The Surveillance State: An Inexorable March Toward Totalitarianism

Authored by Jeremiah Johnson (nom de plume of a retired Green Beret of the United States Army Special Forces) via SHTFplan.com,

The Surveillance State has slowed down its rate of growth since the President took office, however, it has not halted that growth. Instead, it lies festering below the veneer of daily events, inexorably growing its tentacles and extending their reach.

Akin to an infestation of weeds, the roots are deep within the fabric of our communications networks: telephones, CCTV (Closed-Circuit Television) cameras, the Internet…all are thoroughly permeated.

Gizmodo released an article entitled “US Homeland Security Wants Facial Recognition to Identify People in Moving Cars,” on 11/2/17 by Matt Novak. Here is an excerpt from that article:

The proposed program would allow Homeland Security to maintain a database of everyone who leaves and enters the US that would now include photos taken by spying robot-cameras at every border crossing.

 

Not only does DHS want this new facial recognition program to work without anyone having to exit their vehicle, the agency wants it to work even if the travelers are wearing things like sunglasses and hats. DHS also wants it to work without cars having to stop.

Seems they really want our information for their database. There is something more. One of the readers on the article’s website who uses the handle “Artiofab” posted this comment that is important, as he lives on the Texas border with Mexico:

 “11/02/17 12:31pm  Hi everybody I live near the US-MX border so I’m happy to give informed opinions on this topic, since I know that a lot of the audience at Gizmodo dot com apparently lives closer to the US-CA border.

 

Near the US-MX border along major US highways there are these interior checkpoints. If you’re traveling “into” the US (e.g., if you’re in New Mexico and you’re driving north) you stop your car, a USBP agent asks if you’re all US citizens, you say yes, they let you keep going.

 

(I have no personal anecdote about what happens if you don’t say yes. I have some secondhand anecdote about what happens if you are transporting a small amount of substances that the US considers illegal. But that’s tangential…)  If you’re traveling “towards” Mexico, you don’t have to stop. Instead you drive past one of these.

 

 

Yes, those are cameras and lights that take images of your car as you drive past them. What does the USBP do with the images? Great question! I don’t know the answer. But I imagine that they might really like some facial recognition software to do some biometric data-gathering on anyone passing past those cameras.”

This is interesting. Illegal aliens (yes, the Mexicans and foreigners who cross the border illegally are aliens: foreigners entering the United States illegally) are crossing our borders every day. These measures are not to keep the illegal aliens out.

These measures are to keep the subjects (taxpaying American citizen-slaves) in.

Why else would they be requiring the use of a passport starting next year on domestic flights? This is the internal passport system of the former Soviet Union, materializing before our eyes. They will not need the “Mark of the Beast” implanted or bar-coded…they have the cellular telephones.

The taxpayer slave-serfs carry these around…willingly, of their own free will…to transmit their every activity and location every four seconds…events that are all recorded for future use in whatever capacity the rulers see fit.

China has been the “testing ground” ever since free trade with them was initiated along with NAFTA (George H.W. Bush created this: Clinton just signed it into law). There is another revelatory article about the increase in surveillance technology in China. Entitled “This is What a 21^st Century Police State Really Looks Like,” by Megha Rajagopalan for Buzz Feed News, released 10/17/17. 

Here is an excerpt from that important article:

For millions of people in China’s remote far west, this dystopian future is already here. China, which has already deployed the world’s most sophisticated internet censorship system, is building a surveillance state in Xinjiang, a four-hour flight from Beijing, that uses both the newest technology and human policing to keep tabs on every aspect of citizens’ daily lives.

 

The region is home to a Muslim ethnic minority called the Uighurs, who China has blamed for forming separatist groups and fueling terrorism. Since this spring, thousands of Uighurs and other ethnic minorities have disappeared into so-called political education centers, apparently for offenses from using Western social media apps to studying abroad in Muslim countries, according to relatives of those detained.

The reason the article is important is that Miss Rajagopalan was in the area for two months, accumulating firsthand interviews, reports, and photos. Here’s the big news. The Chinese have devices that allow them to scan cell phones and laptops from a distance at any time. They have biometric facial scanners they employ when stopping individuals on the street. The photos are a must-see: it shows an almost cowed populace infringed upon in every area of life.

That is the type of life coming to the United States, and soon.

