Big Brother is watching: 1984 is already here
To the Times: It’s worse than Orwell imagined. The latest technology is facial recognition. The government has 400 million faces in their data bases. Not just criminals but your face from your driving license or passport. By their own admission there is a one in five chance it will recognize a face in error. No one ever gave permission for their driver’s licenses to be used in this way, to track your daily movements if they want. Congress doesn’t care.
Director of NSA Clapper had just got through testifying under oath to Congress, telling them that the agency didn’t collect information from American phone calls when Snowden’s leaks showed they did. But Snowden will be the one to go to prison.
It now looks like they collect not just your phone calls but everything you do on line as well, sites you visit and what you write. They have arranged back doors into cell phones like the iPhone to bypass the encryption.
Does anybody think these agencies care about the Constitution? The FISA court was supposed to protect against fishing expeditions but Mother Jones reported they only refused 0.03 percent of all requests and what’s more it is all too secret for the plebs to see what they do. Trust us. If the FISA court refuses the CIA can always get the information legally from the British who have been given access to the data.
Congress has just passed a bill to make it legal for your server like Verizon or Comcast, etc., to collect your metadata and sell it to advertisers or anyone else who would like to con you.
According to the Washington Post, federal asset forfeiture in 2014 accounted for over $5 billion going into Justice and Treasury Department coffers. This compares with $3.5 billion stolen by burglars. Apparently you can be stopped in your car and if you have a substantial amount of money; it is assumed you got it illegally. No charge or trial. Just take it. I’ve searched the Constitution and have not found it allowed this.
All of which pales into insignificance compared to the 13 wars America has fought over the last 30 years. Presently you can hear the war hawks braying to attack Russia. Got to keep the threat level up to justify the $500 billion a year for the Department of Defense.
With the newly disclosed CIA “Marble” program they can hack Americans and the U.S. government but make it look like another country did it. Easy to make Russia look guilty and have our intelligence agencies all confirm it was the Russians. But the government always follows the Constitution, right?