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Tuesday, January 4, 2011 BIG BROTHER: The Police State Mentality in the Electronic
Age ³They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little
temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.² Benjamin Franklin
(1706 - 1790), American
inventor, journalist, printer, diplomat, and statesman (1775) ³Americans used to roar like lions for liberty;
now we bleat like sheep for security.² Norman Vincent
Peale (1898 –1993), American Christian preacher and author "A Party
member lives from birth to death under the eye of the Thought Police. Even
when he is alone he can never be sure that he is alone. ...At the apex of the
pyramid comes Big Brother. Big Brother
is infallible and all-powerful. Every success, every achievement, every
victory, every scientific discovery, all knowledge, all wisdom, all
happiness, all virtue, are held to issue directly from his leadership and
inspiration." George Orwell (1903-1950) (Eric Arthur Blair), (book: 1984) ³Since
information gives power, access to personal files can lead to unreasonable
pressures, even blackmail, especially against those with the least resources,
people who depend upon public programs, for example. Big Brother isn't a
camera. Big Brother is a computer.² C.J. Howard, political novel ³Cybercash²
In
2049, when the 100th anniversary of the publication of George Orwell
political novel ³1984²
will be celebrated, it will be recalled that the immediate post September 11,
2001 period marked the beginning of a gradual decline in personal liberty and
freedom, especially in the United States but also elsewhere, and the
emergence of a great information-obsessed Leviathan.
Freedom rarely disappears in one fell swoop. Its disappearance is rather the
end result of a thousand encroachments. Pushed to the extreme and without clear democratic
oversight, it becomes the mark of
a totalitarian
state, when authorities feel that they never have enough
information on the people. It is because information is power and state
bureaucrats and politicians naturally like to be in control; on the one hand,
releasing as little information about their own actions through an imposed
secrecy, and on the other, accumulating as much information as possible about
the citizens. And today, modern governments have all the tools to
transform their country into a creeping
police
state, more so now then ever before, in this electronic age.
They have access to information technology that previous full-fledged ³police
state² governments could only have dreamed about. Nowadays, with super computers and revolutionary new models to gather information and build
databases, governments, i.e. bureaucrats and politicians, are in a position
as never before to accumulate and correlate tremendous amounts of personal
information on their citizens, from public (federal, state and local) as well
as from a plethora of private sources. Government intelligence on each and
every citizen is thus rendered much easier and, I would add, much more
frightening. Indeed, the potential for abuse is enormous. In 2002, for example,
retired Vice Admiral John Poindexter proposed that the U.S. government
create a tracking and monitoring system called "Total
Information Awareness",
in order for the U.S. government to gather information in a preventive way
about individuals from widely varied sources, including tax records,
telephone calling records, credit card charges, banking transactions, airline
or ship reservations, and various biometric databases, without taking into
consideration civil liberties or a citizens' right to privacy,
the U.S. Privacy Act of 1974, or
without having to request search
warrants and without having to give prior notice to the persons involved.
—The pretext was to allow the government to thwart possible terrorist
activity, thus creating an unlimited appetite for information. Well, there are clear signs that this massive data mining
system on individuals is now solidly in place and is in full operation and
can be expected to grow over time. George
Orwell must be turning in his grave. First, the U.S. Department
of Homeland Security¹s network of fusion
centers, launched in 2003, has
allowed the government to centralize a host of previously disparate information
about Americans and foreigners alike, whether related to personal and
business records, drivers licenses, local taxes, local infractions, police
records, etc., through a host of coordinated information-sharing networks.
(N.B.: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was established on November 25, 2002 and is the
domestic equivalent of the Department of Defense.) Secondly, central provisions of the USA Patriot Act,
signed into law by President
George W. Bush on October 26, 2001, allow the government to operate roving wire taps, search any
individual¹s business, personal, and even library records upon presentation
of a national security letter, and spy on so-called "lone wolf"
suspects, i.e., foreign nationals who have no known links to groups
designated as terrorist. On this, the current Obama
administration, by extending those provisions, is scarcely different than the
previous Bush administration. Thirdly, since passports
and tight intelligence screening have been made a requirement for most
international travel by the U.S. Department
of Homeland Security, since January 1, 2008, every individual
traveling in and out of the United States has all his or her whereabouts and
movements recorded so the government knows at all times his or her address
and the places he or she has traveled to and from. For instance, U.S. Transportation
Security Administration's recent decision to use full-body airport X-ray scanners
and full body groping at airports is another example where so-called security
procedures are applied blindly and indiscriminately. There is more to come,
since it has been announced that such invasive intelligence screening is
coming to hotels and shopping malls, as well as to trains, buses and ports,
etc. These are some of the main features of the new government
apparatus to gather information on people. There are many others. —Take
for instance the requirement, since 2002, that all American high schools must
give Pentagon
military recruiters the names and contact information of all
their juniors and seniors. Failure to comply on their part may result in the
loss of government funding. The logical next step for the U.S. government would be to follow a
recent Italy's lead and outlaw outright the
use of cash for most transactions, except for small ones, thus
providing the government even more minute information about an individual's
income, purchases and displacements. Nothing will escape the watching eye of
the government in the electronic age. People will be filed, photographed and
corralled. Indeed, the way mass government surveillance systems are
growing, by year 2020, chances are good that Americans will be living in a ³Brave New World²!
—CYBER BIG BROTHER would know it all and it will be
watching you. Rodrigue
Tremblay
is
professor emeritus of economics at the University of Montreal and
can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@yahoo.com.
He is the author of the book "The
Code for Global Ethics" at: www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com/ The book ³The Code
for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles², by Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay, prefaced by
Dr. Paul Kurtz, has just been released by Prometheus Books. Please
visit the book site at: www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com/ See it on Amazon
USA: See it on Amazon
Canada: See it on Amazon
UK: or,
in Australia
at: Please
ask your favorite bookstore and your local library to order the book: The Code for Global Ethics, Ten
Humanist Principles, by Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay, prefaced by
Dr. Paul Kurtz, Prometheus Books, 2010, 300 p. ISBN: 978-1616141721. *****The French
version of the book is also now available. See: www.lecodepouruneethiqueglobale.com/ or on Amazon
Canada _____________________________________ Posted, Tuesday January 4,
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