A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State

by Whitehead, John W.

  Iris Scanners at Work

  be carded at bars and liquor stores. And he has a warning for those thinking of opting out: "When you get masses of people opting-in, opting out does not help. Opting out actually puts more of a flag on you than just being part of the system. We believe everyone will opt-in."378

  Iris scanning technology has already been implemented in the United States. For example, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security ran a two-week test of iris scanners at a Border Patrol station in McAllen, Texas, in October 2010. That same month, in Boone County, Missouri, the sheriff's office unveiled an Iris Biometrie station purchased with funds provided by the U.S. Department of Justice.379 Unknown by most, the technology is reportedly already being used by law enforcement in forty states throughout the country.380

  There's even an iPhone app in the works that will allow police officers to use their iPhones for on-the-spot, on-the-go iris scanning of American citizens. The manufacturer, B12 Technologies, has already equipped police with iPhones armed with facial recognition software linked to a statewide database which, of course, federal agents also have access to. (And for those who have been protesting the whole-body imaging scanners at airports as overly invasive, just wait until they include the iris scans in their security protocol. The technology has already been tested in about twenty U.S. airports as part of a program to identify passengers who could skip to the front of security lines.)

  AOptix Technologies, a force behind cutting-edge biometrics, proudly boasts that its scanners are not only fully automated but can capture high quality images at eighteen meters and perform stand-off iris recognition at two meters. Moreover, the company credits itself with the successful iris enrollment of children as young as five months of age.381 Of course, iris enrollment of five-month-old babies serves little purpose other than to ensure that future generations will be registered and catalogued in a database long before they're old enough to realize its sinister implications. Then again, it's a safe bet that those same young people will be so immersed in the surveillance culture as to never recognize the electronic concentration camp closing in on them.

  Facial Recognition Software

  The FBI's $1 billion Next Generation Identification (NGI) system, which expands the government's current ID database from a fingerprint system to a facial recognition system using a variety of biometrie data, cross-referenced against the nation's growing network of surveillance cameras, not only tracks your every move but creates a permanent "recognition" file on you within the government's massive databases.382

  By the time it's fully operational in 2014,383 NGI will serve as a vast data storehouse of "iris scans, photos searchable with face recognition technology, palm prints, and measures of gait and voice recordings alongside records of fingerprints, scars, and tattoos." One component of NGI, the Universal Face Workstation, already contains some 13 million facial images, gleaned from "criminal mug shot photos" taken during the booking process. However, with major search engines having "accumulated face image databases that in their size dwarf the earth's population,"384 it's only a matter of time before the government taps into the trove of images stored on social media and photo sharing websites such as Facebook.

  Real-Time Surveillance

  Also aiding and abetting police in the government's efforts to track our every movement in real time is Trapwire, which allows for the quick analysis of live feeds of people's facial characteristics from CCTV surveillance cameras. Some of Trapwire's users range from casinos in Las Vegas to police in Washington, D.C., New York, Los Angeles, Canada, and London.385 Utilizing Trap-wire in conjunction with NGI, police and other government agents will be able to pinpoint anyone by checking the personal characteristics stored in the database against images on social media websites, feeds from the thousands of CCTV surveillance cameras installed throughout American cities (there are 3,700 CCTV cameras tracking the public in the New York subway system alone386), as well as data being beamed down from the more than 30,000 surveillance drones taking to the skies within the next eight years.

  SkyWatch Mobile Surveillance Tower

  Given that the drones' powerful facial recognition cameras will be capable of capturing minute details, including every mundane action performed by every person in an entire city simultaneously,387 soon there really will be nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

  A Noxious Mix

  The government's massive identification databases include criminals and non-criminals alike–in other words, innocent American citizens. The information is being amassed through a variety of routine procedures, with the police leading the way as prime collectors of biometrics for something as non-threatening as a simple moving violation.388 This effort is helped along by the Mobile Offender Recognition and Information System, or MORIS, a physical iPhone add-on that allows officers patrolling the streets to scan the irises and faces of individuals and match them against government databases.389

  The nation's courts are also doing their part to "build" the database, requiring biometric information as a precursor to more lenient sentences. In March 2012 New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a law allowing DNA evidence to be collected from anyone convicted of a crime, even if it's a non-violent misdemeanor.390 New York judges have also begun demanding mandatory iris scans before putting defendants on trial.

