10 Incredible Ways You Are Being Tracked, Catalogued and Controlled

Author John Whitehead has a terrifying new book out called “Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State.” The basic thrust and premise of the book is that America’s basic freedoms are under heavy assault on all fronts, and are in danger of being washed away entirely.

He outlines exactly what these various attacks are, how they are manifesting themselves, and precisely how we are being kept under round the clock surveillance at this point, by our own government and forces cooperating with them (mega corporations).

There are more than just these touched on in the book, but to provide a brief overview, among others, these are just some of the ways you are being tracked, around the clock in the “land of the free.”

Based on your consumer activities: Federal and State law enforcement agencies have begun acting in partnership, sharing data collected on you, and they’ve collected a lot of data in an attempt to identify what they term as “suspicious persons.”

What kinds of things can land you on the “suspicious persons” list, you ask? Great question. It turns out that it could be almost anything, up to and including people buying pallets of bottled water, photographing government buildings, and applying for a pilot’s license. Major retailers are getting in on the fun as well, and are often eager participants.

Big Box retailers like Target have been tracking and assessing the behavior of their customers for years. In 2015, mega-food corporations will be rolling out high-tech shelving outfitted with cameras in order to track the shopping behavior of customers, as well as information like the age and sex of shoppers.

Based on your public activities: It’s not hard to see which way the wind is blowing. Following the lead of big government, private corporations are jumping into the fray as well, negotiating incredibly lucrative contracts with various law enforcement agencies (at all levels) around the country.

The major goal here is to create an interlocking, utterly inescapable web of surveillance that encompasses all major urban centers. Companies like NICE and Bright Planet are selling services, expertise, and equipment to police departments with the promise of monitoring large groups of people seamlessly (think protests and rallies).

They are also engaging in extensive online surveillance, looking for any hints of “large public events, social unrest, gang communications, and criminally predicated individuals.” Defense contractors are attempting to take a bite out of this lucrative market as well. Raytheon has recently developed a software package known as Riot, which promises to predict the future behavior of an individual based upon his social media posts.

Based on your phone activities: The CIA is on record as having paid AT&T over $10 million dollars a year for years on end, in order to gain access to data on Americans’ phone calls abroad.

Based on your computer activities: Federal agents now employ a number of increasingly sophisticated hacking methods (oftentimes by hiring the world’s best hackers into their own ranks) in order to gain access to your computer activities and “see” whatever you’re seeing on your monitor.

Hacking software can be installed any number of ways, including USB, or via an email attachment or software update. It can then be used to search through files stored on a hard drive, log keystrokes, or take real time screenshots of whatever a person is looking at on their computer, whether personal files, web pages, or email messages. It can also be used to remotely activate cameras and microphones.

Based on your behavior: Thanks to a flood of federal money, police departments nationwide are able to fund a variety of new surveillance systems that turn the most basic human behaviors into suspicious situations to be studied and analyzed. Police in California and Massachusetts have received federal funds to create systems like that operated by the New York Police Department, which “links 3,000 surveillance cameras with license plate readers, radiation sensors, criminal databases and terror suspect lists.”

Police all across the country are also now engaging in unprecedented, large scale data mining operations, oftentimes with the help, and even blessing of private companies, in order to develop city-wide nets of surveillance. For example, police in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, now work with IBM in order to “integrate new data and analytics tools into everyday crime fighting.”

Based on your face: Facial recognition software promises to create a society in which every individual who steps out into public is tracked and recorded as they go about their daily lives. The goal here is for government agents to be able to scan a crowd of people and instantly identify everyone present. Facial recognition programs are being rolled out in states all across the country (only twelve states do not use facial recognition software).

For example, in Ohio, 30,000 police officers and court employees are able to access the driver’s license images of people in the state, without any form of oversight to track their views or why they’re accessing them. The FBI is developing a $1 billion program, Next Gen Identification, which involves creating a massive database of mugshots for police all across the country.

