They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790), American inventor, journalist, printer, diplomat, and statesman (1775)

“Americans used to roar like lions for liberty; now we bleat like sheep for security.”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)

“Since 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.” C.J. Howard, political novel “Cybercash”

In 2049, when the 100th anniversary of the publication of George Orwell political novel “1984” 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 “police state” 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 Security’s 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 individual’s 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 “Brave New World”!

—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/

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=22596

Michael Allison, a 41-year-old backyard mechanic from southeastern Illinois, faces up to 75 years in prison for an act most people don’t realize is a crime: recording public officials.

Allison lives in Bridgeport, Illinois, and often spends time at his mother’s house in Robinson, one county to the north. Both towns have abandoned property (or “eyesore”) ordinances prohibiting the parking of inoperable or unregistered vehicles on private property except in enclosed garages. These rules place a substantial burden on hobbyists like Allison; to obey the law he must either build a garage—which he says isn’t an option, given his property and his income—or register, plate, and pay insurance on every car he fixes up, even though he never drives them on public roads. So Allison kept working on his cars, and the city of Bridgeport kept impounding them: in 2001, 2003, and 2005.

In 2007 Allison filed a lawsuit against the city, alleging the law was a violation of his civil rights and a scheme to collect revenue through impound fees. He then resumed tinkering with unregistered vehicles in his mother’s driveway in Robinson. By Allison’s account, police officers in Robinson began harassing him with threats of fines or arrest for violating that town’s ordinance, though Allison alleges the harassment was personal—retaliation for his lawsuit back in Bridgeport. That’s when he began recording his conversations with cops.

In late 2008, Allison went to the Robinson police station, tape recorder in hand, and asked the chief to tell his officers either to name the law he was violating and issue him a citation or leave him alone. Not long after, two Robinson police officers showed up at his mother’s property and, while he was working on his mother’s car in her driveway, wrote Allison a citation for violating the eyesore ordinance. Allison openly recorded the conversation with a digital recorder. A court date was scheduled for January 2010.

The day before the trial, Allison went to the Crawford County Courthouse to request a court reporter for the proceedings. “If they were going to convict me of this bogus ordinance violation, I wanted to be sure there was a record of it for my lawsuit,” he says. As he spoke with Crawford County Circuit Court Clerk Angela Reinoehl, Allison showed her his digital recorder, although he says in this instance he wasn’t recording. “I held out the tape recorder to make it clear that if they weren’t going to make a record of this ridiculous farce, I was going to make sure I had one,” he says.

Reinoehl denied the request, but Allison’s promise to record the proceedings apparently came through loud and clear. Just after he walked through the courthouse door the next day, Allison says Crawford County Circuit Court Judge Kimbara Harrell asked him whether he had a tape recorder in his pocket. He said yes. Harrell then asked him if it was turned on. Allison said it was. Harrell then informed the defendant that he was in violation of the Illinois wiretapping law, which makes it a Class 1 felony to record someone without his consent. “You violated my right to privacy,” the judge said.

Allison responded that he had no idea it was illegal to record public officials during the course of their work, that there was no sign or notice barring tape recorders in the courtroom, and that he brought one only because his request for a court reporter had been denied. No matter: After Harrell found him guilty of violating the car ordinance, Allison, who had no prior criminal record, was hit with five counts of wiretapping, each punishable by four to 15 years in prison. Harrell threw him in jail, setting bail at $35,000.

Allison’s predicament is an extreme example of a growing and disturbing trend. As citizens increase their scrutiny of law enforcement officials through technologies such as cell phones, miniature cameras, and devices that wirelessly connect to video-sharing sites such as YouTube and LiveLeak, the cops are increasingly fighting back with force and even jail time—and not just in Illinois. Police across the country are using decades-old wiretapping statutes that did not anticipate iPhones or Droids, combined with broadly written laws against obstructing or interfering with law enforcement, to arrest people who point microphones or video cameras at them. Even in the wake of gross injustices, state legislatures have largely neglected the issue. Meanwhile, technology is enabling the kind of widely distributed citizen documentation that until recently only spy novelists dreamed of. The result is a legal mess of outdated, loosely interpreted statutes and piecemeal court opinions that leave both cops and citizens unsure of when recording becomes a crime
http://reason.com/archives/2010/12/07/the-war-on-cameras/singlepage

what's new about this?

