Reality is stranger than fiction, as they say. What fiction writers have been writing about for decades is now reality. As you read this, there is a total information awareness police state infrastructure rapidly closing the gates on freedom, encircling us into a nightmarish future ruled by an oppressive Corporatocracy.
An all-seeing "Federated Information-Sharing System" that encompasses law enforcement and private corporate systems that collect an increasingly large amount of information on more and more citizens around the country, with the ultimate goals of having "total information awareness," purportedly to "protect us" against "terrorism."
License plates are being collected, and your buying habits (books, dildos, dirty movies, bibles, flowers, iPads, etc.). Systems that collect bio-metric information are being perfected, with the ultimate goal of helping the "system" to identify people who could pose a "future" threat. Information is being collected on people who exercise their constitutional rights of freedom of assembly; their photos and videos being entered into databases of people who could represent a "potential threat" to the State.
Within a very short time, this system will be able to track almost every citizen, and even monitor him inside his own home. Profiles are being created about citizens, where they work, what church they attend, what they buy, what organizations they belong to, if they are activists.
Because the system is ultimately controlled by corporations (because of their hold on our government system), certain activities and groups will be targeted for intimidation, and for discredit, and this in turn will create a chilling effect on the citizenry, creating an environment where people are afraid to express certain views or join certain groups deemed undesirable (or dangerous). These groups could be labor unions, protest groups, environmental activists, social activists.
People will be controlled by not being able to get jobs (because employment background checks are going to rely on more an more data from these databases), or by leaks about personal indiscretions.
This is real. It's here now. Some of the technology and capabilities are still being perfected, but it is all coming together very quickly.
After 9/11, there was a push to create fusion centers so that local, state, and federal agencies could share intelligence, allowing the FBI, for example, to see if the local police have anything in their files on a particular individual. Now the Department of Homeland Security wants to create its own internal fusion center so that its many agencies can aggregate the data they have and make it searchable from a central location. The DHS is calling it a “Federated Information Sharing System” and asked its privacy advisory committee to weigh in on the repercussions at a public meeting in D.C. last month.
Forbes: The Department Of Homeland Security Wants All The Information It Has On You Accessible From One Place
And as we move towards this dystopian future, many have been warning about the dangers of an all-seeing police state.
One big assumption that the DHS privacy committee made in its reports is that officials will be searching their new awesome databanks using specific personal information (i.e., What has Kashmir Hill been up to this month?) as opposed to general patterns (i.e., Who all took the train between D.C. and New York this week?). The latter, pattern-based searches would make the DHS’s new fusion-center-like system too much like Total Information Awareness, say critics. The ACLU sent DHS a letter [pdf] this month voicing its concerns about the mingling of commercial and government databases and the potential civil liberties violations, giving an example of a person’s laptop being inspected by Customs & Border Control and then having any reports of its contents put into a profile accessible to the rest of DHS.
Welcome to the future!
------------------
------------------
Don't dismiss these two young (and good-looking) people because of their youth, until you listen to what they have to say. Very insightful and informative stuff.