George Orwell wrote about Big Brother in his book, 1984. He got the date close. it should have been 2001 when the Patriot Act was passed.
The act dramatically reduced restrictions on law enforcement agencies' ability to search telephone, e-mail communications, medical, financial, and other records. It also eased restrictions on foreign intelligence gathering within the United States.
In addition, the law expanded the Secretary of the Treasury’s authority to regulate financial transactions, particularly those involving foreign individuals and entities.
The act also expanded the definition of terrorism to include domestic terrorism, thus enlarging the number of activities to which the USA PATRIOT Act’s expanded law enforcement powers can be applied.
On May 26, 2011, President Barack Obama signed a four-year extension of three key provisions in the USA PATRIOT Act. Obama, a Constitutional lawyer should have known better.
Because the police or military can indefinitely hold U.S. citizens arrested on American soil, The Act has received critical attention by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other progressive media.
Homeland Security has become Big Brother. Although it can't yet watch what you are doing through your TV set as in 1984, it can watch you on your laptop camera.
What the Patriot Act did was break down barriers between the armed services, the national intelligence agencies and the police.Many law enforcement agencies now have the same ordinance the armed services have: machine guns, grenade launchers, and sophisticated riot control gear developed by DoD.
The police can break into you home network and use sophisticated audio bugs in your home: the same technology that the CIA and NSA uses for foreign surveillance. The Carrier IQ rootkit was surreptitiously put on cellphones so the police can audit you phone. The FBI has admitted using Carrier IQ data.
Are the IT manufacturers and cell phone companies cooperating with law enforcement? You betcha?
During routine traffic stops in Michigan, police without a warrant were asking drivers for their cell phones which they were surreptitiously cloning.
Police have also been conducting wire taps on cell phones without a warrant. A federal judge just ruled that practice was unconstitutional. Rightardia has also described police Kingfish technology that will allow the police in a squad car to track a cell phone. This makes the GPS devices that the police were attaching to cars to track them obsolete.
If the police charge someone using this technology, they delete all of the evidence they discovered so the capabilities of Kingfish won't be revealed in court.
The aggressive approach oaf law enforcement goes behind trying to solve crimes. The police are now assuming they know who the law breakers are and are bugging them to catch them in the act.
This is a dangerous precedent. Homeland Security has become an American Gestapo. Our Democratic leaders should be putting a stop to this, but they have not.
America is now a big brother Police State. There is no mistaking it.
sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization_Act_for_Fiscal_Year_2012
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_PATRIOT_Act
Subscribe to the Rightardia feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/UFPYA
Rightardia by Rightard Whitey of Rightardia is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at rightardia@gmail.com.