The U.S. Surveillance State: Big Brother on Steroids
By Mary Theroux • Monday March 7, 2011 5:09 PM PDT • 15 Comments
This Thursday, the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments in a case brought by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) against the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) use of body scanners. The case asserts “that the federal agency’s controversial program violates the Administrative Procedures Act, the Privacy Act, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the Video Voyeurism Prevention Act, and the Fourth Amendment.”
Depressingly, almost no one expects the case to succeed, in part because, as an ACLU spokesman explained, fourth amendment ruling precedents are almost all bad. And, indeed, the 1973 9th Circuit Court ruling in U.S. vs. Davis, said that “airport screenings are considered to be administrative searches” which are allowed so long as they are “no more intrusive or intensive than necessary, in light of current technology, to detect weapons or explosives, confined in good faith to that purpose, and passengers may avoid the search by electing not to fly.”
Emboldened by its success at completely disregarding all protests against body scanners (a/k/a “porn scanners“) so far, the DHS’s Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is now taking its show on the road—literally. TSA recently set up an invasive search at a Savannnah, GA train station, that included near-strip searches of a group of passengers who had just gotten off a train, but who were nevertheless ordered to go into the train station to be searched. TSA claimed that the passengers were searched because they had voluntarily entered the “secure area” of the train station, which they had not had to do (the baggage claim area was on the platform). Unfortunately for TSA, the group included a group of firefighters and policemen—whom it’s harder for TSA to call liers—who reported that the TSA agents had ordered them to go into the station.
The DHS is also now testing the roll-out of scanners and video cameras that could be tacked on to mobile vans that could scan city streets and intelligent tracking devices could be mounted on buildings and poles. This technology will not only allow them to x-ray your moving car at-will, but would be a part of a “covert inspection of moving subjects”—that’s “innocent people” to you and me—”to monitor pedestrian body and eye movement.”
Now, they are planning to purchase new portable, instant DNA scanners.
All of this neat new technology joins systems also being rolled out across the country that link almost all public and private surveillance cameras to a centralized, government surveillance center, neatly being tied into vast databases of unspecified “public records” at Real Time Crime Centers (RTCC). The unlikely terrorist hotspot of Ogden, Utah is the latest to join cities like Houston and New York, going above and beyond and adding a camera-equipped blimp to drift over the city to add the ability to peer into backyards at will.
Our friend and colleague Robert Higgs recently pointed out that even otherwise-serene rural areas are similarly under camera surveillance, as reported, for example here.
I was somewhat relieved when Google earth first started displaying eye-from-the sky views of backyards since our address brought up a house 2 doors down instead of ours, but it’s now accurate—and closer, revealing views into our all-glass house. And I was extremely mystified that Google was able to come up with the money to invest in all those aerial views, as well as street-by-street video of the entire country. Reports now coming out about Google’s “secret” relationship with the National Security Administration (NSA) reveal that Google’s “Street View” cars also gathered and passed along everyone’s home wireless IP information, so it is reasonable to infer that its other intelligence-gathering has been a joint venture with NSA as well. And if any kid with a laptop can see through the windows of our home over Google, one can only imagine the view classified technology provides.
Adding pinpoint precision to locating where you live, last year’s Census included the GPS-mapping of every front door for every address in the country—an assignment Census workers were trained to keep hidden from prying eyes.
Cell phones now provide the GPS location of their owners, allowing the government to know where we are even when not at home. This is more than a privacy concern for the women victimized by the technology’s use by abusive husbands and stalkers, as reported here.
In addition to liberally accessing cell phone GPS records, the government also has the ability to turn on your cell phone remotely, and use it as a listening device. Such use has been declared legal, so be aware.
Likewise, know that your laptop camera can be enabled as a spy device, and though I haven’t yet seen any accounts of such, likely your cell phone camera as well.
Government abuses of technology and data already in their possession makes the the current mild debate over the extension of the REAL-ID Act and its creation of a centralized national identification database—complete with biometric identifying information—seem a little late.
So, assuming courts keep ruling that all this intrusiveness is Constitutional, what are we to do?
Unfortunately, looking to the legislative branch for help won’t work. Tea Party patriots, who gained election claiming to want to restore government by the people, recently voted to extend expiring provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act, including those authorizing wireless wiretaps—and even voted against a proposed revision that would have specified that investigations of U.S. citizens under such extended authority “shall be conducted in a manner that complies with the Constitution of the United States,” including the Bill of Rights.
Aren’t these the same legislators who insisted on opening their session in Congress with a reading of the very Constitution they have now voted as conditional?
Call me old fashioned, but now that the government CAN intrude at will, perhaps we ought to have a conversation about what the government SHOULD be allowed to do. Neither the courts, legislature—nor certainly the executive—are going to uphold our rights. I guess we’re going to have to do it for ourselves.
If not now, when?
