by Michael Snyder
July 17, 2013
from
EndOfTheAmericanDream Website
Do you ever feel trapped in an invisible control
grid that is slowly but surely closing in all around you? Do you ever feel
like virtually everything that you do is being watched, tracked, monitored
and recorded?
If so, unfortunately it is not just your
imagination.
Our society is rapidly being transformed into
a
Big Brother prison grid by a government that is seemingly obsessed with
knowing everything that we do. They want a record of all of our phone calls,
all of our Internet activity and all of our financial transactions. They
even want our DNA.
They put chips in our passports, they are
starting to scan the eyes of our children in our schools, and they have
declared our border areas to be "Constitution-free zones" where they can do
just about anything to us that they want.
The Bill of Rights has already been eroded so
badly that many would argue that it is already dead. The assault against our
most basic freedoms and liberties never seems to end.
The following are 10 ways that the iron grip of
the Big Brother prison grid is tightening on all of our lives…
1 - Automated License
Plate Scanners
All over the United States automated license
plate scanners are being installed. Sometimes they are mounted on police
vehicles, and other times they are put on stationary locations like bridges
and road signs.
These automated license plate scanners are
collecting a staggering amount of information about the travel patterns of
millions of innocent American citizens every
single day…
Police are recording and storing information
on millions of license plates that aren’t related to suspected violation
of the law or any known activity of interest to law enforcement,
according to data collected by the American Civil Liberties Union
through Freedom of Information requests in 38 states.
According to the Washington Post, automated
license plate scanners recorded the locations of vehicle plates
85 million times in the state of Maryland in 2012.
And as more of these scanners get installed
around the nation, the amount of information that the government collects
about the movements of our vehicles will continue to increase.
2 - Government Workers
Ordered to Spy
...on The "Lifestyles,
Attitudes and Behaviors" of Their Fellow Workers
Did you know that the Obama administration has
ordered federal workers
to spy on one another?…
Federal employees and contractors are asked
to pay particular attention to the lifestyles, attitudes and behaviors -
like financial troubles, odd working hours or unexplained travel - of
co-workers as a way to predict whether they might do "harm to the United
States."
Managers of special insider threat offices
will have "regular, timely, and, if possible, electronic, access" to
employees’ personnel, payroll, disciplinary and "personal contact"
files, as well as records of their use of classified and unclassified
computer networks, polygraph results, travel reports and financial
disclosure forms.
If you do not spy on your fellow workers and
something goes wrong, you could lose your job or potentially even be
prosecuted yourself.
3 - Eye Scanners In Our
Schools
According to
CNN, iris scanners are already going into schools all over the country,
and soon they will be used in banks, at airports and at ATM machines…
In the next year, industry insiders say the
technology will be available all over - from banks to airports.
That means instead of entering your pin
number, you can gain access to an ATM in a blink. Used in an airport,
the system will analyze your iris as you pass through security,
identifying and welcoming you by name.
Will we soon live in a world where we no longer
use passwords and instead use our eyeballs?…
"Imagine a world where you’re no longer
reliant on user names and passwords," Eyelock CMO Anthony Antolino told
CNNMoney.
"If we’re going through a turnstile and you
have authorization to go beyond that, it’ll open the turnstile for you,
if you embed it into a tablet or PC, it will unlock your phone or your
tablet or it will log you into your email account."
4 - Biometric Chips In
Our Passports
Did you know that all U.S. passports contain
biometric identity chips?
The following is from a recent
CNSNews.com article…
According to the website, the Enhanced
Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2002 required foreigners
participating in the Visa Waiver Program - which permits entry into the
United States without a VISA for a limited period of time - to have
these integrated circuits or chips on their passport.
"As a security measure, Congress has
legislated that all countries participating in the Visa Waiver
Program with the United States must issue passports with integrated
circuits (chips), to permit storage of at least a digital image of
the passport photograph for use with face recognition technology,"
the website states.
The website also says that since 2007 the
State Department has been issuing U.S. passports bearing the chips.
The department did this on its own
authority, and not in response to any statutory mandate enacted by
Congress.
5 - All Your Financial
Transactions Tracked By The Government?
Most Americans have never even heard of the
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but one U.S. Senator is warning that
this agency wants to keep a record of
all of your financial transactions…
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)
is looking to create a "Google Earth" of every financial transaction of
every American, Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) warned today in a Senate speech
opposing confirmation of Richard Cordray as CFPB director.
"This bill (creating the CFPB)
was supposed to be about regulating Wall Street. Instead, it’s
creating a Google Earth on every financial transaction.
That’s
right: the government will be able to see every detail of your
finances. Your permission - not needed," Sen. Enzi said.
6 - Complaining About
The Tap Water Makes You A Terrorist?