Based on your car: License plate scanners, which can read plates from a distance of several hundred feet, can identify the owner of any car that comes within its sights, are growing in popularity among police agencies. High resolution cameras are affixed to overpasses or cop cars, these devices give police a clear idea of where your car was at a specific date and time, whether the doctor’s office, the bar, the mosque, or at a political rally.

State police in Virginia used license plate readers to record every single vehicle that arrived to President Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009 from Virginia. They also recorded the license plates of attendees at rallies prior to the election, including for then-candidate Obama and Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. This data collection came at the request of the U.S. Secret Service.

Based on your social media activities: The use of social media as a form of surveillance will have some frightening consequences in coming years. As Helen Popkin, writing for NBC News observed, “We may very well face a future where algorithms bust people en masse for referencing illegal ‘Game of Thrones’ downloads, or run sweeps for insurance companies seeking non-smokers confessing to lapsing back into the habit.

Instead of that one guy getting busted for a lame joke misinterpreted as a real threat, the new software has the potential to roll, Terminator-style, targeting every social media user with a shameful confession or questionable sense of humor.”

Based on your metadata: Metadata is innocuous and almost unnoticed by most, but it is an incredibly invasive dataset. Indeed, with access to one’s metadata, one can “identify people’s friends and associates, detect where they were at a certain time, acquire clues to religious or political affiliations, and pick up sensitive information like regular calls to a psychiatrist’s office, late-night messages to an extramarital partner or exchanges with a fellow plotter.”

The National Security Agency (NSA) has been particularly interested in metadata, compiling information on Americans’ social connections “that can identify their associates, their locations at certain times, their traveling companions and other personal information.”

Mainway, the main NSA tool used to connect the dots on American social connections, collected 700 million phone records per day in 2011. That number increased by 1.1 billion in August 2011. The NSA is now working on creating “a metadata repository capable of taking in 20 billion ‘record events’ daily and making them available to N.S.A. analysts within 60 minutes.”

From the skies: Absolutely nothing will escape the government’s all seeing eyes, especially when drones take to the skies in 2015. These smart devices, ranging from the size of small aircraft to as small as a grasshopper will have the ability to see through the walls of your home, and be capable of tracking your every movement.

Interestingly and compellingly, however, one of the major contributing factors to our loss of privacy, and with it, freedom, goes unmentioned by the author. The fact that we are actively participating in our own surveillance.

Remember the Boston Bombings? Remember how the culprits were identified? It wasn’t from government placed cameras on buildings or signal lights, but rather, pictures taken off of someone’s cell phone.

We document ourselves and our lives. We document each other, and we gleefully pass that information on to the State. Even if we didn’t, there is little to prevent them from getting it anyway, but we cannot pretend that We, the People, have no culpability.

In the end, the author concludes that the surest way to allow the Police State to come to full flower is our own, continued inaction. All we need to do is…nothing. Nothing at all. If we do that, the Police State is inevitable. The author ends on a chilling note: “Thus, we have arrived in Orwell’s world. The question now is: will we take a stand and fight to remain free or will we go gently into the concentration camp?” "

Favorite

7 members favorited this

Comment

You need to be a member of 12160 Social Network to add comments!

Join 12160 Social Network

Comment by Nobody Will Observe on March 15, 2014 at 12:26am: @ Deep I know where u are every day...here LOL

Comment by Just Bill on March 15, 2014 at 12:22am: Seen any working public pay phones lately? If you travel, you cannot be without a cell phone because, especially late at night, there are no others.

Our love for the cell phone has made it impossible to divest ourselves of it. About the best you can do is to buy burner phones and use them for one call, two max, before dropping them in the nearest vehicle or, and I really like this idea, putting them in a rubber balloon, inflating it and then dropping it in the nearest body of water. It doesn't have to be big ... a sewer would work just fine. It goes one way. You go another.

Comment by B or D on March 6, 2014 at 3:22pm: Private Companies Are Scanning Your License Plate And Location, Selling The Data

Here's a short story

Click me

Comment by JUST DEFIANCE on March 5, 2014 at 7:59pm: I drew this in August last year. [Why it reads; "Bradley", not "Chelsea".]