Tags: Civil Liberties, Civil Society, Constitution, Corruption, Criminal Justice, Defense, Elections, Law, Liberalism, Liberty, Natural Law, Peace, Personal Liberty, Police, Politics, Power, Presidential Power, Privacy, Propaganda, Property Rights, Surveillance, Technology, Terrorism, The State, Transparency, Transportation, Video, War 
“in light of current technology”—in 1973 they weren’t shooting X-Rays at people—X-Rays are a known 0 threshold carcinogen. That’s the key—the TECHNOLOGY HAS CHANGED and the old ruling was based on a passive scan of interruption of a magnetic field, versus an active scan of ionizing radiation.
Andy | Mar 8, 2011 | Reply
Mary, you’ll be called an “alarmist”, and “conspiracy theorist”, and similar statements like “it’s all neat and well, but it won’t happen here”, just like was being said in the early ’80′s when the very first street cameras appeared in Florida to “gauge traffic,” were at the time ruled unconstitutional, yet... is that the scent of boiling frogs that I smell?
joe4liberty | Mar 8, 2011 | Reply
Right, Andy.
Please also see my earlier post, “Travelers (Especially Men and Children), Beware: Urgent Warning from Scientists on TSA Machines’ Radiation,” with links to some of the relevant scientific warnings.
Thank you,
Mary
Mary Theroux | Mar 8, 2011 | Reply
Wonder if this will ever arrive at the point that people will just refuse to travel and wouldn’t that make all these intrusive searches a comedy of idiocy?
chibiabo | Mar 9, 2011 | Reply
And just what is it you’re going to do, Ms. Mary? The whole world wants to know.
Mountain Rifleman | Mar 9, 2011 | Reply
It’s long past the time for having a “conversation” about this stuff. A conversation implies the ruling class can be talked out of doing what they so clearly intend to do. That is certainly not in the cards. Stop believing in government, folks. These people are members of a criminal gang, plain and simple.
Paul | Mar 9, 2011 | Reply
DHS has rolled out the portable body scanners in our area. We encountered one at the border patrol checkpoint outside of Alpine, Texas, which, by the way, is 100 miles from any border, interrogating the locals on their way to the grocery store. A surveillance blimp floats over hHghway 67 in the same area, also miles from any border.
If not now...when?
I’ve been asking that for years....It’s so very frustrating to watch the American people swallow one indignity after another. Will Americans ever step up and take back their self-respect?
Melinda | Mar 9, 2011 | Reply
Melinda:
No, they won’t. They won’t even pay attention at all, not until it actually happens to them up close and personal...
annje | Mar 9, 2011 | Reply
Did all of you vote for Ron Paul? If not then you are getting just what you asked for.
Sorry if you don’t like being reminded about the stupidity of voting for anyone except the only candidate who was pro-freedom, pro-privacy, anti-big government and pro-constitution but if you don’t learn from your mistakes then how are we ever going to get out of this? It’s time to wake up and realize that dem=gop=con men. We need leaders who are driven by constitutional principles, not politics which change with every opinion poll.
Yeah sure | Mar 10, 2011 | Reply
“The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.” —Joseph Mengele
Tom | Mar 11, 2011 | Reply
On the ‘mobile DNA testing’ doohickeys; let it be known – as widely as possible – that when government collects and stores people’s DNA profiles, it CAN NOT SECURE THE DATA.
I for one will be advocating that hacker collectives (e.g., Anonymous, Gnosis, Metanoia and Baphomet) devote resources to hacking government DNA databases and releasing the information into the wild – for the sole reason of undermining confidence that governments are capable of the information security required to protect that data it collects INVOLUNTARILY.
It will only take for a few dozen people’s entire genome to be released (thence to be examined and exploited by their health insurers) for widespread opposition to this appalling violation of rights to be opposed with vigour by the Mass Idiot who currently believes all the made-for-gullible-idiots rationales for this intrusion.
The claims being made in defence of the porta-scanners – that the DNA profiles collected will not contain anything other than a few dozen alleles; that information that has no evidentiary value will be destroyed – are patently lies along the same lines as the ‘images from porno-scanners will not be stored or transmissible’.
If governments
* collate DNA material that is collected involuntarily, and
* lie about what they obtain, which data is retained, and how it is stored
... well, then it is the moral obligation of right-thinking hacktivists to destroy government credibility as regards information security (as if that hasn’t been done already); to show that entire genomes are stored; and to find ways to corrupt the government versions of stored material.
For example – my fingerprints were taken in France in late 2007 pursuant to an inquiry that resulted in no charges. Under EU law AND French law, those prints ought to have been destroyed when they were shown to have no value to the investigation. But they weren’t (I know this because the DGSE’s computer system is porous and I know who to pay to get that sort of information).
Governments can not be trusted to abide by their own guidelines; they are fond of giving blanket FALSE assurances regarding the safety and efficacy-for-stated-purpose of their unquenchable thirst for our private data.
The ONLY recourse is to hack it all, and blast it into the internet – so that even couch-potato mouth breathers realise that their government lies to them.
GT | Mar 12, 2011 | Reply
The next step is what happened in France and the English Colonies about 200 yrs or so ago. The “ruling class” now is just as bad morally and a whole lot more dangerous than then. Weapons are the tools of power. Power to the people. Keep your powder dry.
seldon wright | Oct 31, 2011 | Reply