In an article by the Wall Street Journal entitled, “Who Wants to Supply China’s Surveillance State?  The West,” by Dan Strumpf on 11/1/17.  This excerpt reveals the meaning of the article’s title:

Companies from across the globe packed one of the world’s biggest surveillance trade shows to demonstrate the latest gizmos and algorithms powering the high-tech revolution in the industry, of which China is on the vanguard. Tools being hawked included facial-recognition cameras, iris scanners, software that can read a subject’s mood and cameras that can scan license plates in the dark.  The surveillance-equipment market in China was valued at $6.4 billion last year, according to IHS Markit .

 

China is a big buyer of surveillance technology as Beijing steps up its efforts to better monitor its 1.4 billion people. That is providing a boon for equipment makers, who are looking to export their gear abroad. But it has also sparked concern from rights activists about how the authoritarian government is using the souped-up “Big Brother” technology.

China is the testing ground for the eventual use of this surveillance technology in the United States. An article posted on 11/6/17 shows us just how far the police state has come along toward completion. “Texas National Guard Using Cellphone Spy Tech on Surveillance Planes,” is the article’s title, by Michael Thalen of Info Wars.  The Texas National Guard is using technology to mimic cell phone towers and capture locations of thousands at a time. Here is part of the article:

The devices, purchased with drug-asset forfeiture money from Maryland-based Digital Receiver Technology Inc. (DRT), are designed to locate cellphones within a certain range by emulating a cell tower.  The specific model obtained by the Texas National Guard, known as the DRT 1301C, is even capable of intercepting and recording phone calls in real-time. A leaked U.S. government catalogue of cellphone surveillance devices obtained by The Intercept in 2015 also notes the ability of the DRT 1301C, nicknamed the “dirt box,” to “locate up to 10,000 targets and can process multiple analog and digital wireless devices all at the same time.”

There is a large question as to whether a National Guard Unit is allowed to take on the role of a police force. That question has already been covered under legislation and executive orders passed under the Color of Law that basically has thrown the rulebook out the window. Posse Comitatus has been supplanted by the Warner Defense Act of 2006, and the NDAA’s and accompanying Executive Orders under Obama have all but federalized both Active Duty military forces and National Guard troops in the never-ending “War on Terror.”

As can be seen with these articles, the U.S. government has a new President and a new “pitch,” but many things are not changing, or if so…it is for the worse. The increasing surveillance is tightening of the noose around the necks of the American citizens.

The surveillance state is growing more powerful and thanks to legislation, is becoming more invulnerable to challenges to its supremacy. Soon its inexorable march will be irreversible. Totalitarian control will be in place, and most of the citizens are either unaware of such, or they do not care that it is so.

Facial Recognition Tech Could Ensnare Millions Of Innocent Americans For Crimes They Didn’t Commit

Authored by Daniel Lang via SHTFplan.com,

It’s often the case that new technologies arrive on the scene faster than our society and its legal code can keep up. Sometimes this can be a good thing. For instance, 3D printing allows people to print out unregulated gun parts, thus allowing gun owners to circumvent the onerous laws of our government, which has struggled to come up with new laws to restrict the technology.

When technology advances at a breakneck pace however, it can also be quite dangerous for our liberties. This is especially true in regards to privacy. If a new technology makes it easy for the government to track us, you can bet that the government is going to take its sweet time updating the legal code in a way that will protect us from surveillance.

That certainly seems to be the case with facial recognition software. During a recent Congressional Oversight Committee hearing, members of both political parties sounded the alarm on the FBI’s use of the technology, and read the written testimony of Electronic Frontier Foundation senior staff attorney Jennifer Lynch:

Lynch detailed the stunning scope of the FBI’s photo collection. In addition to collecting criminal and civil mug shots, the agency currently has “memorandums of understanding” with 16 states that mean every driver’s license photo from those states is accessible to the agency—without the drivers’ consent. The FBI also has access to photos from the U.S. State Department’s passport and visa records.

Lynch argued that “Americans should not be forced to submit to criminal face recognition searches merely because they want to drive a car. They shouldn’t have to worry their data will be misused by unethical government officials with unchecked access to face recognition databases. And they shouldn’t have to fear that their every move will be tracked if face recognition is linked to the networks of surveillance cameras that blanket many cities.”

