Panopticon: Transformational Clandestine Tradecraft

• Posted on April 30, 2013
• by Clyde Lewis
• in Articles

PANOPTICON:
TRANSFORMATIONAL CLANDESTINE TRADECRAFT

Over the past few decades we have thrown ourselves into a virtual fast forward mode. In the past, dreamers would write science fiction stories that practical scientists would label improbable.
The allegories would be warnings to anyone who would even think of tampering with the sacred whims of Mother Nature. The fearful and religious would shout out the warnings from radio shows to the pulpits that our out-of-control science would come back and bite us if we abused our abilities as mortal men.
I often wonder if anyone can stop for a moment and actually see the future ahead? It seems that it is not as difficult as it was 20 or 30 years ago. It seems like the “future” that Orwell and Huxley talked about is not happening in the nebulous tomorrow – but the literal present day.
Need we forget that in every science fiction story, there always seems to be some element of desperation before a person surrenders his humanity and civil liberties and becomes part of machine or corrupt system against his will. We have already accepted high tech gadgetry as a way of life.
As we have predicted, and as anyone could have predicted, there have been calls for increased security measures following the Boston Marathon bombings. The demand has now been overwhelming and lawmakers are now considering the use of cameras and monitoring devices not only on the streets, but right at our doorstep and if you believe a number of electronic analysts the prospect of spying in the homes is not above possibility.

Rand Paul was recently on Fox News claiming that the surveillance state that is being proposed is a slippery slope towards a dystopian world as seen in the George Orwell novel ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four‘.


Meanwhile, Dennis Byrne of the Chicago tribune is astonished that there are people actually protesting the idea of surveillance. According to his editorial, he believes that surveillance cameras were crucial in nabbing the suspects in the Boston bombings. This of course is debatable especially when people clamoring for more video evidence of the suspects dropping the bombs get nothing but platitudes and emotional pabulum from the networks which aggravates the issue and puts fearful people at odds with those who believe that more and more surveillance will make us a Panopticon prison without barbed wire and fencing. When it comes to the surveillance state, we find that statistically it is not effective in combating crime or even terrorism.
But, of course, Byrne is incredulous and wants so badly for the authorities to set up and operate a full surveillance prison to stop the horrible terror.
“Federal spending on Homeland Security is now exceeding $790 billion and many are saying that this is unprecedented. A lot of that money is going towards video surveillance and ammunition spending. New York City has more than 4,000 cameras in Manhattan alone, according to the ACLU. Chicago’s linked public and private security cameras number around 10,000.”
With all of Chicago’s cameras and gun control laws, there have been 441 shootings and 100 homicides in the city of Chicago so far this year. That works out to 3.8 shootings per day or approximately one shooting every 6.3 hours.
However, it seems that when there are problems or spiking events where the people become frightened for their safety you begin to see strange things happen. You begin to see people become paranoid and demand that every single person be under suspicion by an already-out-of-control government that wants nothing more than to impose more controls and destroy civil liberties.
There are many people like Byrne and many television commentators that believe that more surveillance is a good thing and pitch for a public demand that surveillance should not only be in the streets where you live, but in the homes where you live as well.
This has already been done and probably will be done again. Back in 2005, a Chicago-based research firm called Market Facts Incorporated polled Americans and asked what things should be regulated by the government. Many of the questions were geared towards public safety and public information that is disseminated to the public through radio and television. It was reported that the American people believed that the Internet and the cable television should be highly regulated in order to provide safety for their children.
These polls were taken at a time where, once again, the people were worried about the information that was being beamed into their homes through the Internet and cable television. There was actually a drop in cable and Internet bundling and many people were of the opinion that much of what was being broadcast was dangerous for children and families to watch.
The solution was digital television. This became highly regulated, much like state-run television stations in other countries like China.
The digital television conversion was forced on the American people. They had no choice in the matter.
Digital signals send and receive information in binary code, easily tapping into a vast network of computer servers worldwide. Digital signals compress far more data and can embed multiple data feeds. Digital signals transmitted into your home by the telecom industry serve a relatively benign purpose. They provide you with access to agreement-based paid communications services. And they can also deliver well-researched government propaganda.
With the conversion there is the opportunity for stations to multiplex information. If they do, then you may see some bad quality sound and picture. Also other stations who do not have content for multiplexing will offer more channels for shopping, and other government related programming that will be free to insert. This will be highly controlled and regulated.
We regulate what we watch by remote control. However, with more rules and federal control of bandwidth, we will find that our choices will slim down. There will be more channels available but many of them will be channels devoted to government education, religion, military and law enforcement.
Digital TV allows for many things, including two-way visual, and audio. Roving bug technology can and will be used with the new DTV systems. The eavesdropping technique can be activated even if a system has been turned off.
The information transmitted by your devices are subject to government surveillance without a warrant. Thanks to FISA, the government legally monitors millions of digital streams programmed to cue in on a variety of key words. This high tech word search filters communications and tags those that contain key words for higher surveillance protocol. With the digital channels, the government can legally monitor when and what you have been watching.
CALEA, a controversial law enacted by Congress in 1994, requires the Digital TV telecommunications industry to design its systems in compliance with FBI technical requirements to facilitate electronic surveillance.
The FBI sought and were given surveillance capabilities that far exceeded the powers law enforcement has had in the past and is entitled to under the law. The FCC resolved in favor of police powers and against privacy.
When you download a movie from Netflix or turn on web radio, any time you tweet or even tell a Facebook friend where you are, you could be alerting unwanted watchers to exactly what you are doing and where you are.
According to the CIA, we are making their job easier to spy on us. We demanded a digital footprint and a regulated cable system, and this gave the government the go ahead to pursue their spying on you through different channels of analytics and data mining.
Predictive Analytics, a data mining company based in Cambridge, Mass., set out to determine what it could tell about a person based on how he or she used a television remote control.
The company discovered that by recording every button-press on a remote and analyzing the resulting data, the company could pick out distinct “channel surfing patterns.” After learning these patterns, Predictive’s software could determine which one of several members of a household has control of the TV at any particular time.
Predictive found that men and women use the TV remote control quite differently; during commercial breaks, men engage in a kind of rapid-fire channel surfing, while women tend to switch to only one or two other channels, if they surf at all.
The company’s software — which it now sells for use in digital TV set-top boxes –- builds digital profiles of each person regularly using a particular TV, a statistical analysis of your TV tendencies that functions as a sketchy picture of your personality.
Newer flat screen HD television screens are equipped with a Bluetooth transmitter, which, when combined with built-in TV speakers and a computer savvy government agent, digital electronic audio surveillance can occur on any government laptop inside that black, windowless van parked around the corner.
This violates the 4th Amendment. FISA was implemented by the Bush Administration and has also been endorsed by Barack Obama. The mandate of digital TV now becomes suspect. The whole conversion has been engineered by the government to aid in the tracking of your conversations your movements, watching and buying habits. It has all been marketed under false consumer pretenses. Public has no opinion of it because there are no concerns about its abuse.
Your past present and even your future will be a matter of public record thanks to the invention of apps and digital chip technology that is being readied for the new surveillance state that will be implemented in the new battlefield America. It is being called ‘transformational technology‘ and it is being slowly introduced to the populace as being a routine accessory for the future and for future safety.
Biometrics, sub dermal chips and wearable devices will be marketed to consumers for the purpose of full spectrum surveillance. This will be promoted for your safety and for purposes of protecting identity.
It will be for the purpose of plugging into the grid, and there will be benefits and incentives to get the public to comply to such a mass surveillance Panopticon.
It has always been a tried and true method to affect opinion. Make the people believe that their choices have been made by a fair and balanced judgment of the “facts.” Many are unaware that the facts are controlled, the so-called coercion practiced by other governments to their people will appear to not happen in America.
Because the media can assure you that you “need” or that you should “fear” certain things.
That is the illusion of free press and free choice. It is still coercion.
The mainstream media has set a framework within which others operate. If you work in a newsroom sometimes you will notice on the teletype or the news blog: “Advisory to Editors: Tomorrow’s New York Times is going to have the following stories on the front page.” The reason why it is done is sometimes editors in small cities don’t have the resources to figure out what the news is, so they go by what the news organizations dictate. This is called news networking.
This is the simplest form of media control. Telling others who are unaware of what to use as content how and what should be content. This way any story that contradicts the mainstream is considered crazy or outrageous. Even though the media itself is controlled by companies who have a stake in how you should think. People like us who try to speak of alternative thoughts are laughed at.
However, it is us that should laugh because most newsrooms do not have the staff or reporters to get out independent stories from the main artery of news. People are following what is “permitted” to be known.
They follow without thinking.
The mainstream media manufactures consent.
This is why you are compelled to buy, compelled to make excuses for a manufactured economic slump, compelled to vote for whom the media shows in a favorable light, compelled to say “how high” when someone in a perceived power position says “jump.”
George Orwell Once made the statement, “Circus Dogs jump and do somersaults when the trainer cracks his whip. But the really well trained dog is the one that jumps and does somersaults when there is no whip.”
The corporate media in reality has never offered more than barely rewritten government pronouncements as news. They also review and approve shallow entertainment designed primarily to promote consumer commodities.
All intelligence teams from the CIA, NSA, and the Department of Homeland Security work full time making sure that nothing of significance is released to the public as part of a declassification process. Sometimes things do slip through the cracks.
Now those who question the mainstream line of reporting are now being evaluated as being mentally ill or delusional.
What better way to control the media? Narrow it down to a few stations and relays. Then produce controlled programming.
When David Petraeus was head of the CIA, he stated in an interview that the transformational technologies that are part of the Panopticon’s virtual “shelter in place” plans include clandestine tradecraft.
All people and items of interest will be located, identified, and monitored. All items in the new clandestine tradecraft will be remotely controlled through technologies such as radio-frequency identification, sensor networks, tiny embedded servers and energy harvesters – all connected to the next-generation Internet using abundant, low-cost, and high-power computing.
Elaine M. Ramish made this statement for the Franklin Pierce Law Center about the future of surveillance tracking:
“A mandatory national identification system via microchip implants could be achieved in two stages: Upon introduction as a voluntary system, the microchip implantation will appear to be palatable. After there is a familiarity with the procedure and knowledge of its benefits, implantation would be mandatory.”
Futurists think that one day ‘connected’ devices will tell the Internet where they are and what they are doing at all times – and will be mapped by computers as precisely as Google Maps charts the physical landscape now. Privacy groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation have warned of how information such as geo-location data can be misused – but as more and more devices connect, it’s clear that opportunities for surveillance will multiply.