Share & Follow us on facebook and be updated!
http://www.facebook.com/shortcuttingblog
Most of us don't think much about it, but
the truth is that people are being watched, tracked and monitored more
today than at any other time in human history. The explosive growth of
technology in recent years has given governments, spy agencies and big
corporations monitoring tools that the despots and dictators of the past
could only dream of. Previous generations never had to deal with
"pre-crime" surveillance cameras that use body language to spot
criminals or unmanned drones watching them from far above. Previous
generations would have never even dreamed that street lights and
refrigerators might be spying on them. Many of the incredibly creepy
surveillance technologies that you are about to read about are likely to
absolutely astound you. We are rapidly heading toward a world where
there will be no such thing as privacy anymore. Big Brother is becoming
all-pervasive, and thousands of new technologies are currently being
developed that will make it even easier to spy on you. The world is
changing at a breathtaking pace, and a lot of the changes are definitely
not for the better.
The following are 14 incredibly creepy surveillance technologies that Big Brother will be using to watch you....
#1 "Pre-Crime" Surveillance Cameras
A company known as BRS Labs has developed
"pre-crime" surveillance cameras that can supposedly determine if you
are a terrorist or a criminal even before you commit a crime.
Does that sound insane?
Well, authorities are taking this
technology quite seriously. In fact, dozens of these cameras are being
installed at major transportation hubs
in San Francisco....
In its latest project BRS Labs is to
install its devices on the transport system in San Francisco, which
includes buses, trams and subways.
The company says will put them in 12 stations with up to 22 cameras in each, bringing the total number to 288.
The cameras will be able to track up
to 150 people at a time in real time and will gradually build up a
‘memory’ of suspicious behaviour to work out what is suspicious.
#2 Capturing Fingerprints From 20 Feet Away
Can you imagine someone reading your fingerprints from 20 feet away without you ever knowing it?
Gaining access to your gym or office
building could soon be as simple as waving a hand at the front door. A
Hunsville, Ala.-based company called IDair is developing a system that can scan and identify a fingerprint from
nearly 20 feet away. Coupled with other biometrics, it could soon allow
security systems to grant or deny access from a distance, without
requiring users to stop and scan a fingerprint, swipe an ID card, or
otherwise lose a moment dealing with technology.
Currently IDair’s primary customer is
the military, but the startup wants to open up commercially to any
business or enterprise that wants to put a layer of security between its
facilities and the larger world. A gym chain is already beta testing
the system (no more using your roommate’s gym ID to get in a free
workout), and IDair’s founder says that at some point his technology
could enable purchases to be made biometrically, using fingerprints and
irises as unique identifiers rather than credit card numbers and data
embedded in magnetic strips or RFID chips.
#3 Mobile Backscatter Vans
Police all over America will soon be driving around in unmarked vans looking inside your cars and even under your clothes
using the same "pornoscanner" technology currently being utilized by the TSA at U.S. airports....
American cops are set to join the US
military in deploying American Science & Engineering's Z Backscatter
Vans, or mobile backscatter radiation x-rays. These are what TSA
officials call "the amazing radioactive genital viewer," now seen in
airports around America, ionizing the private parts of children, the
elderly, and you (yes you).
These pornoscannerwagons will look
like regular anonymous vans, and will cruise America's streets,
indiscriminately peering through the cars (and clothes) of anyone in
range of its mighty isotope-cannon. But don't worry, it's not a
violation of privacy. As AS&E's vice president of marketing Joe
Reiss sez, "From a privacy standpoint, I’m hard-pressed to see what the
concern or objection could be."
You can see a YouTube video presentation about this new technology
right here.
#4 Hijacking Your Mind
The U.S. military literally wants to be
able to hijack your mind. The theory is that this would enable U.S.
forces to non-violently convince terrorists not to be terrorists
anymore. But obviously the potential for abuse with this kind of
technology is extraordinary. The following is from a recent article
by Dick Pelletier....
The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency (DARPA) wants to understand the science behind what makes people
violent, and then find ways to hijack their minds by implanting false,
but believable stories in their brains, with hopes of evoking peaceful
thoughts: We’re friends, not enemies.