Aldous Huxley wrote.. A Brave New World... The progressive manifesto..

Surprise.. Surprise..

I think you do not know the definition of a progresive. I am here to help.

According to Dictionary.com it means;

1. Moving forward; advancing.

2. Proceeding in steps; continuing steadily by increments: progressive change.

3. Promoting or favoring progress toward better conditions or new policies, ideas, or methods: a progressive politician; progressive business leadership.

No sane american would support a police state unless of course they are still terified from all that smokeing gun talk from the regresive right.

I think it would get plenty of support, actually

like the sentiment about profiling in Arizona 'if you got nothing to hide, you should be HAPPY to do it.'

Only from those who aren't really paying attention, and buy into the media propaganda. I mean no offense in saying that, but that's pretty much the truth of the matter. If anyone is paying close enough attention they will know what the true agendas are here, and know that the media cannot be trusted to tell you the full truth, because they simply will not do it.

As for the second part of that statement, the problem is twofold:

1. They really have no business invading our rights to privacy. Even if we are innocent of whatever supposed crimes we may be guilty of, without a good reason it is really none of their business.

2. The whole idea of having nothing to hide and all is fine and dandy, I understand the logic you are trying to use there. To a point it can even work, if you're innocent then what's the problem right? Here's the thing, the more you let them in on your life, the more they will intrude on it.

Going back to 9-11 this has been the case, they have slowly gotten into our lives and our personal business further and further and further, to where now we barely have any left. At what point do you draw the line and say enough is enough?

I mean look what has happened with the airline security, the scans and the pat downs and how far that's gone. It doesn't matter whether you have nothing to hide or not, the fact is, the more you allow them in, the more intrusive they are going to get. I don't know about you, but I'd rather have my rights, privacies and freedoms as a human being respected, taking my chances of x,y or z happening, then be safe but have none of those things. What type of a life is that?

To take it a step further, what happens when they start to come after YOU? What happens when they see YOU as the threat, YOU as the guilty, etc? Suddenly it all changes doesn't it?

You may think you are innocent, that you have nothing to hide, but what if they disagree with you? Now suddenly it's YOU being directly effected by this police state, how would you feel about it then?

There are so so many laws on the books anymore to the point that many things we do everyday are illegal or against the law. You could be breaking a law and not even know it. That's to say nothing of the fact that more are always being added to the list on a daily basis.

Keep that in mind, maybe you are innocent, but if you're not according to them, you're screwed.

great post

sounds like like you are saying it is the governments fault for trying to keep the extremists on the other side of the ocean... if your looking for blame, try the 18 muslims that flew 4 planes into buildings... while i agree with you about our personal freedoms being lost, but it is the extremist muslims to blame as well...

Well when we invade countries kill innocents and support Israel in its war crimes it tends to create violent extremism.

tell me agian- what country did we invade before 9-11?

We supported Israel all throughout its blood soaked history right or wrong. We support the Brutal regime in Saudi Arabia this explains why so many hijackers were from that country.

That being said i am still not convinced of the facts of 911. to many loose ends and Bin Laden still runs amuk? but that is a topic for another thread dont ya think?

ya, we support a lot of countries and not support others... thats a reason to kill 3000 innocent people? sorry, but your argument makes no sense...me personally, i would support Israel no matter what. the muslims have so much hate towards the jews, and the jews just want to be left alone. and i still don't know what "war crimes" Israel has committed.