“But without meaningful legal protections, this is where we may be headed,” Lynch stated. “Without laws in place, it could be relatively easy for the government and private companies to amass databases of images of all Americans and use those databases to identify and track people in real time as they move from place to place throughout their daily lives.”

All told, law enforcement agencies around the country have access to 400 million photos in facial recognition databases, which are connected to roughly 50% of American adults. Most of these people have never committed a crime, and obviously haven’t given any consent to this.

At first glance it may sound harmless to be in one of these databases. Movies and TV shows make it sound like this technology can help law enforcement swiftly and precisely nab suspects. So what do you have to fear if you haven’t committed a crime? It turns out that in real life, facial recognition is far from perfect.

Internal FBI documents obtained in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center indicate that the FBI’s own database, called the Next Generation Identification Interstate Photo System, or NGI-IPS, had an acceptable margin of error of 20 percent — that is, a 1-in-5 chance of “recognizing” the wrong person.

And research published in the October 2015 issue of the scientific journal PLOS ONE by researchers at the universities of Sydney and New South Wales in Australia found that the humans who interpret such data build in an extra error margin approaching 30 percent.

If we ever allow our government to roll out facial recognition cameras on a wider scale, lots of innocent people are going to be hurt. Whether by mistake or by malice, it will become shockingly easy for law enforcement to identify ordinary people as criminals. The surveillance control grid will not only be inescapable, it will be unwieldy and rife with abuse.

It’s often said that you should never trade freedom for safety. In this case, we wouldn’t receive any kind of safety.

NYC Plans New Facial Recognition Cameras At Bridges, Tunnels (& Here's How To Dodge Them)

The state of New York has privately asked surveillance companies to pitch a vast camera system that would scan and identify people who drive in and out of New York City, according to a December memo obtained by Vocativ. As big brother tactics continue to creep quietly into Americans" everyday lives, here are six ways to dodge biometric verification...

As Vocativ.com reports, the call for private companies to submit plans is part of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s major infrastructure package, which he introduced in October.

Though much of the related proposals would be indisputably welcome to most New Yorkers — renovating airports and improving public transportation — a little-noticed detail included installing cameras to “test emerging facial recognition software and equipment.”

“This is a highly advanced system they’re asking for,” said Clare Garvie, an associate at Georgetown University’s Center for Privacy and Technology, and who specializes in police use of face recognition technologies. “This is going to be terabytes — if not petabytes — of data, and multiple cameras running 24 hours a day. In order to be face recognition compliant they probably have to be pretty high definition.”

Cuomo’s office didn’t respond to multiple requests for clarification in the ensuing weeks after his announcement. But a memo from the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s Bridges and Tunnels division, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, shows that on December 12, the MTA put out a call to an unknown group of private vendors of surveillance equipment. The proposed system would both scan drivers as they approached or crossed most of the city’s bridges and tunnels at high speeds, and would also capture and pair those photos with the license plates of their cars.

“The biggest risk that comes with a system like this is its ability to track people, by location, by their face,” Garvie said. “So what needs to be put in place is a prohibition on the use of these cameras and the technology as a location tracking tool.”

The proposed system would be massive, the memo reads:

The Authority is interested in implementing a Facial Detection System, in a free-flow highway environment, where vehicle movement is unimpeded at highway speeds as well as bumper-to-bumper traffic, and license plate images are taken and matched to occupants of the vehicles (via license plate number) with Facial Detection and Recognition methods from a gantry-based or road-side monitoring location.

All seven of the MTA’s bridges and both its tunnels are named in the proposal.

New York City wouldn’t be the first in the U.S. to have a network of facial recognition cameras for law enforcement. In 2013, for instance, the Los Angeles Police Department admitted it had deployed 16 cameras equipped with face recognition software, designed to search for particular suspects.

If all of this big brotherly love is too much for you, Jeremiah Johnson (nom de plume of a retired Green Beret of the United States Army Special Forces) explains, via ReadyNutrition.com, how you can dodge facial recognition software...

Helen of Troy, according to the Odyssey, was “the face that launched a thousand ships,” prior to the Greek invasion of Troy.  You and I, on the other hand, are the faces that launch an army of CCTV cameras ready to capture our images when we walk past them.  ReadyNutrition Readers, we just covered winter camouflage tips and techniques.  Camouflage is an important part of your prepping, in terms of being able to effectively hide yourself and your supplies from prying eyes.

