‘Your Government Is On The Verge Of Recording Every Move You Make’
April 1st, 2012Via: Casey Research:
To move forward, I’d like to step backwards – to the revelation that your government is on the verge of recording every move you make. As an exercise in critical thinking, let’s think a little deeper about the potential consequences of this development. As I believe you’ll quickly see, they’re important.
To begin, let’s just go with the assumption that the government will succeed in its efforts. As the Brookings report makes clear, the technology is already about 99% there – and the cost associated with recording and storing pretty much all of your communications and all of your movements throughout your every day is plummeting. In other words, we are no longer dealing with a hypothesis but a fact.
Might there be a legislative pushback against such a wholesale invasion of privacy? Isn’t there some hope there? Hardly. If history tells us anything, it’s that once something this powerful is created, it will be deployed. And any legislative resistance that may arise will be as quickly swept aside by the next 9/11 as the US Constitution was swept aside by the last.
May I be the first to welcome you to a world so Orwellian that even George himself would have been impressed.
Related:
Coming Soon: Retroactive Surveillance on Anyone
Research Credit: HB
And if you think the concept of “thought police” is not close ahead on the horizon, read some of the research on patterns of thinking and behavior and how computers are able to extrapolate various seemingly innocuous things like consumer behavior, interests, and travel patterns. The next “enemy” they identify may be you or a member of your family or group of associates. It is all just about here. And remember, THEY are the ones with the automatic weapons, attack helicopters, and weapons of mass destruction.
Dear original author of this piece, self-made global overlord and neo-liberal professional investor Doug Casey:
>> Orwell did not live in a world <> of suitcase nukes or weaponized <> bird flu. <<
At this point, looking down from your libertarian high horse, you're likely tempted to respond with some choice citation from post-Enlightenment political hagiography, like:
"Those who would give up essential
Liberty, to purchase a little temporary
Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor
Safety." — Benjamin Franklin
("Pennsylvania Assembly: Reply to the
Governor", November 11, 1755)
… to which I would again reply, , that Benjamin Franklin likewise did not live in a world of suitcase nukes or weaponized bird flu.
(But I wish he had, because I’d truly love to hear what he’d have to say about political values in such a world.)
Doug, go re-read Bill Joy’s 2000 essay “Why the future doesn’t need us.” Then mull over its political implications.
Then mull them over, again.
If you are hiding in upper New Zealand, or Salta, Argentina, or elsewhere on “civilization’s periphery” (which of course begs for convincing definitions of both those terms, but I’m confident people get my point), no one is looking to kill you simply because you exist. You are in the boondocks. No offense, but really: no one cares about the boondocks. So enjoy yourself. Do as Voltaire suggested, and tend your garden.
Meanwhile, most of the rest of us in the “OECD Great Prosperity Sphere” cannot do the same, especially those of us in large metropolitan areas. We are targets for terrorists, or even just organized criminals. (I would include ‘common thugs’ in this list, but then, you have common thugs in upper New Zealand and Salta, Argentina, don’t you? Just not as many per capita…)
You can quibble about the reasons *why* those of us in large cities in the West are targets for terrorists (“You’re all little Eichmanns; you deserve it” — mm, so the babies blown up in the daycare center in the Oklahoma City bombing deserved it? Riiight. Moving right along…), but the factual reality remains: some of us are targets. That is our security reality.
I, for one, am not happy or complacent about this. Quite the contrary.
But I get exasperated when subjected to self-satisfied-therefore-outraged or politically myopic hand-wringing over the erosion of civil liberties in our society.
Mr. Casey: duh. Of-freaking-course governments are looking to track everything everyone is doing, every minute. Why?
>> Because in a world of suitcase <> nukes or weaponized bird flu, <> a police state is mathematically <> inevitable. <<
Anyone who hasn't realized this has simply not thought things through.
The only convincing alternative to ceding one's personal sovereignty to the State — which is as troubling a state of affairs as contending with terrorism, as history has so thoroughly taught us — is to light out for the Western Territories, the periphery, in a fashion Frederick Jackson Turner would heartily applaud.
And even then, well… to paraphrase the ecology movement of the 1970s, there really is no "away" anymore, is there? Though I suppose there is "remote"…
~~~
Kevin F: I applaud your decision to leave the "Insane-O-Sphere" years ago, and create a better life for yourself and your family.
Not all of us have that option, however, for perfectly reasonable and non-blameworthy reasons (relative poverty, family obligations, personal physical limitations, etc.) Some of us are stuck in Crazytown, and Crazytown will inevitably become a police state, bit by bit.
The really interesting question is, Is there an alternative to living in a police state, other than fleeing to the (relative) hinterlands? Is there a response other than simply pulling up stakes and leaving? Truly, I don't know. In the dystopic film _The Children Of Men_ (2006, loosely based on P.D. James's 1992 novel of the same title) Theo's friend Jasper and his invalid wife live in a hidden compound in the woods. That almost saves them from the police state. Almost.
So, hunker down and prepare? A bunker won't mean much if the area is irradiated by a cloud of plutonium dust, or infected by a bio-weapon.
We are so desperate to believe there is a way to be safe, and free. Even those in "the outer rim" will be effected by a truly global catastrophe.
No, no one is an island, much as some of us would like to be… We are all in this together, and there are no easy answers. Complaining about the encroaching police state is simply "free-rider" whining, in my opinion.
