Just about every branch of the government-from the Postal Service to the Treasury Department and every agency in between- now has its own surveillance sector, authorized to spy on the American people. Postal Service, which has been photographing the exterior of every piece of paper mail for the past 20 years, is also spying on Americans’ texts, emails and social media posts. The agency claims the online surveillance, which falls outside its conventional job scope of processing and delivering paper mail, is necessary to help postal workers avoid “ potentially volatile situations.” Headed up by the Postal Service’s law enforcement division, the Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP) is reportedly using facial recognition technology, combined with fake online identities, to ferret out potential troublemakers with “inflammatory” posts. Then there are the fusion and counterterrorism centers that gather all of the data from the smaller government spies-the police, public health officials, transportation, etc.-and make it accessible for all those in power. And that doesn’t even begin to touch on the complicity of the corporate sector, which buys and sells us from cradle to grave, until we have no more data left to mine. It’s not just what we say, where we go and what we buy that is being tracked. We’re being surveilled right down to our genes, thanks to a potent combination of hardware, software and data collection that scans our biometrics-our faces, irises, voices, genetics, even our gait-runs them through computer programs that can break the data down into unique “identifiers,” and then offers them up to the government and its corporate allies for their respective uses.Īll of those internet-connected gadgets we just have to have ( Forbes refers to them as “ (data) pipelines to our intimate bodily processes”)-the smart watches that can monitor our blood pressure and the smart phones that let us pay for purchases with our fingerprints and iris scans-are setting us up for a brave new world where there is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.įor instance, imagine what the government could do (and is likely already doing) with voiceprint technology, which has been likened to a fingerprint. As The Guardian reports, “ voice biometrics could be used to pinpoint the location of individuals.” Described as “the next frontline in the battle against overweening public surveillance,” the collection of voiceprints is a booming industry for governments and businesses alike.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |