The Big Brother phenomenon is a man-god concept that enables sinister powers of control over people.
The FBI is to spend $1billion to develop a biometric database, enabling them to identify people based on voice, finger, hand, eye or other biometric features. It is intended to “protect the people and the children of America”.
Every strength has its weaknesses and vice versa. The value of any law enforcement system is unquestionable and the FBI, founded by J Edgar Hoover, has sucked up its fair share of miscreants and social threats. My own country has a variation of the FBI as a second police-force. It has done wonders in terms of uprooting political corruption in and out of the regular police-force. It provides a self-regulating mechanism by which each force monitors and regulates the other. That is useful and the fact that the FBI, as for our own agency, cuts across federal lines to serve national interests, is also valuable in reinforcing the focus of local policing, whilst bridging the limitations imposed on local police forces.
Over the years the fight against crime and terrorism has become very sophisticated. Again this is to be praised, for the criminals and terrorists always seek to go one up. They are sophisticated and adept at manipulating legal technicalities in their favor. This demands a criminal justice system that can develop prosecutable cases based on solid evidence, the product of efficient surveillance. Every crime scene leaves some evidence, but modern forensics is developing scant evidence into hard facts that are nailing criminals and helping us to make a safer world for law-abiding members of society.
However, as we have seen in the movies, there is a growing shift towards intrusive surveillance, enabling people to be tracked anywhere, anytime. That has already crossed the fine line that divides legitimate law enforcement from the rights to individuality and freedom. The zeal of law enforcement authorities is purely self-serving. They are paid to be single-minded and just want to do their jobs well whilst limiting the impact on their own resources. That focus cannot be compromised by the law enforcers, because they do not have the scope to think that laterally. But somewhere higher up the political chain of command, legislators need to strike the right balance between competing rights: the right to protection versus the right to freedom.
The bible predicts that a one-world government would reflect the original spirit of Babel and calls it “mystery Babylon the great”. People once tried to build a tower to reach the heavens and be as God. We have now reached the heavens, a satellite-based enterprise that has also universalized the cultures and languages of the globe into a networked or connected society. It is borderless, enabling trade between people across the earth. The system behind that also facilitates global surveillance and will eventually integrate into a universal platform capable of precise control over every global citizen.
Key to that process is a reliable identification system, using biometrics to uniquely identify and track individuals. $1billion of US tax-payers money will buy a lot of surveillance power and provide a powerful vehicle for offensive levels of control. Surveillance technology is arguably shifting the balance of power out of the hand of elected authorities into the hands of parastatal and paramilitary authorities, who by the very nature of their mandates, operate above the law.
The 666 “mark-of-the-beast”, is an astute prophetic insight into the vulnerability of existing identification systems and the inevitability of systems capable of uniquely identifying everyone, reliably. It will be a biometric system and is already in service, being used to track animals and criminals. It uses RFI technology to feedback data to a nerve-centre and is capable of geo-fencing. My wife’s boss has two very expensive Siamese cats, which are geo-fenced. If they step beyond the electronically defined boundaries to which they are limited, the RFI device around their necks delivers a startling electric shock. The same systems could be used to control house-arrest criminals and thus keep them out of jail, as such.
There is something very sinister about all this. The CIA, conveniently to Republican electoral ambitions, reports that Al Quaeda is planning another 911 hit on the US homeland. How useful the untouchable, indefinable, mystical threat of Bin Laden and his merry men have been to the Republican cause and to the two terms of office handed to an otherwise inadequate administration. That same pretext is now being used to close the eyes of liberal politicians to the risks of overt surveillance and its implications for the land of the free and brave.
The FBI is to spend $1billion to develop a biometric database, enabling them to identify people based on voice, finger, hand, eye or other biometric features. It is intended to “protect the people and the children of America”.
Every strength has its weaknesses and vice versa. The value of any law enforcement system is unquestionable and the FBI, founded by J Edgar Hoover, has sucked up its fair share of miscreants and social threats. My own country has a variation of the FBI as a second police-force. It has done wonders in terms of uprooting political corruption in and out of the regular police-force. It provides a self-regulating mechanism by which each force monitors and regulates the other. That is useful and the fact that the FBI, as for our own agency, cuts across federal lines to serve national interests, is also valuable in reinforcing the focus of local policing, whilst bridging the limitations imposed on local police forces.
Over the years the fight against crime and terrorism has become very sophisticated. Again this is to be praised, for the criminals and terrorists always seek to go one up. They are sophisticated and adept at manipulating legal technicalities in their favor. This demands a criminal justice system that can develop prosecutable cases based on solid evidence, the product of efficient surveillance. Every crime scene leaves some evidence, but modern forensics is developing scant evidence into hard facts that are nailing criminals and helping us to make a safer world for law-abiding members of society.
However, as we have seen in the movies, there is a growing shift towards intrusive surveillance, enabling people to be tracked anywhere, anytime. That has already crossed the fine line that divides legitimate law enforcement from the rights to individuality and freedom. The zeal of law enforcement authorities is purely self-serving. They are paid to be single-minded and just want to do their jobs well whilst limiting the impact on their own resources. That focus cannot be compromised by the law enforcers, because they do not have the scope to think that laterally. But somewhere higher up the political chain of command, legislators need to strike the right balance between competing rights: the right to protection versus the right to freedom.
The bible predicts that a one-world government would reflect the original spirit of Babel and calls it “mystery Babylon the great”. People once tried to build a tower to reach the heavens and be as God. We have now reached the heavens, a satellite-based enterprise that has also universalized the cultures and languages of the globe into a networked or connected society. It is borderless, enabling trade between people across the earth. The system behind that also facilitates global surveillance and will eventually integrate into a universal platform capable of precise control over every global citizen.
Key to that process is a reliable identification system, using biometrics to uniquely identify and track individuals. $1billion of US tax-payers money will buy a lot of surveillance power and provide a powerful vehicle for offensive levels of control. Surveillance technology is arguably shifting the balance of power out of the hand of elected authorities into the hands of parastatal and paramilitary authorities, who by the very nature of their mandates, operate above the law.
The 666 “mark-of-the-beast”, is an astute prophetic insight into the vulnerability of existing identification systems and the inevitability of systems capable of uniquely identifying everyone, reliably. It will be a biometric system and is already in service, being used to track animals and criminals. It uses RFI technology to feedback data to a nerve-centre and is capable of geo-fencing. My wife’s boss has two very expensive Siamese cats, which are geo-fenced. If they step beyond the electronically defined boundaries to which they are limited, the RFI device around their necks delivers a startling electric shock. The same systems could be used to control house-arrest criminals and thus keep them out of jail, as such.
There is something very sinister about all this. The CIA, conveniently to Republican electoral ambitions, reports that Al Quaeda is planning another 911 hit on the US homeland. How useful the untouchable, indefinable, mystical threat of Bin Laden and his merry men have been to the Republican cause and to the two terms of office handed to an otherwise inadequate administration. That same pretext is now being used to close the eyes of liberal politicians to the risks of overt surveillance and its implications for the land of the free and brave.
(c) Peter Eleazar at www.bethelstone.com
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