Not for me to do, but there's a place for the idealized "Global Democratic Citizens' Counter-Intelligence" 'assembly' methinks?

Just gotto get the three CEO's out of the can, maybe?

Comment by JUST DEFIANCE on March 5, 2014 at 7:50pm: "Deep Space" - "My thinking, is that you might as well rock the boat, while you still have the ability to do so..."

Spot-on!

Comment by B or D on March 5, 2014 at 7:19pm: Traffic cameras of course.
Which are taking place of the traffic cops more and more now.
Did you know that these cameras haven't reduced any accidents? They have created more accidents since they have been put up. Check out some of the stats at the link below. Some instances, accidents went up over 100 %!! Mainly rear end accidents.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/news/industry/2420766

I kept the below article and link from 2009..
Just a FYI...Liberty Island, name notwithstanding, is one of the most heavily surveilled places in America. What these cameras can do is very unique, and kinda jaw dropping. without human input even!! And this was from 2009, so you can imagine what they are probably possible of doing today.
Good small article is here. Link:: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/4236865

Cameras again.. This was from 2010, school spies webcams used to watch students at home.. These are just some of the earlier stories I remembered when doing research. There have been thousands of stories like this since then of course.
Link:: http://www.newsoxy.com/technology/school-spies-webcams-12670.html

Did you know that years ago Google began to OFFICIALLY use computer audio fingerprinting for advertising???? This was back in 2006 !! Here ya go Google developing eavesdropping software "Google is working on a system that listens to what's on your TV playing in the background, and then serves you relevant adverts"
Link:: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/03/google_eavesdropping_software/
Oh yeah does anyone remember this?? (GOOGLE) admitted working with the NSA. Do you remember this? Google asked the NSA to help secure it's network. This was back in 2010
Link:: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/02/google-seeks-nsa-help/

NSA massive database is the largest database ever assembled in the WORLD. NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls.
This was a story in the USA TODAY back in 2006. three telecommunications companies are working under contract with the NSA, which launched the program in 2001 shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Back then only one company refused to participate in helping the NSA read the story.
Here's a link to the story.
Link:: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm
In 1975, a congressional investigation revealed that the NSA had been intercepting, without warrants, international communications for more than 20 years at the behest of the CIA and other agencies. The spy campaign, code-named "Shamrock," led to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which was designed to protect Americans from illegal eavesdropping. This has been going on way longer than most people think. Just another FYI.

public sound surveillance.. this software listens for dangerous keywords.. it can detect verbal aggression in public places. and can easily be intergrated into other systems..

Hope you enjoy some of the info. Sometimes I may ramble or loose my place, been up for around 18 hours and trying to squeeze time in to post a little. Please forgive me if I ramble or get off topic. Just trying to do what I can do to inform.
Thanks
B

Comment by JUST DEFIANCE on March 5, 2014 at 6:43pm: "....by our own government and forces cooperating with them (mega corporations)."

Key - 'mega corporations'. THEY, are the forces 'operating' government.

"Based on your consumer activities: ..." Not all, but consumer activities would be a major aspect of what, and WHY the corps are so interested in middle-America.

'Security issues', are as likely to be considered so-as to keep the corporations' 'consumer marketplaces' secure.

So, going off-grid, and growing as much as you can, for yourself, and/or for the local kibbutz, also makes you worth monitoring, I guess?

"Hacking software can be installed any number of ways, including USB, or via an email attachment or software update."

I use Norton. I'm safe! AAAAAA-HAHAHAHA! I've made my feelings clear to Norton recently about this very issue, and asked that my [totally 'political'] comments on their 'chat' help lines, be passed as far up the chain of command as they can, to wit the chatter assured me they would be.

I take my chances that they will continue to ensure my lappie remains secure. But, during one recent 'chat' with their assistant, in India, I watched my wireless broadband stats graph show 27Mb being UPloaded off my computer.

I asked about that, but HEY! It's a corporation!

I also made the firm point to them that the facts are that 'hackers' of Dissenting groups are not the problem.