I might have just left my comment while the site went down.
In any case, I think that in the future, we’re probably going to need encryption to post and read comments on any internet website just because these dorks can’t get enough of the in your pants invasive stuff.
Maybe its time to get that set up before it comes to be.
My Mom read my diary at a time when she was going crazy over the love of her life dying in a car accident. I forgive her, but man that was painful to me.
Its hard to put a smiley face on this new surveillance. No wonder Clif High has gaps in his data come 2013. These morons are going to try to ruin everything the net has come to be. Sheesh, hey moron, you reading this? Bite me.
@ CitizenK Not that I don’t agree with much of what you’ve laid down – but it’s the legitimacy you give to the concept of ‘terrorism’ and its ‘inescapable outcome’ that strikes an off chord.
Regarding your contention that “a police state is mathematically inevitable” – it’s inevitable insofar as a Hegelian dialect already in motion; rational within a non-rational paradigm. That is, the weaponized bird flu and suitcase nukes are state-created problems (that a police state supposedly solves?). So I’d ask, rhetorically, is a police state necessary to track sales, and potential use thereof, for mattock and bolt cutters?
I live in the boondocks among God-only-knows how many witness protection program folks. Im not one of them but came damned close over the documents I sent to the department of transportation office of inspector general concerning $5 billion in hidden defects. Instead of putting a round od lead through my skull to shut me up, they simply paid a state governor to demand the investigation die instead of me. Probably cost them less than a hit way out in the sticks. So as far as Im concerned, they can monitor me until hell freezes ovet- thats how they know that I sent copies of the documents to people with media connections. If I die of some “accident,” my complaints will be published publicly. Meanwhile, its a long drive to the end of the road and Im simply not worth the bullet.
@CitizenK:
Orwell actually did live in a world of ‘weaponized bird flu’ or rather one H. G. Wells recognized and subsequently believed a New World Order was called for -one that Orwell decried would be a police state.
THE STOLEN BACILLUS by H. G. Wells
YOU AND THE ATOMIC BOMB (1945) by George Orwell
Had the atomic bomb turned out to be something as cheap and easily manufactured as a bicycle or an alarm clock, it might well have plunged us back into barbarism, but it might, on the other hand, have meant the end of national sovereignty and of the highly-centralised police state. If, as seems to be the case, it is a rare and costly object as difficult to produce as a battleship, it is likelier to put an end to large-scale wars at the cost of prolonging indefinitely a ‘peace that is no peace’.
@Zuma
Thank you. It would have taken me a while to find those links to post. Not only was the NWO envisioned before Orwell, but if one were observant I’m sure they could have seen the direction,scope and power of the secret government would lead from it’s SS/OSS beginnings.
@CitizenK
I’m curious. Are you suggesting that the bulk of terrorism is not state sponsored? While the police state may have been inevitable, I can’t imagine how anyone could see it as necessary or positive in any way.
When people complain about TSA overreach I’ve heard the response that “maybe there should be flights without any security and who would want to fly on them?” Of course I wouldn’t want to be on one of those flights – not for fear of al-qaeda or some other bogeyman, but because it would be an obvious false flag target.
Does the police state make you feel safer from suitcase nukes and weaponized bird flu?
@CitizenK:
Suitcase nukes. Hmm. Are there any? Have any ever been seen, let alone used? What exactly are we afraid of here?
Weaponised Bird Flu. Hmm.
EMP weapons. Hmm.
etc. etc.
There are plenty of things to get scared about. Which ones are real, and which ones are Grimm stories designed to scare you into submission?
But you want me to quit complaining about the encroaching police state… and do what, exactly? Accept it? Live with it? Not fight it?
You think that Orwell, Lincoln and everyone else would have said ‘Oh shit, suitcase nukes and weaponised bird flu… ya got me beat fair ‘n square’ and learned to love the new reality?
You justify the police state on the grounds that you live in a densely populated area likely to be a target? Why this is Hell, nor am I out of it.
You’ll be thanking them for controlling you next.
You get exasperated when people speak out against the police state. Can’t you put your exasperation to better use against a more suitable target?
“We are so desperate to believe there is a way to be safe, and free.” You don’t sound desperate in this regard. You do sound as though you have Stockholm Syndrome though.
I’m not saying that you don’t have a point, it’s just that you do sound as though you are rationalising having given up hope.
If you seriously don’t want to be a target, don’t live at the target. If you stay at the target, but think that the police state will protect you, well, good luck with that.
@ CitizenK. Biggest clue to the wellspring of your rant here – and it is a rant due to the somewhat snide attitude to Casey … is that you hold up the OKC murders as one good reason why Americans should be willing to accept the onslaught against their culture by over-zealotry on the part of the Government there. OKC is far from a settled matter, and has government involvement stamped all over it. Hard as it appears to be for you to accept the real politic behind these “conspiracy” theories, it is a matter of record for some of the leading lights of the recent administrations that they admire and seek to emulate Machiavelli – who was a proponent of ‘the end justifies the means’. The entire thrust of your rant is that the USA is beset on all sides by murderous fanatics with both high tech and low tech weapons … this is simply not the case, and is rather reminiscent of the rampant macho paranoia I associate with the fundamentalists in Israel. Maybe they are more influential in your country than you realise ?