Critics say this raises ethical issues such as those addressed in the 1971 sci-fi movie, A Clockwork Orange, which attempted to change people’s minds so that they didn’t want to kill anymore.
Advocates, however, believe that placing new plausible narratives
directly into the minds of radicals, insurgents, and terrorists, could
transform enemies into kinder, gentler citizens, craving friendship.
Scientists have known for some time that narratives;
an account of a sequence of events that are usually in chronological
order; hold powerful sway over the human mind, shaping a person’s notion
of groups and identities; even inspiring them to commit violence. See
DARPA proposal request HERE.
#5 Unmanned Drones In U.S. Airspace
Law enforcement agencies all over the
United States are starting to use unmanned drones to spy on us, and the
Department of Homeland Security is
aggressively seeking to expand the use of such drones by local authorities....
The Department of Homeland Security
has launched a program to "facilitate and accelerate the adoption" of
small, unmanned drones by police and other public safety agencies, an
effort that an agency official admitted faces "a very big hurdle having
to do with privacy."
The $4 million Air-based Technologies
Program, which will test and evaluate small, unmanned aircraft systems,
is designed to be a "middleman" between drone manufacturers and
first-responder agencies "before they jump into the pool," said John
Appleby, a manager in the DHS Science and Technology Directorate's
division of borders and maritime security.
The fact that very few Americans seem
concerned about this development says a lot about where we are as a
nation. The EPA is already using drones to spy on cattle ranchers
in Nebraska and Iowa.
Will we eventually get to a point where we all just consider it to be
"normal" to have surveillance drones flying above our heads constantly?
#6 Law Enforcement Using Your Own Cell Phone To Spy On You
Although this is not new technology, law
enforcement authorities are using our own cell phones to spy on us more
extensively than ever before
as a recent Wired article described....
Mobile carriers responded to a staggering 1.3 million
law enforcement requests last year for subscriber information,
including text messages and phone location data, according to data
provided to Congress.
A single "request" can involve
information about hundreds of customers. So ultimately the number of
Americans affected by this could reach into "
the tens of millions" each year....
The number of Americans affected each
year by the growing use of mobile phone data by law enforcement could
reach into the tens of millions, as a single request could ensnare
dozens or even hundreds of people. Law enforcement has been asking for
so-called “cell tower dumps” in which carriers disclose all phone
numbers that connected to a given tower during a certain period of time.
So, for instance, if police wanted to
try to find a person who broke a store window at an Occupy protest, it
could get the phone numbers and identifying data of all protestors with
mobile phones in the vicinity at the time — and use that data for other
purposes.
#7 Biometric Databases
All over the globe, governments are developing massive biometric databases of their citizens. Just check out what is going on
in India....
In the last two years, over 200
million Indian nationals have had their fingerprints and photographs
taken and irises scanned, and given a unique 12-digit number that should
identify them everywhere and to everyone.
This is only the beginning, and the
goal is to do the same with the entire population (1.2 billion), so that
poorer Indians can finally prove their existence and identity when
needed for getting documents, getting help from the government, and
opening bank and other accounts.
This immense task needs a database
that can contain over 12 billion fingerprints, 1.2 billion photographs,
and 2.4 billion iris scans, can be queried from diverse devices
connected to the Internet, and can return accurate results in an
extremely short time.
#8 RFID Microchips
In a previous article, I detailed how the
U.S. military is seeking to develop technology that would enable it to
monitor the health of our soldiers and improve their performance in
battle using
RFID microchips.
Most Americans don't realize this, but
RFID microchips are steadily becoming part of the very fabric of our
lives. Many of your credit cards and debit cards contain them. Many
Americans use security cards that contain RFID microchips at work. In
some parts of the country it is now mandatory to inject an RFID
microchip into your pet.
Northside Independent School District
plans to track students next year on two of its campuses using
technology implanted in their student identification cards in a trial
that could eventually include all 112 of its schools and all of its
nearly 100,000 students.
