LOL, JK”, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/27/teenager-justin-carter-facebook-comment-jail_n_3512025.html

Once upon a time, it was student’s fault, if the grades were bad. Once upon a time, it was a disgrace to be a village idiot.

Alas, no more. Like the teacher and/or society and/or parents and/or lizard alien jews get the blame for bad grades, so lies the responsibility of understanding no longer at the receiving end but the broadcasting.

Using technology superior to capabilities of early space flight to comment on kitty pictures. Being an abusive father and family matters’ judge. Utterly stupid comments fro0m senators and legislation to match. Hallmark of Texas fame these days – and not just.

At some point in life children learn to tell apart when an idiom said is not to be taken literally: “pulling a leg”, “butterflies in my stomach”, “dead as doornail” aren’t realistic representations of reality and “bats in belfry” doesn’t mean little black mutated squirrels will come to eat walnuts.

A bit later, shades of meaning apply, flirting, menace, adding insult to injury – all possible only because the broadcaster and recipients understand the subtlety within. Reading between the lines and determining the hidden meaning of what was not said. High times during Cold War, low… the last decade and running.

Inability to properly interpret an internet comment has minor effect on a life of an individual, a wide impact with an official in play and community-wide impact as bare minimum when institutions are concerned. While a “woman from Canada” might on a road paved with good intentions hail nearest representative of law, and share her erroneous if sincere interpretation with said representative, it DOES NOT excuse, exonerate, relieve, or exclude an ACTUAL ANALYSIS from the equasion that must be a standard procedure in a suspected threat to life and safety.

While I would expect any a Canadian to understand English, any regular internet user to be aware of most common abbreviations and their meanings, absolutely anyone to BLOODY USE BRAINS AND ASK SOMEONE SMARTER if not sure on ANY significant issue, the ultimate weight of responsibility DOES NOT lie with the individual, but the institution. This particular case shoult NEVER have made it as far as into court. NEVER. It is a symbolic FAILURE of 1. reason, 2. process, 3. proportionate response and methods thereof.

If the comment was in full as reported, some selective filter should have worked. Who looked at the thread and the comment? Did anyone contact the boy and asked what he meant by it, if there WAS any doubt? How come internet comments are analyzed by people who do not know the most basic shorthand of the lingo and their judgement acted upon by someone as empty headed.

It is astounding that ANYONE would be actually ACTUALLY IN CONFINEMENT over this. And facing a prison term about it is no less significant. When was the requirement of putting things into context removed from due process?

As absurd the whole case is, it is but a speck on a hump of a whale.

The ability to reason, analyse and put things into context is absolutely essential. Whether evaluating a sarcastic comment or a straightforward one. The law enforcement agency faled to do so miserably in first response, that failure was repeated during choosing the appropriate and proportionate (sic!) response and it remains to be seen if it will be cemented in his trial or will the row created in the media upturn it. Don’t you feel safe in knowing that instead of reason and context, someone’s ability to rouse the media will choose your fate instead?

The local law enforcement is the speck, here, and let us welcome the whale: 9-11 times Patriot Act times Prism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_%28surveillance_program%29
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2013/jun/14/nsa-prism

The local police coud have called Justin in and had a “serious discussion” about how to say and not to say something in open social media (“As it upsets the genteel ladies”) and wrap it up with sending a Wikipedia link on Sarcasm to aforementioned Canadian woman. And ALL parties could have called it a learning experience and all that taxpayer money could have gone to station’s brass button budget surplus.

Instead, the public is being told there is not a single decisionmaker at any such level who has AVERAGE grasp of English language and AVERAGE perceptiveness of human subtlety. How come cops with AVERAGE literacy levels are that hard to find during a recession?

So, not a literate cop was encountered in that case. But how much more delicate is the data the rest of the alphabet soup plods through? Would we find a literate agent there? Even a single one? It is not very comforting to know a limitless unrestricted datahoarder stems from the same trunk as those specimens of spectacular failures above. More so for any foreigner, whose interpretation of “sarcasm” may widely differ from standard of USA.

Because that is the worrisome part about this global involuntary surveillance that is not legal, but lethal. If such is the failure level in law enforcement, how much better could it possibly be on higher? Assuming international agreements about e-surveillance will be drawn up and agreed to, it is still a massive amount of data that has to be combed through – and while there has been stories of failures and inability to come up with the right names with the right connections at the right time, not much on how well it all works. And a foreigner has none of the protection a citizen of US of A might appeal to. NONE.

It is MINDBOGGINGLY easy to become a terrorist these days. Own a pressure cooker? LOLd? Have a wit or a chill or just slow to make up your mind? And while an extended vacation package to Guantanamo Bay is no longer the standard deal, you may still get harassed, end up on a no-fly list with no particular reason whatsoever besides that it was 42, on Tuesday.

It would be half the issue if those with the power would come across with  a functioning brain. Unfortunately, it seems labeling anyone a terrorist has become a conveniency measure, not an exceptionary one.Cross a street with the red light? errorist by default. A parking ticket? You terrorist! Business cards, replasing Mr/Mrs with, Tr and Trs, respectively.

Unfortunately, all seems to infer beginners dabbling at “PPT for Dummies”-level. That does come across the same level as illiterates for cops. Now we have MS newbies for national security services and defenders of democracy. Not exactly surprised, if anyone becomes suicidal after these news; one might just want to give up…

The missing slide: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/06/07/nsa-prism-program-powerpoint-spoof_n_3403133.html

There are many good points in that Guardian piece, one is as follows: “The 9/11 Commission said that America’s spooks had everything they needed to predict the attacks – but it was lost amid all the noise of overcollected data. Since then, the overcollection has gone into overdrive – the haystacks are enormous, but they still have the same number of needles in them. I want my skies safe, just like you – so I want my spooks doing their job well, not simply sucking up all the data in the hopes it it will be useful some day.”

Thw whole point of gathering the data is getting something useful out it. While you’re about as likely as not ending up labeled a terrorist these days, the real ones are out there too. But it doesn’t seem the good guys are going about the business the smart way, quite the contrary – presuming they’d be capable of doing it at all. And the signs aren’t that good.

Technical surveillance per se has been around as long as there has been the technology that enables it. That is not the news here: the inability of designated people, with all that power, to do their job properly is.

Edit: For the benefit of the… The title begins as a paraphrase of “in the land of the blind…”. I leave it for you to determine if there is a winner present in this case.