The Surveillance State: An Inexorable March Toward Totalitarianism

by Jeremiah Johnson

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

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 21st 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.

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Original article

Jeremiah Johnson is the Nom de plume of a retired Green Beret of the United States Army Special Forces (Airborne). Mr. Johnson is also a Gunsmith, a Certified Master Herbalist, a Montana Master Food Preserver, and a graduate of the U.S. Army’s SERE school (Survival Evasion Resistance Escape). He lives in a cabin in the mountains of Western Montana with his wife and three cats. You can follow Jeremiah’s regular writings at SHTFplan.com or contact him here.

This article is being republished by The Liberty Beacon with proper attribution to the author and a link to www.SHTFplan.com.

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