That, the CORPS are!

Therefore the internet security corps, who I made clear must be working in cahoots with the 'dark side' corps, have an obligation to ensure Dissenters computers are safe!

..........Still working! ..........?

"From the skies: Absolutely nothing will escape the government’s all seeing eyes, especially when drones take to the skies in 2015. These smart devices, ranging from the size of small aircraft to as small as a grasshopper will have the ability to see through the walls of your home, and be capable of tracking your every movement."

Ah! Grasshopper? Still flying for the NSA are you?

Of course, no mention of the CIA, etc., using the occult to 'see'?

But in 'from the skies'... Satellites have been able to zoom in to identify people for a while, yes?

'Targeted suspects' can be monitored from 'on high' wherever they go.

So, as satellite visuals etc., are able, and are undoubtedly more advanced than the public is told, why are they not being used to keep constant scans of say, the streets, roads, highways, for, say 'speeders', red light runners, etc? That'd save police departments heaps in 'manned' traffic cops, and the high-cost of running the fancy vehicles, etc?

Naturally I don't advocate that. It's just a point about the anomalies extant in policing. As satellite monitoring is as advanced as it is, it's likely we're able to be tracked everywhere, and in everything we do outdoors.

Too bad if you're homeless!

"We document ourselves and our lives. We document each other, and we gleefully pass that information on to the State. Even if we didn’t, there is little to prevent them from getting it anyway, but we cannot pretend that We, the People, have no culpability.

In the end, the author concludes that the surest way to allow the Police State to come to full flower is our own, continued inaction. All we need to do is…nothing. Nothing at all. If we do that, the Police State is inevitable. The author ends on a chilling note: “Thus, we have arrived in Orwell’s world. The question now is: will we take a stand and fight to remain free or will we go gently into the concentration camp?” "

So, the consumer, especially of hi-tech stuff, is complicit in the 'corps' watching them?

It might follow then, that 'mainstreamers' and wannabes, are the prime targets of the corporation. 'Consumer habits', being what they're innerested in, and use to 'know' you.

Question might be then, what value is 'consumerism' to Jo Av'rage?

Apart from food and shelter, do we actually 'gain' anything, primarily Happiness, from the junk?

So, if we knew 90 to 99% of the junk did not help us in our life-quest for 'happiness', we might be able to drop it, and explore other ways, paths, lifestyles, cultures for satiation.

Firstly, that'd make us better citizens, [not though, to the corporations], for being less consumptive, so using less energy, so being more responsible. 'Government' [minus the corporation] is really, about the most efficient management of the state, and low-consumption people are then, it's best friends.

So, if everyone went low-tech, without phone cameras for one [ha!], sought to become more agrarian, and grow their own everything/s, 'government', were it NOT of and for the corporation, would treat us really really well!

And we'd all live Disney ever afta!

I see the article as telling us that, the people, the mainstream people who grease the corporations' machinery, are the corporations' enemies!

BIZAAAARRE!?

But, of course, going off-grid, makes us the enemy also, for not being addicted to their consumable drugs.

Comment by B or D on March 5, 2014 at 5:51pm: I know exactly what you mean Deep Space. I've been told the same things several times.

We are already on a watch list, most defenetly we are. Exspecially any and all people that want others to know the truth about the way things really are... A group of educated people, are a lot more dangerous to there greater plan.

I know that if I get shut down again, that someone else will take my place and spread the word, the truth. Like everyone here.

I'm there with you on rocking the boat!! We might as well do it BIG right?

Comment by B or D on March 5, 2014 at 5:40pm: The RFID powder that was developed by Hitachi , which the multitude of uses are endless --Could be used for tracking hard currency so we can't even keep cash undetected. The Gov may try to implement this before the True crash of the Dollar.

Comment by B or D on March 5, 2014 at 5:35pm: Note: I forgot to mention that most of those RFID cards, probably required your SSN to get them. Not all, but a lot of them do. Some movie rental places do. etc. Sams Club? And of course credit cards etc..