What was once foretold by George Orwell is still in play, but how it looks is morphing into a type of Security Industrial Complex where everyone's privacy rights have to be sacrificed in order to bring about "safety" and "security," or so we are told.
An unofficial fourth branch of the United States government, this burgeoning surveillance state is coming to bear not through electoral mandate or constitutional referendum. It is simply being imposed by force, and few are resisting.
"It operates beyond the reach of the president, Congress and the courts, and it marches in lockstep with the corporate elite who really call the shots in Washington, D.C.," write John and Nisha Whitehead of The Rutherford Institute.
"This is the new face of tyranny in America: all-knowing, all-seeing and all-powerful. Tread cautiously."
The Whiteheads warn that rapidly advancing surveillance technology coupled with the expansion of public-private partnerships between big corporations, law enforcement and the intelligence community is paving the way for Orwell's 1984 dystopia to become a reality.
"1984 portrays a global society of total control in which people are not allowed to have thoughts that in any way disagree with the corporate state," the Whiteheads explain. "There is no personal freedom, and advanced technology has become the driving force behind a surveillance-driven society."
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"Snitches and cameras are everywhere. People are subject to the Thought Police, who deal with anyone guilty of thought crimes. The government, or 'Party,' is headed by Big Brother who appears on posters everywhere with the words: 'Big Brother is watching you.'"
(Related: These seven organizations are engineering the Censorship Industrial Complex.)
No more personal privacy
The rise of Big Tech and the always-listening, always-online culture of modern society has driven a nail in the coffin of personal privacy. Increasingly, there is no such thing as a private life as everything goes public – whether people like it or not.
The spying and surveillance apparatus of the deep state is supposedly there to keep us all "safe," but the truth is that people are being watched and monitored by the watchers, which include government bureaucrats, technicians and private corporations.
It is said that there are now one billion surveillance cameras worldwide, with that number growing every single day. People have been lured into accepting this invasion of privacy and even installing it in their homes in the form of an Amazon Ring doorbell or an Amazon Alexa speaker.
There are also the GPS devices in people's smartphones that keep track of them at all times, as well as drones, store security cameras, geofencing and geotracking devices, FitBits, stingray devices, facial recognition technology, body cameras, predictive policing software, AI-enhanced video analytics technology, real-time crime centers and fusion centers, to name just a few.
The increasing visual appeal and affordability of such devices, especially those that consumers can buy for their homes, cars and bodies, is accelerating the growth of the Security Industrial Complex as well. What was once available only to deep-pocketed corporations or government agencies can now be picked up at the Apple Store for a few hundred bucks – and it looks "cool" to boot.
All the spying and surveillance devices that are flooding society are a dream come true for the FBI, the NSA and DHS agents, which now have at their fingertips a vast surveillance map with which to track the movements of their targets.
"It has all but eliminated the notion of privacy enshrined in the Fourth Amendment and radically re-drawn the line of demarcation between our public and private selves," the Whiteheads warn.
More related news coverage can be found at Surveillance.news.
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