Police officers in Chicago, Illinois can remotely access video shot from any of the city’s 24,000 closed-circuit television cameras, and they are already using that ability to nab suspects who thought they could outsmart surveillance.
According to a recent Chicago Sun-Time article by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Frank Main, police officers in the Windy City recently issued their first arrest stemming from the use of space-age facial-recognition technology coupled with thousands of cameras that collect live video in real-time at all hours of the day.
Pierre Martin, 34, was arrested on May 2 and charged with armed robbery in connection with two incidents from earlier this year.He is the first individual to be picked up by the CPD using the facial-recognition technology, but only one month after a city-wide roll-out he is likely to not be the last.
The Transportation Security Administration has given the CTA a $5.4 million grant to aid with the program, and that money has been used to update an already impressive arsenal of city-licensed surveillance cameras to run in tandem with NeoFace, a high-tech analysis program used by various governments and law enforcement agencies around the globe to grab biometric data off of an image and match it to another.
The F.B.I has announced plans to have a database of 14 million photographs on file by next year when it rolls out its Next Generation Identification system, which will use surveillance camera clips and other footage to match suspects almost instantaneously up with a pool of persons derived from state DMV photo-shoots and other government-owned images.
(Digital)Fascism, The merger of State and Corporate(private)Power
Big Brother may be private and unregulated, Russia Today reports, regarding the United Kingdom:
There are 70 times more privately owned surveillance cameras in the UK than government ones, a new study has revealed. The research found that Britain has a total of 5.9 million cameras and called for better regulation of privately owned devices.
Some 70,000 cameras run by the British police and authorities make “perhaps only 1.2 to 1.7 per cent” of the overall number of CCTV cameras in the UK, the study reads. The research was conducted for the British Security Industry Association (BSIA), according to the Evening Standard.According to the research, cameras that are in public control include more than 10,000 CCTV units installed by the police and some 60,000 more controlled by local authorities across Britain.
But the overall number of cameras is likely to stir the heated debate surrounding the UK’s so-called “surveillance society,” just one year after the Protection of Freedoms Act was imposed and days after the introduction of a surveillance code of practice for public CCTV systems. Both legislations include the regulation of state cameras.
Has The Era Of Genetically Pure “Gattaca Babies” Now Begun?
Should selective breeding be used to improve the human race? Should we genetically screen embryos shortly after conception and choose only those that are the most genetically pure? This may sound like science fiction, but as you will read about below, the technology for this is already operational.
On the May 18th, a couple in Philadelphia gave birth to a baby that came from an embryo that was selected thanks to a cutting edge procedure known as “next-generation sequencing”. This procedure allows scientists to read every letter of the human genome very rapidly and very cheaply. So will millions of parents soon be lining up to check their potential offspring for “genetic abnormalities”? Has the era of genetically pure “Gattaca babies” now begun?
This new technology is being heralded as a great “breakthrough” in the field of human fertility.
According to the Guardian, the scientists that helped develop this new procedure are promoting it as a way to help couples produce a much higher percentage of “healthy” babies
And aren’t healthy babies a good thing? Of course they are. But what about all of the babies that are “discarded” in the process?
A lot of scientists involved in this field of research truly believe that they are doing a wonderful thing for parents. They are fully convinced that helping parents transform the process of fertility from “a game of craps” into a process that they can control is a worthwhile endeavor.
But where does this end?At first, they may just weed out babies that have a high chance of getting sick or being deformed.Next, parents may start selecting babies based on hair color, eye color, etc.
And eventually, “defective” embryos may be banned entirely because they would be “too much of a burden on society”.
Back in 1997, a movie entitled Gattaca came out that envisioned a world where those that are not “genetically pure” are greatly discriminated against.The film presents vision of a future society driven by liberal eugenics where potential children are selected through preimplantation genetic diagnosis to ensure they possess the best hereditary traits of their parents. A genetic registry database uses biometrics to instantly identify and classify those so created as “valids” while those conceived by traditional means are derisively known as “in-valids”
At the time, nobody ever dreamed that we would actually see such a thing in the real world.
But these days technology is moving at a pace that is absolutely mind blowing.We are moving into a time when genetic manipulation of the human race is going to become commonplace.Scientists are assuring us that there is absolutely nothing to be concerned about.Unfortunately, they have no idea what they are messing around with.
The mission of a small “elite” group to control the masses is nothing new. It has always been a tool implemented in the form of propaganda used to alter perception and thus steer the direction of large populations. The modern methods of mind control are in many ways merely higher-tech extensions of what always has been predictably successful: religion, sports, politics, education, etc.