District officials said the Radio
Frequency Identification System (RFID) tags would improve safety by
allowing them to locate students — and count them more accurately at the
beginning of the school day to help offset cuts in state funding, which
is partly based on attendance.
#9 Automated License Plate Readers
In a
previous article, I quoted
a Washington Post piece that
talked about how automated license plate readers are being used to
track the movements of a vehicle from the time that it enters Washington
D.C. to the time that it leaves....
More than 250 cameras in the District
and its suburbs scan license plates in real time, helping police
pinpoint stolen cars and fleeing killers. But the program quietly has
expanded beyond what anyone had imagined even a few years ago.
With virtually no public debate,
police agencies have begun storing the information from the cameras,
building databases that document the travels of millions of vehicles.
Nowhere is that more prevalent than
in the District, which has more than one plate-reader per square mile,
the highest concentration in the nation. Police in the Washington
suburbs have dozens of them as well, and local agencies plan to add many
more in coming months, creating a comprehensive dragnet that will
include all the approaches into the District.
#10 Face Reading Software
Can computers tell what you are thinking just by looking at your face?
Don't laugh.
Such technology is actually being actively developed. The following is from a recent
NewScientist article....
IF THE computers we stare at all day could read our faces, they would probably know us better than anyone.
That vision may not be so far off.
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab are
developing software that can read the feelings behind facial
expressions. In some cases, the computers outperform people. The
software could lead to empathetic devices and is being used to evaluate
and develop better adverts.
#11 Data Mining
The government is not the only one that
is spying on you. The truth is that a whole host of very large
corporations are gathering every shred of information about you that
they possibly can and selling that information for profit. It is called
"
data mining", and it is an industry that has absolutely exploded in recent years.
The company fits into a category
called database marketing. It started in 1969 as an outfit called
Demographics Inc., using phone books and other notably low-tech tools,
as well as one computer, to amass information on voters and consumers
for direct marketing. Almost 40 years later, Acxiom has detailed entries
for more than 190 million people and 126 million households in the
U.S., and about 500 million active consumers worldwide. More than 23,000
servers in Conway, just north of Little Rock, collect and analyze more
than 50 trillion data 'transactions' a year.
#12 Street Lights Spying On Us?
Did you ever consider that street lights could be spying on you?
Well, it is actually happening. New high
tech street lights that can actually watch what you do and listen to
what you are saying are being installed in some major U.S. cities. The
following is from a recent article by Paul Joseph Watson
for Infowars.com....
Federally-funded high-tech street
lights now being installed in American cities are not only set to aid
the DHS in making “security announcements” and acting as talking
surveillance cameras, they are also capable of “recording
conversations,” bringing the potential privacy threat posed by
‘Intellistreets’ to a whole new level.
#13 Automated ISP Monitoring Of Your Internet Activity
If you download potentially
copyrighted software, videos or music, your Internet service provider
(ISP) has been watching, and they’re coming for you.
Specifically, they’re coming for you on Thursday, July 12.
That’s the date when the nation’s
largest ISPs will all voluntarily implement a new anti-piracy plan that
will engage network operators in the largest digital spying scheme in
history, and see some users’ bandwidth completely cut off until they
sign an agreement saying they will not download copyrighted materials.
Word of the start date has been
largely kept secret since ISPs announced their plans last June. The deal
was brokered by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)
and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), and coordinated by
the Obama Administration.
Spying On Us Through Our Appliances
Could the government one day use your refrigerator to spy on you?
Don't laugh.
That is exactly what CIA Director David Petraeus says
is coming....
Petraeus says that web-connected
gadgets will 'transform' the art of spying - allowing spies to monitor
people automatically without planting bugs, breaking and entering or
even donning a tuxedo to infiltrate a dinner party.
'Transformational’ is an overused word, but I do believe it properly applies to these technologies,' said Petraeus.
'Particularly to their effect on
clandestine tradecraft. Items of interest will be located, identified,
monitored, and 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.'
Petraeus was speaking to a venture
capital firm about new technologies which aim to add processors and web
connections to previously 'dumb' home appliances such as fridges, ovens
and lighting systems.
Source :
http://worldtruth.tv
