Will We Be Under Total Surveillance?
by Charles Ostman
Imagine a world in which every aspect of your life, past and present, is
encrypted on a personal ID card and stored on a nationwide data base. Where
virtually all communications media-soon to be 100% digital-are
automatically monitored by computerized phone taps and satellites from
control centers thousands of miles away. Where self-training neural net and
artificial intelligence data search systems scan for undesirable lifestyles
and target you for automatic monitoring.
Personal privacy was once considered the most sacred of our constitutional
rights; agencies were severely limited by law. All that's about to change
drastically thanks to a deadly combination of extremely sophisticated
surveillance technology, ubiquitous digital information collection, and
centralized interagency data exchange.
Until recently the "supersecret" National Reconnaissance Organization did
not exist-even though it has the largest budget of any intelligence agency.
They are responsible for the design, development and procurement of all US
reconnaissance satellites and their continued management once in orbit.
Recently photos have surfaced in the press of its huge new complex being
completed in Chantilly, Virginia. (Senator John Warner-Lix Taylor's ex- has
described the one million square foot complex as a "Taj Mahal.") The NRO is
eagerly implementing such technologies as ultra-high storage capacity
holographic films (allowing huge amounts of personal information to be
present on your ID card) and self-training artificial intelligence software
that tracks your personal data without human intervention. A new era of
ubiquitous surveillance is dawning.
A struggling military-industrial complex searching for new markets for
their technologies has merged forces with a government obsessed with ever
tighter control over the activities of the general public. Congresswoman
Barbara Jordan has proposed a "National Employment Verification Card" that
will be required for all employment in the U.S. The card will, of course,
have a magnetic data strip, and altering of counterfeiting the card will be
a federal felony offense.
There is a dedicated and aggressive effort underway to chart various
genetic features as part of one's personal information set. The fed's goal
is to have the ability to screen individuals for everything from behavioral
characteristics to sexual orientation, based on genetic information
embedded in your personal (and required) national ID card.
Biometric signature technologies have been developing apace. There is even
a technique available to translate human DNA into bar codes for efficient
digital transmission between agencies.
Are these science fiction story lines or the ravings of a paranoid lunatic?
I wish they were. As a former research engineer at Lawrence Livermore Labs
and other government labs, I watched some of these mad schemes being
hatched. This technology is on the street today or about to leave the labs
and believe me, it goes way beyond Orwell's worst nightmares. Listen up and
hunker down.
A fundamental shift in the legal definition of personal privacy is
occurring right now. A court-issued warrant used to be a universal
requirement for personal surveillance, such as phone tapping, observing
physical papers, and probing financial or medical records. Now, in this new
age of AI-driven monitoring and data tracking systems, there are no pesky
people in the loop.A computer doesn't need to seek a court warrant to
monitor every aspect of your private life. A self-training automated
surveillance system doesn't need permission to observe your movements or
communications.
Total data tracking is already commonplace for financial institutions and
private security operations. Tomorrow, it will be commonplace for all of
us. The technical elements of a massive surveillance engine are in place.
It's just a matter of turning the key to fire it up. Let's examine these
elements and why you should be concerned.
Universal Encryption Chip
Is sounds logical. The feds want to preserve privacy, so their story goes,
so they've announced that an encryption chip will go into all phones and
computers that they buy. But what do they really want in the long run?
How about a government-issue encryption chip in all personal computers and
communication devices? That way, the feds can deal with drug smugglers,
terrorists, kiddie porn merchants, and other miscreants who use encoded
messages.
Of course, they'd have to prevent tampering with the chip. In fact, the
technology to do just that has already been developed at Sandia National
Laboratory. Scientists there have developed an optical sensor that uses a
powdered silicon optical absorption layer in an optical waveguide embedded
in a chip. A micro photodetector detects even the slightest intrusion into
the chip package by measuring a slight change in the photonic conduction
through the waveguide. It can then send an alert via modem to a central
monitoring system to notify an interested party that the device has been
tampered with. Sandia is also developing a microchemical intrusion detector
that would be sensitive to the chemical signature of human fingertips.
Is this all part of some master plan, or what?
In fact, in the near future, all encryption hardware and software will be
subject to federal registration/authorization. Possession of unauthorized
encryption/decryption capability will be punishable as a federal felony. In
other words, if it doesn't have a handy back door for NSA snoops, it ain't
legal.
We can further speculate that the feds will embed chips in all equipment
sold for use in data transmission, digital phone calls and all other
frequencies. Note: all new phone systems wired and wireless will be digital
in the next three years.
Intelligent Video
Nor would you know what's watching you. Security cameras are becoming
standard in corporate and government facilities. They may soon even be
required. Why? Ostensibly because they want to recover losses in cases of
theft, keep insurance premiums down, monitor petulant employees and keep
intruders out.
But the new genre of video cameras now coming out of the labs do a lot more
than that. They're intelligent. They can recognize faces, motion, and other
interesting characteristics. In fact, they behave a lot like a human eye,
with intelligent preprocessor abilities.
Intelligent cameras are needed because a security guard or cop can't
monitor the dozens or hundreds of video cameras in a large facility (or
dozens of satellite video surveillance channels). Intelligent cameras use
artificial intelligence-based object and motion recognition. They scan for
what a trained security guard looks for: certain motions, clothing, faces;
the presence of people in off-limits places. Instead of watching 100
cameras, only a few at any time send pictures. A single guard or a computer
can deal with that.
In fact, a steady data stream from multiple intelligent cameras can be
uploaded to computerized monitoring facilities anywhere, coupled with other
automated observation systems.
The next big thing in intelligent cameras will be "content-addressable"
imagery. That means they'll automatically detect the content of
sophisticated patterns, like a specific person's face, by matching it
against a digital "wanted" poster, say. New software that can even run on
cheap personal computers makes that possible. MatchMaker from Iterated
Systems (Norcross, GA), for example, uses a fractal algorithm that converts
image data into mathematical form, automatically recognizing and
categorizing realtime "targets"-untouched by human hands and tied into a
centralized monitoring facility!
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