On the 18th anniversary of 9/11 let’s take a moment of silence for what we have lost- the ability to go about our daily business without being tracked, listened to, and surveilled ever moment if our lives in the name of ‘safety.’
First off, we all know that our electronic devices from phones to laptops to watches spy on our conversations , our moods, our buying habits, and nobody seems to care. Google/Facebook/amazon feed user data right to our federal government.
Trump made mention of this recently, implying that we should use electronic devices to identify people who shouldn’t own guns.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/beta.washingtonpost.com/health/white-house-considers-controversial-plan-on-mental-illness-and-mass-shooting/2019/09/09/eb58b6f6-ce72-11e9-87fa-8501a456c003_story.html%3FoutputType%3DampNext we have Argus-IS, which was tested out in Afghanistan, and is now in deployment over conus. This system can track people, and vehicles over a wide area in very high detail, and the tech is likely far more advanced than the info that can be found on the internet.
https://www.baesystems.com/en-us/product/autonomous-realtime-ground-ubiquitous-surveillance-imaging-system-argusisArgus-IS, along with more advanced surveillance gear is being tested at this very moment in the Midwest on high altitude blimps that could potentially stay aloft and monitor an area Indefinitely.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/02/pentagon-balloons-surveillance-midwestWe know that they’ve been playing with these on the east coast for a few years now, only because one of them broke and dragged its tether in Pennsylvania.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna453106The FBI has been handing out ‘Stingray’ units to law enforcement agencies for about a decade now to Hoover up metadata from anyone’s cellphone within its range. Several police agencies, including Milwaukee PD which is local to me, have abused the system illegally (the act of using these units in their very nature is illegal) to identify criminal activity. Serious crimes have been rightfully thrown out of court because of the use of stingray in the cases.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/26/stingray-oakland-police-fbi-surveillanceI’m not sure how others feel, but I used to think that movies like ‘Minority Report’, ‘Enemy of the State’, and various other dystopian stories were a fun lark, not an actual reality we would face in short order.
Not to worry though, if you are doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about, we need this technology to track and keep us safe from 8th century religious fanatics, or something. /S