  Then there are the nation's public schools, where young people are being conditioned to mindlessly march in lockstep to the pervasive authoritarian dictates of the surveillance state. It was here that surveillance cameras and metal detectors became the norm. It was here, too, that schools began reviewing social media websites in order to police student activity. With the advent of biometrics, school officials have gone to ever more creative lengths to monitor and track students' activities and whereabouts, even for the most mundane things. For example, students in Pinellas County, Florida, are actually subjected to vein recognition scans when purchasing lunch at school.391

  Of course, the government is not the only looming threat to our privacy and bodily integrity. As with most invasive technologies, the groundwork to accustom the American people to the so-called benefits or conveniences of facial recognition is being laid quite effectively by corporations. For example, a new Facebook application, Facedeals, is being tested in Nashville, Tennessee, which enables businesses to target potential customers with specialized offers. Yet another page borrowed from Stephen Spielberg's film Minority Report, the app works like this: businesses install cameras at their front doors which, using facial recognition technology, identify the faces of Facebook users and then send coupons to their smartphones based upon things they've "liked" in the past.392

  Even store mannequins have gotten in on the gig. According to the Washington Post, mannequins in some high-end boutiques are now being outfitted with cameras that utilize facial recognition technology. A small camera embedded in the eye of an otherwise normal looking mannequin allows storekeepers to keep track of the age, gender, and race of all their customers. This information is then used to personally tailor the shopping experience to those coming in and out of their stores. As the Washington Post report notes, "a clothier introduced a children's line after the dummy showed that kids made up more than half its mid-afternoon traffic ... Another store found that a third of visitors using one of its doors after 4 p.m. were Asian, prompting it to place Chinese-speaking staff members by that entrance."393

  At $5,072 a pop, these EyeSee mannequins come with a steep price tag, but for storeowners who want to know more–a lot more–about their customers, they're the perfect tool, able to sit innocently at store entrances and windows, leaving shoppers oblivious to their hidden cameras.394 Italian mannequin maker Almax SpA, manufacturer of the EyeSee mannequins, is currently working on adding ears to the mannequins, allowing them to record people's comments in order to further tailor the shopping experience.395

  Making this noxious mix even more troubling is the significant margin for error and abuse that goes hand in hand with just about
every government-instigated program, only more so when it comes to biometrics and identification databases. Take, for example, the Secure Communities initiative. Touted by the Department of Homeland Security as a way to crack down on illegal immigration, the program attempted to match the inmates in local jails against the federal immigration database. Unfortunately, it resulted in Americans being arrested for such things as reporting domestic abuse and occasionally flagged U.S. citizens for deportation.396 More recently, in July 2012, security researcher Javier Galbally demonstrated that iris scans can be spoofed, allowing a hacker to use synthetic images of an iris to trick an iris-scanning device into thinking it had received a positive match for a real iris over 50 percent of the time.397

  The Writing Is on the Wall

  With technology moving so fast and assaults on our freedoms and privacy occurring with increasing frequency, there is little hope of turning back this technological, corporate, and governmental juggernaut. Even trying to avoid inclusion in the government's massive identification database will be nearly impossible. The hacktivist group Anonymous suggests wearing a transparent plastic mask, tilting one's head at a 15 degree angle, wearing obscuring makeup, and wearing a hat outfitted with infrared LED lights as methods for confounding the cameras' facial recognition technology398

  Yet for those who can read the writing on the wall, the message is clear: we're living in The Matrix of the corporate police state from which there is little hope of escape. The government has taken on the identity of the corporation, which exists to make money and amass power—not protect freedoms. Together, these surveillance tools form a toxic cocktail for which there is no cure. By subjecting Americans to biometric scans in public and other insidious forms of surveillance without their knowledge or compliance and then storing the data for later use, the government—in conjunction with the corporate state—has erected the ultimate suspect society. In such an environment, there is no such thing as "innocent until proven guilty." We are all potentially guilty of some wrongdoing or other.

  They Live

  Ultimately the erection of the electronic concentration camp comes back to power, money, and control—how it is acquired and maintained, and how those who seek it or seek to keep it tend to sacrifice anything and everything in its name. In the meantime, like those caught within the confines of They Live, we are to conform and obey.

  This is the same scenario that George Orwell warned about in 1984. It is a warning we have failed to heed. As veteran journalist Walter Cronkite observed in his preface to a commemorative edition of 1984:

  1984 is an anguished lament and a warning that vibrates powerfully when we may not be strong enough nor wise enough nor moral enough to cope with the kind of power we have learned to amass. That warning vibrates powerfully when we allow ourselves to sit still and think carefully about orbiting satellites that can read the license plates in a parking lot and computers that can read into thousands of telephone calls and telex transmissions at once and other computers that can do our banking and purchasing, can watch the house and tell a monitoring station what television program we are watching and how many people there are in a room. We think of Orwell when we read of scientists who believe they have located in the human brain the seats of behavioral emotions like aggression, or learn more about the vast potential of genetic engineering. And we hear echoes of that warning chord in the constant demand for greater security and comfort, for less risk in our societies. We recognize, however dimly, that greater efficiency, ease, and security may come at a substantial price in freedom, that "law and order" can be a doublethink version of oppression, that individual liberties surrendered for whatever good reason are freedoms lost.399

  CHAPTER 17

  Subduing a Populace:THX1138

  Government by clubs and firing squads ... is not merely inhumane (nobody cares much about that nowadays); it is demonstrably inefficient and, in an age of advanced technology, inefficiency is the sin against the Holy Ghost."401

  –ALDOUS HUXLEY

  Killing people is a messy thing–especially if it happens to be a government killing its own citizens. Shooting protesters who get rowdy for example, invariably attracts more media attention and bad press for the police. The solution? Weapons of compliance, such as tasers, which inflict pain and subdue dissidents but which don't incite quite as much public outrage.