One of the biggest problems that we encounter is not blending in with the terrain in a wilderness environment, however, but what we face in an urban and suburban environment.  As mentioned in previous articles, you have to camouflage in accordance with the environment you find yourself within.  It would not be intelligent to stroll down the sidewalk of Hollywood Boulevard dressed up in Realtree-patterned garb with a holstered sidearm and a hunting knife.  You would undoubtedly be “noticed,” and probably take a ride in a black and white, courtesy of the police department.

There’s an article that gives some very stark details about the 250 million security cameras in existence throughout the world.  The article entitled “Opinion: Facial recognition will soon end your anonymity,” written by Tarun Wadwha on 6/4/2016 explains this in detail and how new developments in software and the ever-growing number of cameras everywhere are reducing your chances to remain anonymous.  Chances are that your face has already been scanned and entered into a database without your knowledge. Knowing these things, there are a few measures that we can take…and these are directed toward urban and suburban dwellers to give them an edge.

What these Statists are trying to do is to create a “map” of where you are and what you’re doing, along with the times and dates of your activities.  Go and see (or rent out) the latest “Jason Bourne” movie to really get a feel for the intricacies of how these Law Enforcement agencies, the government, and other interests utilize the public domains to tie into their surveillance of you and your family.

6 Ways to Dodge Biometric Verification

Here are some things you can do, and keep in mind to help lower your signature:

1. Wear sunglasses during the daylight hours…breaking up the potential to photograph your eyes, the way they are set into your face, and any eye movements that might give away what you are doing (what you’re getting ready to do).


2. Wear a hat, especially one that covers up the ears. Baseball caps are fine, but they really focus on the ears – their shape and proximity to the side of your head – for identification purposes.  The caps also bust up the curvature of your head and also hide the hair and hair patterns.


3. Wear scarves, turtlenecks, and other clothing such as balaclavas to break up the outline of the neck.


4. Gloves: hide the hands, your marital status, and scars, fingernails, or other prominent features…even the fingerprints can be photographed.


5. Layered clothing: yes, this is great to protect from the cold, but I’ll give you another reason to wear it. The Doctrine of Contrasting Colors.  For a “real-time” view of this look no further than the movie “The Recruit” with Colin Farrell and Al Pacino.  Farrell escaped from his pursuers by shedding the outer layer of his clothing and reversing the jacket.  You can do the same.  Make the green sweatshirt disappear when the need arises with a change to a tan polypro top with a zippered neck.


6. Rule of Thumb: “When the Need Arises.”  Yes, you can pack yourself a small “kit” with darker-toned makeup/lighter-toned makeup such as skin cream, and also hats of various types different from the ones you normally use.  A wig may be a quick fix to turn your hair from brown to blonde.  There are also movie supply sites you can visit that will sell you real mustaches actually made from human hair.  Sound stupid?  It won’t if you use it and it keeps you out of a cell.  This measure is for when it’s really hitting the fan…not for “day to day” activities.

Another big problem to overcome with all of this surveillance is the fact that most people have their constantly clicking and snapping little phone-cameras to take pictures of every single thing on the planet within their “biome,” and it’s these individuals who serve as “silent witnesses” to help the surveillance state gather as much info as they can.  In addition, let’s not forget that every photo you post, twitter, place on Facebook, or download in any capacity does indeed become “scarfed up” by the government.  That $50-billion-dollar facility in Utah wasn’t built to help out Olan Mills with their photography work.

Be aware, and not just of others but of yourself.  Reduce the “footprint” you put out by learning where the cameras are where you work and on your trips back and forth to your house.  Disable the little camera-dot on the top edge of your laptop with 2 layers of aluminum HVAC duct tape pieces.  Disable the microphone within it as well.  Bottom line: you have to pull security for yourself and on yourself to reduce the chances of them cataloguing your every move.  Don’t give them what they need to build up their files.

We are entering into a phase in our country with a moment of decision to come with the U.S. elections.  Martial law is always just around the corner, waiting to be inflicted on us.  These are techniques you’ll have to incorporate into your daily routine and they’ll take some practice.  Awareness and the ability to act on what is happening around you are the keys you’ll need to be able to make it all work.  We’d like to hear any suggestions you have on the matter that may work for others.  Keep fighting that good fight, and stay away from those cameras!