With the advent of television, a whole new world was opened up for would-be controllers, as news media was easily corporatized and made uniform enough to translate core messages, while encouraging passivity, and also presenting the illusion of choice. Simultaneously, choice has been reduced in fundamental areas such as finance, education and health with reams of legislation and “incentives” to ensure compliance.
The mind control of the future forgoes all pretense at indirectly altering perception through media and politics, as that continues to be exposed for what it truly is. It does away with the clumsy and sporadic effectiveness of mind-altering drugs and environmental toxins, as companies like Monsanto are not only reviled, but are seen as the epitome of true evil on earth. The mind control of the future goes straight into direct programming of the digital mind, and this is exactly what the technotronic elite are discussing right now.
Implants and Ingestibles — RFID is one technology being touted as a wonder for finding lost items — like kids and dogs and products — but has also broken through into the field of medicine. This plays a major role in selling the mind-body-computer connection to nearly every age. It, too, is a form of surveillance.
The area of mind control, aside from the obvious behavioral changes, becomes probable with RFID implants and ingestible RFID. VeriMed’s human implant has been approved by the FDA and has been used as an ID system by the Israeli military. At the moment, this technology is being sold as an interior sensor network, but there is much more that can be done, as has been shown in animal testing. Once again, the battlefield is where it is likely to appear first in the area of neurorobotics, funded by DARPA of course.
Mind-controlled Robots and Drones — This is already in the mainstream news, but how about the merging of man and machine? This is what the transhumanist dream actually is, but DARPA is naturally looking to be sure it gets to the battlefield first. The Royal Society, an elite UK think-tank has published a report that indicates an interest in using brain mapping technology to keep soldiers alert, as well as “operate weaponry remotely through mind-machine interfaces.”
With an increasing amount of robots and drones already on the battlefield and in civilian space, this opens up the possibility of “thought-controlled” drones. After this, the question becomes whether or not autonomous drones will be able to link in reverse to anyone they wish.
ElectroMagnetic Manipulation — Transcranial pulsed ultrasound was made famous by The God Helmet. This is being tested in the military and begins to form the crucial bridge between “buying into it” and being subjected to it. Weapons are already being developed (and possibly used) that use transcranial pulse ultra sound to soldiers to increase altertness and minimize pesky emotions like fear or compassion.
Here is a frightening description from Wired reporter Jack Hitt as his brain is magnetically manipulated to have a “religious experience.”
…selected electromagnetic fields begin gently thrumming my brain’s temporal lobes. The fields are no more intense than what you’d get as by-product from an ordinary blow-dryer, but what’s coming is anything but ordinary. My lobes are about to be bathed with precise wavelength patterns that are supposed to affect my mind in a stunning way, artificially inducing the sensation that I am seeing God
Surveillance and Gadgets
Surveillance alone can change the way we think and act. These two facets together are more powerful still. They have now been successfully intertwined into a de facto brain-computer interface. If we look at just two inventions — the television and video game consoles — we see a massive impact upon the way people of all ages view the world through their gadgets. In order to take people to the next level of mind control, there has to be a consumer relation to it, as well as creating something that appears intrinsically necessary to relate to the outside world. Enter the Internet and the “smart” devices wired into it. The Internet is every form of surveillance and gadget wrapped up into one. Now, even that is heading to the next level.
SWAT teams are raiding poker games and trying to stop underage drinking? Overwhelming paramilitary force is on the rise.
Excerptes from “Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces”
Sal Culosi is dead because he bet on a football game — but it wasn’t a bookie or a loan shark who killed him. His local government killed him, ostensibly to protect him from his gambling habit.
Several months earlier at a local bar, Fairfax County, Virginia, detective David Baucum overheard the thirty-eight-year-old optometrist and some friends wagering on a college football game. “To Sal, betting a few bills on the Redskins was a stress reliever, done among friends,” a friend of Culosi’s told me shortly after his death. “None of us single, successful professionals ever thought that betting fifty bucks or so on the Virginia–Virginia Tech football game was a crime worthy of investigation.” Baucum apparently did. After overhearing the men wagering, Baucum befriended Culosi as a cover to begin investigating him. During the next several months, he talked Culosi into raising the stakes of what Culosi thought were just more fun wagers between friends to make watching sports more interesting. Eventually Culosi and Baucum bet more than $2,000 in a single day. Under Virginia law, that was enough for police to charge Culosi with running a gambling operation. And that’s when they brought in the SWAT team.
On the night of January 24, 2006, Baucum called Culosi and arranged a time to drop by to collect his winnings. When Culosi, barefoot and clad in a T-shirt and jeans, stepped out of his house to meet the man he thought was a friend, the SWAT team began to move in. Seconds later, Det. Deval Bullock, who had been on duty since 4:00 AM and hadn’t slept in seventeen hours, fired a bullet that pierced Culosi’s heart.