You would have to educate yourself. I believe Israel has been condemed more by the UN than any other country. the fact is though the US vetos everything. Its a strong testement to the lack of media coverage. You seem like the type that likes to at least stay informed.

we are all entitled to our own opinions... but i have spent some time with Israelis and muslims over here, and while they both are set in their ways, the 5 years i spent living in Miami Beach with the Hasidic Jews, they never once said anything hateful towards anyone. then, on the other hand, the 3 years i worked with the muslims, i dreaded going to work just for the fact all they ever talked about was their hatetread for the bushes, Israel, and our government being in league with the Jews. personal experiences counts for a lot on these matters as well...it seems to me that all the Jews want is what they think is theirs, which happens to be the same as the what the muslims have right now,and to be left alone. All though history the Jews have been persecuted, and i always wondered why that is so. I cannot remember an Israeli hijacking a plane, or killing athletes at an Olympics, or trying to blow up any buildings. so, i ask again, what are these war crimes you speak of?

Isreal did all there terrorism before they became an independent state. The first act of modern terrorism was commited by Israel.

July 22 1946 the KING DAVID HOTEL wing occupied by the British civil-military authorities in Jerusalem was blown up killing 91 people -- 28 British, 41 Arabs, 17 Jews and 5 others. The Irgun carried out the attack and claimed responsibility.

http://freethoughtmanifesto.blogspot.com/2008/01/israels-founding-fathers-of-modern.html

If you simply google KING DAVID HOTEL You will find this all to be true. Menachum Begin ran the terror group that drove out the british. It seems to me one mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter. That is if one is objective.

Honestly though the Arabs are bitter since they have lost and lose politicaly and militarily, the Jews know they have allready won and They have no sour grapes.

Actually that's not true either. When you look at 9-11, the war and everything that has came as a result of that, you must ask yourself a simple question. Who had the most to gain from this? Who stood to benefit from such a big event? You don't have to look very far to find the answer.

You see, there is no way, no how that this war we have been engaged in the last 8 years or so, and all these rights and freedoms they have taken from us along with that, could have been justified without an event to provide them a reason. The government knew they needed a catalyst in order to get the people to accept all of this without really questioning it. 9-11 was that catalyst.

I know you may find that hard to believe, that our government would be capable of something like this, murdering 3000 people or so in one fell swoop, but you have to understand something. The government has always tended to reign by fear. It is a very well known tactic used to bend us to their will. You see it manifest in many different ways, using fear of arrest or fines if you break a law even if it's bogus, fear of sickness if you do this or don't do that such as not getting a vaccine, etc etc. All the while, our rights and freedoms as people reduce ever further.

In this case the fear tactic used is terrorism. It has been repeated over and over ad nauseum basically since 9-11. Why do you think things keep happening every so often, with each subsequent event requiring another right being infringed on and more intrusions into our privacy? Why do you think nothing ever changes in this way?

The simple fact is, if they have us scared we are much more easily manipulated then if we are not. This in short is the reason why little changes. They always have to keep us scared, because the moment we aren't anymore is when we begin to wake up, and they start to lose their power over us.

So no the muslims have nothing to do with this at all, because the entire official story of what happened on 9-11 was a flat out lie. This whole war on terror is a smokescreen, the true war is and always has been the war on us.

Well stated I am humbled. I couldnt have stated this so well.

so those poor, misunderstood muslims...no wonder they want to eradicate all non muslim life, because of our government....

sorry, but i don't think so...

America thought it was immune to the problems of Europe, arrogance and complacency have been replaced by fear and uncertainty.

It was the mindset of this country that caused us to be ill prepared for what could happen when our government failed us. And they did with 9/11 and have continued to by starting an illegal war with a country that had nothing to do with our terrorism problems killing many Iraqis and many Americans wrongly.

We as a country have done wrong to other countries making people hate us causing some of the problems we have.

We cannot be unjust and expect others to ignore it and give us exemption.

I understand it is hard to accept, and difficult to see when you have been told for so long that the truth is something different, but the truth is always much stranger than fiction. Don't take my word for it if you don't believe it, research for yourself.

As for the Muslims, they have basically been used as scapegoats in this. Obviously if the government wanted to again justify this war and all that has resulted from it, they needed an enemy, which is where the Muslims come in as the terrorizers. Can't really have a good reason for all this without having someone for us to fear.