  A far more effective way to subdue a population, more so than through the use of compliance weapons, is to numb them with drugs, which come in all shapes and sizes. Of the many drugs available, legal and illicit alike, the drug of materialism–the endless pursuit of consumerism–is the most effective at distracting the populace from what is happening around them. Coupled with the wall-to-wall corporate entertainment complex and the distractions of everyday life, it's a wonder that there is any resistance at all to the emerging police state.

  Then there are the actual prescription drugs that permeate American society. For example, the National Center for Health Statistics released a report in 2010 indicating that there has been a steady increase in the number of Americans taking at least one prescription drug. According to the study, 48% of Americans are on at least one prescription drug, 31% are on two or more, and 11% are on five or more. One in five children are on a prescription drug and 90% of older Americans use prescription drugs. Adolescents most commonly use "central nervous systemstimulants," such as those used to treat conditions such as ADD/ADHD. Middle aged individuals most often use antidepressants.

  In 2008, $234.1 billion were spent on prescription drugs, twice the amount spent in 1999.402 At the same time, we have seen an increase in the pharmaceutical corporations advertising directly to "consumers." For example, Oxycontin advertising spending increased to $30 million annually between the years 1996 and 2001.403 The manufacturers of these dangerous drugs are basically legally protected drug dealers, except that their impact is much more widespread and deadly than the guy selling marijuana on the corner.

  Such is the scenario in director George Lucas' THX 1138, where the use of mind-altering drugs is mandatory. In this future world, narcotics-prescription drugs, that is–are critical in both maintaining compliance and for ensuring that the citizenry can endure the mindless but demanding jobs required of them. In this futuristic world, people no longer have names but letters and numbers such as THX 1138, who works in a factory producing android policemen. Eventually, THX 1138, with the help of a girl who weans him off the drugs, begins to wake up to the monochrome reality surrounding him. From there, THX 1138 tries to escape, chased by robots and android cops.

  Unlike THX 1138, the great majority of Americans, while being fed a diet of bread, circuses, and prescription drugs, don't seem to want to escape. All the while, the corporate state is erecting an electronic concentration camp around us. And to those who dare complain and take active steps in exercising their rights, the police are armed with a whole host of stinging devices to corral them.

  Welcome to the battlefield that is America.

  CHAPTER 18

  Tactics of Intimidation

  I was astonished, bewildered. This was America, a country where, whatever its faults, people could speak, write, assemble, demonstrate without fear. It was in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. We were a democracy ... But I knew it wasn't a dream; there was a painful lump on the side of my head ... The state and its police were not neutral referees in a society of contending interests. They were on the side of the rich and powerful. Free speech? Try it and the police will be there with their horses, their clubs, their guns, to stop you. From that moment on, I was no longer a liberal, a believer in the self-correcting character of American democracy. I was a radical, believing that something fundamental was wrong in this country–not just the existence of poverty amidst great wealth, not just the horrible treatment of black people, but something rotten at the root. The situation required not just a new president or new laws, but an uprooting of the old order, the introduction of a new kind of society–cooperative, peaceful
, egalitarian."404–HOWARD ZINN

  We're entering the final phase of America's transition to authoritarianism, a phase notable for its co-opting of civilian police as military forces. Not only do the police now look like the military–with their foreboding uniforms and phalanx of lethal weapons–but they function like them, as well. As we have seen, in many instances, no longer do they act as peace officers guarding against violent criminals. And no more do we have a civilian police force entrusted with serving and protecting the American people. Instead, today's militarized law enforcement officials, have, it seems, shifted their allegiance from the citizenry to the state, acting preemptively to ward off any possible challenges to the government's power.

  NYPD Disorder Control Unit (CS Muncy)

  We're the Enemy

  In such an environment, free speech is little more than a nuisance to be stamped out. Nowhere is this more evident than in the way police deal with those who dare to exercise their First Amendment right to "peaceably assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." For example, Chicago police in riot gear and gas masks, as well as SWAT teams,405 clashed with thousands of antiwar protesters who gathered to air their discontent during the NATO summit that took place inMay2012.406

  Anticipating a fracas, police during the weeks leading up to the NATO summit had equipped themselves with $1 million worth of militarized riot gear.407 Then, a few days before the summit commenced, fighter jets–including Air Force KC-135 tankers, Air Force F-16s, and Coast Guard HH-65 Dolphin helicopters–took to the skies over Chicago as part of a "security" drill. Surveillance drones were also sighted.408 Police also arrested six activists and held them in solitary confinement for 18 hours, then released them without charge. News reports indicated that some of those "arrested" may have been undercover officers.409