Sal Culosi’s last words were to Baucum, the cop he thought was a friend: “Dude, what are you doing?”
The raid on Sal Culosi was merely another red flag indicating yet more SWAT team mission creep in America. It wasn’t even the first time a Virginia SWAT team had killed someone during a gambling raid. In 1998 a SWAT team in Virginia Beach shot and killed security guard Edward C. Reed during a 3:00 AM raid on a private club suspected of facilitating gambling.
Police said they approached the tinted car where Reed was working security, knocked, and identified themselves, then shot Reed when he refused to drop his handgun. Reed’s family insisted the police story was unlikely. Reed had no criminal record. Why would he knowingly point his gun at a heavily armed police team? More likely, they said, Reed mistakenly believed the raiding officers were there to do harm, particularly given that the club had been robbed not long before the raid.
Statements by the police themselves seem to back that account. According to officers at the scene, Reed’s last words were, “Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book.”
In the fall of 2010, police in New Haven, Connecticut, sent a SWAT team to a local bar to investigate reports of underage drinking. Patrons were lined up at gunpoint while cops confiscated cell phones and checked IDs. There have been similar underage drinking SWAT raids on college fraternities. Federal appeals courts have upheld these “administrative searches” even when it seems obvious that the real intent was to look for criminal activity as long as the government can plausibly claim that the primary purpose of the search was regulatory.
But the Fourth Amendment requires that searches be “reasonable.” If using a SWAT team to make sure a bar isn’t serving nineteen-year-olds is a reasonable use of force, it’s hard to imagine what wouldn’t be.
President Obama has usurped all available forms of communication for use and discretion of the US government. Under an Executive Order (June 6, 2012) entitled Assignment of National Security and Emergency Preparedness Communications Functions, Obama has enabled the executive branch to control communications “under all circumstances to ensure national security, effectively manage emergencies, and improve national resilience”.
The order says this is pursuant to section 706 of the Communications Act of 1934 (47 U.S. C. 6066), which states, in part:
“The President, if he deems it necessary in the interest of national security or defense, may suspend or amend, for such time as he may see fit, the rules and regulations applicable to any or all stations or devices capable of emitting electromagnetic radiations within the jurisdiction of the United States . . . and may cause the closing of any station for radio communication, or any device capable of emitting electromagnetic radiations between 10 kilocycles and 100,000 megacycles . . . and the removal therefrom of its apparatus and equipment, or he may authorize the use or control of any such station or device and/or its apparatus and equipment, by any department of the Government under such regulations as he may prescribe upon just compensation to the owners.”
Obama’s executive order authorizes the heads of Homeland Security and the Office of Science and Technology Policy to make recommendations to the President on how he might enforce that 1934 law.
It also empowers the head of Homeland Security to make sure, “in conditions of crisis or emergency,” that the executive branch maintains “priority communications requirements through the use of commercial, government, and privately owned communications resources.”
Put this in perspective with Obama’s other Executive orders such as the NDAA and NDRP, and it’s hard not to see a strengthening of the Proto-Fascist National Security State, that The U.S. Has become.
People were shocked in 2007 when Texas news KPRC revealed that local police were conducting drone tests on American soil. Some cried “conspiracy theory” even as further revelations quickly showed that a full program had been established with Customs and Border Protection as far back as 2004. Drone flights took advantage of the 100-mile-wide “Constitution-free Zone” around the perimeter of the United States within which drones were permitted to operate for border security — two-thirds of the U.S. population happens to reside within this area.
The targeted killing of American citizens abroad jarred people enough to consider the “mission creep” taking place, finally wondering when strikes might land on American soil.
For those who have been following this steady progression of drone use, as well as the continued development in high-tech “non-lethal” weapons, one might already have wondered when the two would officially merge over America. It appears that Homeland Security has also been considering this aspect behind closed doors for quite some time.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has been at the forefront of attempting to obtain documents under the Freedom of Information Act and through lawsuits that will show the full scope of what the military-industrial complex has in store for America. What they have found so far is quite disturbing. So far, documents obtained by EFF have shown a massive ramp-up of drone surveillance across an array of agencies and “entities,” which includes facial recognition and data collection. along with consideration of the possibility of arming their border drones with “expendables or non-lethal weapons.”
Nevertheless, most Americans look at the drones-in-America debate as something entirely separate from what occurs overseas, and politicians are only too happy to make us forget. It has been repeatedly shown that more more innocent people are killed in the various undeclared wars and military actions than are those identified as enemies of the United States. Let’s keep this in mind when we hear the term, “targets of interest.”
Realize the lies 