Have you ever complained about the water? If so,
you might be a terrorist.
The following is a brief excerpt from a recent
article
by Anthony Gucciardi…
Concerned about the high levels of arsenic
in your water, or perhaps the
known levels of radioactive contamination?
Well you must be a terrorist, according to
the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) and
Homeland Security, who consider issuing such complaints to be classified
under terrorist activity.
It all started when Tennessee residents
in Maury County recorded an exchange with the deputy director from the
state’s environmental entity TDEC, who issued a warning that complaining
about low quality tap water could put you in Guantanamo.
7 - DNA Databases
The United States already has a database that
contains the DNA
of approximately 11 million criminals…
The biggest database is in the United States
- the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, which holds information
on more than 11 million people suspected of or convicted of crimes.
It is set to grow following a May Supreme
Court ruling that upheld the right of police forces to take DNA swabs
without a warrant from people who are arrested, not just those who are
convicted.
(Policies on DNA collection vary by state; more than half of
the states and the federal government currently take DNA swabs after
arrests.)
But of course authorities will never be
satisfied until they have all of our DNA. And we are
definitely moving in that direction.
The following comes from my recent article
entitled "The
Coming National DNA Database"…
A national DNA database is coming. Barack
Obama has already said
that he wants one. A major Supreme Court decision
last month paved the way for one.
The DNA of those that commit "serious
crimes" is already being routinely collected all over the nation.
Some states (such
as New Jersey) are now passing laws that will require DNA collection
from those charged with committing "low level crimes". And a law that
was passed under George W. Bush allows the federal government to screen
the DNA of all newborn babies in the United States.
So how long will it be before we are all
required to give DNA samples to the authorities?
8 - Copying Your Hard
Drive At The Border
How would you feel if you went to cross the U.S.
border and officials grabbed your computer and made a copy of the hard
drive?
As incredible as that sounds, it is happening
all the time.
As I wrote about
recently, if they do take your computer, you might not get it back
for an extended period of time…
Two years ago The Constitution Project
issued a report on the issue, "Suspicionless Border Searches of
Electronic Devices: Legal and Privacy Concerns with the Department of
Homeland Security’s Policy."
The group explained: Customs and Border
Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement,
"officers may detain electronic devices
for significant periods of time. For CBP, detentions can be extended
well beyond the minimum five-day guideline with supervisory
approval.
If the device is detained by ICE, the
detention can last for ‘a reasonable time,’ which according to its
Directive can last 30 days or more."
Neither agency sets any firm time limit.
9 - NSA Snooping
Thanks to
Edward Snowden, we now know much more
about NSA snooping.
Sadly, the NSA seems to want to collect every
piece of data about everyone in the world that they possibly can.
And right now the NSA is building a place to
store all of that data. It is being constructed out in Utah, and it will be
the largest data center in the history of the world. It is going to have
approximately a million square feet of storage space, it is going to cost
nearly 2 billion dollars to build, and it is going to take about
40 million dollars a year just to pay for the energy needed to run it.
For much more on this, see "21
Facts About NSA Snooping That Every American Should Know".
10 - Obama Now Has The
Power To Seize Control Of The Internet?
Why does
Barack Obama keep releasing very
important executive orders very late on Friday afternoons?
Is he trying to sneak things through that nobody
will notice?
For example, it
is being reported that Barack Obama has just signed an executive order
that will allow him to seize control of the Internet during a national
emergency…
Another late-Friday afternoon release from
the White House - this one on how agencies should communicate with the
public in emergencies - has Internet privacy advocates crying foul over
a possible power grab.
The executive order - "Assignment of
National Security and Emergency Preparedness Communications Functions" -
was released last Friday in the late afternoon.
This executive order is apparently worded so
vaguely that it would allow Obama to do just about anything he wanted to as
far as the Internet is concerned…
Essentially, it says the government can take
control of private telecommunications technology, presumably including
those used for the Internet, for government communications in an
emergency.
"Under the Executive Order the White House
has… granted the Department [of Homeland Security] the authority to
seize private facilities when necessary, effectively shutting down or
limiting civilian communications," wrote the Electronic Privacy
Information Center in a blog post.
Are you alarmed by all of this? You should be.
Sadly, most Americans don’t even realize what is
going on. Most Americans are just working really hard to make it in this
very difficult economic environment, and when they turn on their televisions
the mainstream media doesn’t warn them that they are rapidly losing their
freedoms and liberties.
Please share this article with as many people as
you can. We need people to get educated about what is happening. What we are
experiencing right now is kind of like "death by a thousand paper cuts".
The Big Brother control grid is closing in on us
in hundreds of different ways, but it is often happening so gradually that
people don’t really feel it.