Marching Towards Orwell's 1984, It's Closer Than You Think!

Signs of the Times: Surveillance Watching the US?

WASHINGTON – Sept. 11 turned much of the West into a high surveillance society. And hi-tech devices could soon enable the government to track our lives more than we’d like.

Surveillance may not be at the level that author George Orwell wrote about in 1984, where “big brother” could see and control all. But experts say the tools are being forged to create such a world.

“We’re talking Little Brother now, and we’re talking Big Brother down the road,” said Michael Ostrolenk, national director of the Liberty Coalition.

Scientific ID

Attempts to track terrorists and illegal immigrants have led to massive new efforts to identify people, using their body’s unique fingerprints, facial characteristics and iris patterns. A program called Real ID would marry this “biometric” information with a person’s driver’s license, making it easier to track.

“It would require all states to conform to national standards for your driver’s license,” Ostrolenk explained. “So it basically creates a national identity card.”

Visit the CBN Special Page: Sign of the Times – How Will it All End?

Amie Stepanovich of the Electronic Privacy Information Center told CBN News that many states are saying “no way.”

“Twenty-four states have enacted laws that say that Real ID will not be implemented in their state,” she explained.

Government Decides Who Can Work

The E-Verify system has also been proposed to boot illegal immigrants out of the American workplace. But both Ostrolenk and Stepanovich object to its overreach.

“E-Verify is kind of the government inserting itself between an employer and an employee,” Stepanovich said. “The employer must collect certain types of information and send it over to the government.”

The government will check verification databases and let the employer know if they can hire or keep the worker.

“But you should never have to seek permission from the federal government to be employed,” Ostrolenk said. “Or for an employer to hire a new person.”

And Stepanovich says the databases are filled with errors.

“So people are being rejected for employment or they lose the employment they already have based on information in the system that may or may not be true,” she added.

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