Stated simply, I have five internet correspondents I contact. Each of them has five to assist in finding the sixth person in the link ... and the total levels are six ... me 1 2 3 4 5 target person.
That doesn't seem like much on the surface, but in actuality it shows why Bush and the NSA are thinking they can get away with domestic spying by only "following links from known or suspected terrorists overseas via connections between them and US citizens."
The math might work out this way:
I contact 5 to find #6 6 1 degree of separation
Each of the 6 contacts 5 to find #6 30 2 degrees of separation
Each of the 30 contact 5 to find #6 150 3 degrees of separation
Each of the 150 contact 5 to find #6 750 4 degrees of separation
Each of the 750 contact 5 to find #6 3750 5 degrees of separation
Each of the 3750 contact 5 to find #6 18750 6 degrees of separation
That is a big number ... 23,436 BUT it doesn't add up. If you think about it, you realize that this type of chain is actually applicable to each link in the chain, so the number grows quite a bit bigger, quite a lot faster; it grows "expodentially" 6 to the 6thpower, or 46,656 However, I am not limited to 5 or 6 people; I belong to three mailing lists and can thus contact at least 75 people with a single properly routed e-mail. If that number grew expodentially to the sixth power, we're looking at 177,978,515,625 people linked back to me ... that's a "national debt sized" number -- almost 178 Billion.
How many is $178 Billion? Well, here's some data on world population:
The Earth Debate4 ...
World population in 1950: 2.5 billion.
World population in 2000: over 6 billion.
Projected population 2050, with substantially slowed growth: 9.3 billion.
"OK," you say, "we all know that more than half the people would drop the ball, somewhere along the way." I agree, but even with a more realistic 35 people in each link of the chain, the result would still be huge: 1,838,265,625 ... almost two billion! That is one-third of the world's population, which would primarily represent a good portion of the world's adults.
Those figures appear to involve solely the internet, but I'm not working on that presumption. Whereas I might use e-mail to start a chain, many of the links along the way will be via telephone. Admittedly I'm somewhat of a recluse, and not that many numbers are called via my home phone or the three cells in the family plan I subscribe to, but the number would have to be at least ten different contacts per month. And most of those contacts have far more contacts than I or my family. In other words, even based upon our family's limited phone useage, we could be linked to One million people in any month, even if everyone in the chain knew only ten new people to contact.
When you look at it in that manner, it seems rather obvious that "following links to known terrorists to find others in the possible chain of treachery and treason" could involve a tremendous number of plain, ordinary, even patriotic, American citizens. And all without warrants.
Anyone thinking that the government was somehow totally unaware of the "six degrees" concept should be disabused of the notion. Simply read "Knock, Knock, Knocking on Newton's Door" available at http://www.dau.mil/pubs/dam/03_04_2005/war-ma05.pdf (Note: This is an official US Military website.)
There is another aspect of the studies and experiments performed by Dr. Stanley Milgram with which I am certain the President's staff, the CIA, and the military are also familiar. A world-wide controversy began to follow Dr. Milgram when he published, including motion pictures, his findings on a series of experiments on obedience to authority (conducted at Yale University in 1961-1962). The shocking (no pun intended) results were that 65% of his subjects, regular plain everyday people who lived in New Haven, were willing to give apparently harmful electric shocks -- up to 450 volts-- to a begging, crying, protesting victim, simply because an authority figure commanded them to, and despite the fact that the victim had done nothing to deserve such extreme punishment. (The "victim" was an actor who was not actually shocked; this fact was told the subject only at the end of the experiment.) During the experiment itself, the experience was real, powerful, and totally involving for most of the subjects. I've seen the films myself, and while some subjects protested mildly about the pain apparently being doled out, questioning the
authority figure (a scientist in lab coat), the shocks were given over and over, higher and higher voltages.
Almost like torturing prisoners, with authority overriding sanity and personal ethics? As scary as the experiments at a California university which showed plain ol' normal every day students, who were given total control over student "prisoners," became violent, vicious, and almost out of control in less than two weeks? Well, see if you can discover where much of the funding for such experiments has come from over the last five or six decades.
If you'd like to learn more of the background of "Six Degrees of Separation," and what is currently being done to extend studies of this concept, a good starting point is this article
http://www.sciam.com/askexpert_question.cfm?articleID=000D52E0-D89D-1D35-90FB809EC5880000
I found on the Scientific American Website.
For more on Dr. Stanley Milgram go to http://www.stanleymilgram.com
1: In 1967, social psychologist Stanley Milgram set up an experiment of test what he called "the small world phenomenon," the idea that every person in the United States is connected by a chain of six people at most.
2: Psychologists Milgram and Travers set up an experiment where individuals in Boston and Omaha were asked to deliver a letter to a target person in Boston, but via an unconventional route. Messages were to be passed solely through a chain of acquaintances. The people starting the chain were were asked to forward the letter to someone they knew on a first-name basis -- and each was asked to do the same -- in an effort to deliver it through as few intermediaries as possible; the 'starters' were told the target's name, age, and occupation. The chains, on those letters which actually reached the target, had a median number of only six people.
3: More recent work on the "six degrees of separation" theory is being applied to network linking, can be found here: http://www.umass.edu/newsoffice/newsreleases/articles/20618.php You might find it interesting reading.
4: NOW with Bill Moyers. Science & Health.
http://www.pbs.org/now/science/unpopulation.html
