Industrial
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An important change in the development of computers occurred in 1948 with the invention of the
Stretch by
Throughout the early 1960s there were a number of commercially successful computers (for example the IBM 1401) used in business, universities, and government and by 1965 most large firms routinely processed financial information by using computers. Decisive for the success of computers in business was the stored program concept and the development of sophisticated high-level
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Within the EU's goal of establishing a European single market also
An overview of EU activities relating to intellectual property protection is available on the website of the European Commission (DG Internal Market):
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The plastic card invasion.
The tendency of modern data-driven economies is to structure economic activity in such a way that an increasing amount of data is generated. For example, the fact that only a few years ago few people in continental Europe used a credit card, and that now almost everybody who has a bank account also has a credit card, shows that payment by credit card is preferred to anonymous cash transaction. If somebody pays by credit card, there are computers that register the transaction. They record who paid what amount where, and for what purpose. This is valuable information. It allows businesses to "better know their customers". Credit card companies today belong to the largest data repositories anywhere. However, credit card companies have tried to introduce cash cards, or "electronic purses", plastic cards which can be used in lieu of cash in shops - a type of payment, that is not really catching on. In the small town of
Credit cards may be the most common, but certainly not the only way in which an economic activity produces a data surplus. In the end, the data surplus generated by a credit card is limited to just a few indicators. The tendency of the data body industry is to collect as much data as possible from each single transaction. Therefore, a range of new plastic card applications is emerging.
Most big retailers or service industries, offer customer cards which reward customers with certain discounts or gifts when used frequently. However, the cost of these discounts is easily set off by the value consumer data that is generated each time a card is pulled through the magnetic reading device. Frequent-flyer cards are among the most common plastic data-collecting devices. Often such frequent-flyer cards are also credit cards, in which case travel and consumption data are already combined at the point of sale, creating further rationalisation of the process.
Electronic networks have created a general tendency to move to move marketing decisions to the point of sale, rather than locating them in central locations. This way, the marketing process becomes cheaper and more efficient for the company.
The ideal situation for the data body industry and for government bureaucracy would be a complete centralised storage and management of people's data, and a collection process the pass unnoticed and ensures that the data in question are always current. Many efforts in this direction have been undertaken. One of the most recent such projects is called the
The Irish town of Ennis, although striving to become "one of the technologically most advanced towns in the world" may have frustrated the expectations of the plastic card industry. Yet this is only a minute, if embarrassing, setback on the path towards global rationalisation of data collection. The economic benefits which the plastic card data collection technologies promises for retailers, E-commerce, marketing and bureaucracies all over the world have given rise to a wealth of research programmes, field tests, projects and government policies, all aimed at promoting the data body economy and adopting it as the business model of the future.
Links to plastic card trade associations:
Links to plastic card research programmes:
Links to publications:
Links to EU research programmes
Producers
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The result of this informatisation is the creation of a virtual body which is the exterior of a man or woman's social existence. It plays the same role that the physical body, except located in virtual space (it has no real location). The virtual body holds a certain emancipatory potential. It allows us to go to places and to do things which in the physical world would be impossible. It does not have the weight of the physical body, and is less conditioned by physical laws. It therefore allows one to create an identity of one's own, with much less restrictions than would apply in the physical world.
But this new freedom has a price. In the shadow of virtualisation, the data body has emerged. The data body is a virtual body which is composed of the files connected to an individual. As the
The virtual character of the data body means that social regulation that applies to the real body is absent. While there are limits to the manipulation and exploitation of the real body (even if these limits are not respected everywhere), there is little regulation concerning the manipulation and exploitation of the data body, although the manipulation of the data body is much easier to perform than that of the real body. The seizure of the data body from outside the concerned individual is often undetected as it has become part of the basic structure of an informatised society. But data bodies serve as raw material for the "New Economy". Both business and governments claim access to data bodies. Power can be exercised, and democratic decision-taking procedures bypassed by seizing data bodies. This totalitarian potential of the data body makes the data body a deeply problematic phenomenon that calls for an understanding of data as social construction rather than as something representative of an objective reality. How data bodies are generated, what happens to them and who has control over them is therefore a highly relevant political question.
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YAKIMA, USA
Latitude: 46.592633, Longitude: -120.528908
The Yakima Research Station was established in the early 1970s inside the 100,000-hectare United States Army Yakima Firing Center, 200 kilometers south-east
of Seattle. The facility, located between the Saddle Mountains and Rattlesnake Hills, initially consisted of a long operations building and a single large dish pointing
west to enable collection against the Pacific Intelsat satellite. By 1995 the Yakima station had expanded to five dish antennae, three facing west to the Pacific and two, including the original large 1970s dish, facing east. In addition to the original operations building several newer buildings had been added, the largest a two-story windowless concrete structure. The Yakima station has been monitoring Pacific Intelsat communications since it opened, and also monitors the Pacific Ocean area Inmarsat-2 satellite.
Source:
Royalties refer to the payment made to the owners of certain types of rights by those who are permitted by the owners to exercise the rights. The
Pine Gap, run by the CIA, is near Alice Springs in central Australia and mostly an underground facility. Pine Gap was mainly established to serve as the groundstation and downlink for reconnaissance satellites like the RHYOLITE and ORION system. The facility consists of more than 7 large antennas in randomes. In Pine Gap's Signals Processing Office transmitted signals are received and transformed for further analysis.There is a no fly zone 4km around PG, and local land holders have agreed not to allow "visitors" access to there properties. It is said that Pine Gap employs nearly 1000 people, mainly from the CIA and the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).
Source:
Jeffrey T. Richelson, The U.S. Intelligence Community, (Westview Press, 4th ed., 1999)p190
Nicky Hager, Secret Power, New Zealand's role in the internatinal spy network, (Craig Potton, 1996)p34ff
Pictures of Pine Gap
Latitude: 47.86353, Longitude: 12.00983
RSOC - Bad Aibling is a ground station for the interception of civil and military satellite communications traffic operated by the
for more information:
Description by FAS intelligence resource program.
Description of the tasks of the Signals Intelligence Brigade.
Look at a detailed guide for military newbies at Bad Aibling.
CIGNA was formed in 1982 through the combination of INA Corporation and Connecticut General Corporation. CIGNA's formation in 1982 combined a leading property-casualty insurer with a leading supplier of life insurance and employee benefits. CIGNA has tightened its focus on employee benefits, divesting its individual life insurance business in 1998, and its domestic and international property and casualty operations in 1999.
One of the largest and foremost communications and media conglomerates in the
world. Founded in 1971, the present form of the corporation dates from 1994 when Viacom Inc., which owned radio and television stations and cable television programming services and systems, acquired the entertainment and publishing giant Paramount Communications Inc. and then merged with the video and music retailer Blockbuster Entertainment Corp. Headquarters are in New York City.
Latitude: 40.771, Longitude: 141.3776
Misawa Air Base is located in Misawa City, on the shores of Lake Ogawara in northeastern Honshu, Japan's main island. The Department of Defense presence at Misawa includes more than 15,000 military and civilian personnel and family members, including 4500 military personnel. The installation has experienced significant growth and development over the past ten years. From Misawa the NSA monitors Russian and other regional communications satellites.
The Misawa Passive Radio Frequency (RF) space surveillance site tracks satellites using RF signal emmisions to compute angle of arrival observations. This site provides coverage of geosynchronous satellites utilizing the Deep Space Tracking System (DSTS).
Latitude: 38.497387 Longitude: -79.273876
Sugar Grove Naval Communications Facility, near Sugar Grove, WV, intercepts Pacific
Source: