You May Think You're a Nobody But Your Future Is An Open-Air Prison!

From Brae Jaeger in Your Place in the Database

…I know what some of you are thinking.  ”I’m a nobody.  They won’t waste time with me.”  Our national security apparatus does not have to waste time with you.  Computer algorithms, which are more accurate and faster than humans, will analyze everything about you to determine where you fall on the threat matrix, perhaps even knowing your intentions before you formulate them.

“I am not a terrorist, so I don’t have to worry.”  In the drip-drip of truth, we recently found that the NSA spies on people “3 hops” removed from a suspect.  That means that if you are the friend of a friend of a friend of a suspect, you are a suspect.

The algorithms are only going to get more sophisticated, and the data collection more thorough.  We just found out that the police across the country are using federal grant money to emplace license plate scanners on their vehicles, passively collecting even more location data.  The lessons learned by our government from the drone war in Muslim lands are set to be applied here; the FAA estimates that 30,000 drones will be in use by 2020.  A school in San Antonio, TX just ended its hotly contested use of RFID chips to track students, but what is far more important is that a federal court upheld their use in January.  This small step back for tracking was preceded by a dozen steps forward, and there will be more to come.

I have no doubt that 365 days hence, this article will be obsolete.  Given the rush of information we have learned just this year, there is no telling what other unsettling capabilities will be revealed soon.  It is my sincere hope that Americans will rise up and unleash their righteous political fury on the surveillance state, crushing it to bits so that no stone of the edifice stands upon another.  Somehow, I doubt that we will do much, other than wring our hands.  If you do have an idea for how to empower the Wacko-Birds and stop this speeding snowball of tyranny, please try to implement it before the drones arrive in earnest, but for God’s sake, don’t text or e-mail the idea to get it out.

Read it all here…