The Surveillance State Did Not Disappear With The Trump Victory: "It Is Still Lurking And Completely Intact"

Submitted by Jeremiah Johnson (nom de plume of a retired Green Beret of the United States Army Special Forces (Airborne)) via SHTFPlan.com,

One of the things Donald Trump has really done correctly is to assess his future arena in the areas of intelligence-gathering and operational security.  Trump wants to return to a “courier” method of transmitting sensitive information and classified documents for the purpose of reducing the amount of material that can be hacked or stolen.  There is a subtlety about this for a caveat, in case the compliment has bloomed flowers in your thoughts: the NSA $50 billion facility for collection and storage of data in Utah won’t be shutting down anytime soon.

As Snowden’s exposés clearly pointed out, the government has clearly followed Petraeus’ glowing “internet of things” yellow brick road to form an integrated, interconnected surveillance state.  All CCTV (closed circuit television) systems, all merchants with cameras, all law enforcement cameras…all of the camera surveillance systems everywhere are either tied into data collection immediately or can be accessed for use at a later time.

The latest “Jason Bourne” movie clearly illustrates how the government can utilize devices such as cellular telephones (especially the ones with cameras) to track movements, record conversations, and be a “piggyback” to relay information to a nearby computer or a camera.  This isn’t the future: this is now.

There is an older piece written by Michael Snyder in June of 2013 entitled 27 Edward Snowden Quotes About U.S. Government Spying That Should Send a Chill Up Your Spine.  The information in this article is directly from Edward Snowden that revealed exactly what the government has been doing regarding their total surveillance program.  The surveillance did not occur overnight, and in the manner of the “frog in the cold-water kettle” by stretching out the time for putting it all into place, the stultified public’s focus was either diverted or bypassed entirely.

Here are a few other pieces worth reading over regarding the government’s total information awareness and the (ongoing) growth of the surveillance state:

As can be seen, all of these developments require time, and the bypassing of the public awareness/consciousness.  Time is necessary to inculcate these changes; however, time also serves as a tool to insulate their actions from what would normally draw outcry if all the actions were taken at once.  A couple of pieces that illustrate this concept are as such:

These two pieces are extremely significant.  They show how the transfer of the Internet to U.N. control has been pushed for quite some time, now.  Guess what?  It has been done.  Obama did it in October when he handed off the control (through his Commerce Department) to ICANN, the multinational firm assigning names and numbers to Internet users and controlling content.

See, Obama quietly did this just before the election in November, and barely anyone took notice of it.  Now, legislation has been passed to “combat disinformation and ‘false’ news and propaganda,” in essence, targeting independent news media sites.  Back in 2012 when those last two cited articles were written, the country had already suffered for four years under Obama with no sign of a let-up.  The UN was coming for the guns (John Kerry’s signing the Small Arms Treaty), coming for the wilderness areas (the Agenda 21 and EPA assault on private property and public lands), and now the internet.

It wouldn’t have been tolerated and may have thrown things off for the election in the fall of 2012 for Obama.  Quietly in October of 2016, Obama sneaked it through the back door of transferring control to a corporation…the public consciousness is bypassed…and the UN-controlled corporation now has control of the Internet.  Now is the time to marginalize and criminalize public and journalist opinion to clamp down on independent thought and alternative news sources.

Obama had an eight-year ride akin to a sled going downhill: unchecked and unstopped, except for his term expiring.  Now (just as with the Overton Window principle), the paradigm shift takes a breather with Trump, who will continue the course, but at a slower pace.

The U.S. is still pointed in the direction of losing its national sovereignty and heading toward global governance, but the angle of descent is not so steep or the speed so high: this “deadens” the public’s awareness to lull them into thinking the bad years are behind us and the struggle is done with Trump’s win.

It hasn’t stopped, that sled of paradigm shift: it is still creeping forward.  If we are not vigilant, the machine that has come into creation this past decade will tighten its own screws and proceed on the course to global governance quietly, while no one notices.

It is not so much giving the people what they want, as making them believe they’re getting what they want.

Bush Jr. and Obama laid the groundwork, and the surveillance state as exposed by Snowden did not disappear with the Trump victory.  It is still lurking, completely intact just below the surface of visibility.  Where the ship will be taken will be largely in Trump’s hands, and there will be others that will influence him both where and how to steer the ship.  Guess (to paraphrase Pelosi) we’ll have to wait and see where we’ve gone to after the ship has docked.