intelliot
07-09-2008, 02:57 AM
I just finished watching Live Free or Die Hard (2007) starring Bruce Willis and Justin Long. I don't know if this was the intention, but I loved the movie not only for its action, but also for the themes of freedom. In the movie, a ring of Internet terrorists takes over the United States by infiltrating the computer infrastructure.
It definitely shows many of the risks of having the large government we already have today. It's a government that controls hugely important infrastructure and fails to do it in a secure way.
For example, the power grid in the movie is divided into three regions, and from these central stations the terrorists are able to shut down the power across the nation.
Of course, the media becomes controlled by the terrorists, and they are able to pipe in any video stream onto every TV channel. Matthew (played by Justin Long in the movie) starts up on a speech about his evidence about how the media is completely and entirely manipulated by corporations to make them brainwash people into consumers that spend money and just keep buying stuff they don't really need.
I couldn't help but think that many of these infrastructural necessities should be divided much more locally and operated independently. For example, it was clear that states' rights were virtually nonexistent. The entire U.S. was (and is!) controlled by a central federal government, completely responsible for making sure everything operates correctly. In the movie, they mentioned that it was the country that the terrorists wanted to bring down. And they wanted to bring it down because it was possible.
The main bad guy is a former D.O.D. programmer, who created a system to backup the entire country's financial data. It's an obviously bad idea in the movie, yet realistic enough that I could see the government wanting to do it. Backups are good, right? Not if the bad guy who created it can break in and take the country's financial data with him on a portable hard drive.
He knew the system was insecure when he worked for the government, but they refused to spend the money necessary to fix it. That's understandable; the government really shouldn't be in charge of so much to begin with. But since it is... how can we deal with the problem?
His rationale in causing all the destruction: "Better me than an outsider."
The system is housed in the Social Security Administration's secret building ("Woodlawn") which seems to me like a stab at the fact that government is operating with far too much secrecy, which actually hurts it more than it ostensibly seems to help it. Of course, the SSA shouldn't be so powerful and expensive to begin with.
Also, there's a single cell phone network and a single legacy satellite network; but if there were many, and if they were operated by private companies, it would be nearly impossible to bring it down as they did in the movie.
Just some thoughts. Have you seen the movie?
P.S. The movie's theme music is Fortunate Son by Creedence Clearwater Revival. One of my favorite songs, and used in the Ron Paul Remix in my sig.
It definitely shows many of the risks of having the large government we already have today. It's a government that controls hugely important infrastructure and fails to do it in a secure way.
For example, the power grid in the movie is divided into three regions, and from these central stations the terrorists are able to shut down the power across the nation.
Of course, the media becomes controlled by the terrorists, and they are able to pipe in any video stream onto every TV channel. Matthew (played by Justin Long in the movie) starts up on a speech about his evidence about how the media is completely and entirely manipulated by corporations to make them brainwash people into consumers that spend money and just keep buying stuff they don't really need.
I couldn't help but think that many of these infrastructural necessities should be divided much more locally and operated independently. For example, it was clear that states' rights were virtually nonexistent. The entire U.S. was (and is!) controlled by a central federal government, completely responsible for making sure everything operates correctly. In the movie, they mentioned that it was the country that the terrorists wanted to bring down. And they wanted to bring it down because it was possible.
The main bad guy is a former D.O.D. programmer, who created a system to backup the entire country's financial data. It's an obviously bad idea in the movie, yet realistic enough that I could see the government wanting to do it. Backups are good, right? Not if the bad guy who created it can break in and take the country's financial data with him on a portable hard drive.
He knew the system was insecure when he worked for the government, but they refused to spend the money necessary to fix it. That's understandable; the government really shouldn't be in charge of so much to begin with. But since it is... how can we deal with the problem?
His rationale in causing all the destruction: "Better me than an outsider."
The system is housed in the Social Security Administration's secret building ("Woodlawn") which seems to me like a stab at the fact that government is operating with far too much secrecy, which actually hurts it more than it ostensibly seems to help it. Of course, the SSA shouldn't be so powerful and expensive to begin with.
Also, there's a single cell phone network and a single legacy satellite network; but if there were many, and if they were operated by private companies, it would be nearly impossible to bring it down as they did in the movie.
Just some thoughts. Have you seen the movie?
P.S. The movie's theme music is Fortunate Son by Creedence Clearwater Revival. One of my favorite songs, and used in the Ron Paul Remix in my sig.