Pre-Crime Police State

Imagine an America in which the state was capable of monitoring keywords and phrases in face-to-face public and private communication with tiny sensors placed wirelessly throughout the country. Even when a person is not speaking but only typing, sensors could translate keystroke vibrations to determine which key is being selected based on the amount of pressure placed on the keyboard.

Prior to revelations of NSA spying by former contractor Edward Snowden the public largely believed the government was incapable of mass surveillance methods; and even if it was, it was not using them without a warrant. Now we know the NSA has been spying on citizens without warrants, the CIA has been spying on Congress, and very little has been done to curtail abuses of power by the President or Congress. In fact, the current administration is perpetuating methods adopted by the Bush administration, justifying them in the name of national security under the legal permissions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Methods of spying include, but are not limited to:

- Cell phone geolocation
- Cell phone calls/texts sent and received (not necessarily audio or context)
- Email scanning
- Social network activity
- Web history

The NSA has requested information about individual users of services from Google, Microsoft, Apple, and others and has placed these firms under a gag order so they cannot disclose the extent of the requests.

On August 7th while listening to The Takeaway, a mid-day NPR program hosted by John Hockenberry, I learned there is technology capable of detecting audio vibrations typically only captured by microphones, which can be reconstructed to create a close rendition of the original audio. Hockenberry interviewed MIT electrical engineering student Abe Davis who has been working on a project that uses a "visual microphone" to detect sounds from music and even the sounds of crumpling potato chip bags.(1)

When asked whether the technology could be used for pernicious purposes the student dismissed the possibility since such technology requires a vast amount of resources. But who has the kind of resources to turn the technology into something usable on a massive scale? You got it.

Never before in the history of human civilization have people's lives been trackable to the extent they can be in the 21st century. Nearly everyone has some form of electronic communication device, email account, or GPS navigation system. And never before in the history of national defense has the need for early detection of threats been necessary as in the age of Islamic terrorism and cyberwarfare.

The government is in the business of protecting its citizens from foreign and domestic threats. It has an interest in using all means necessary to fulfill its primary duty. There is a point where surveillance tramples civil liberties, and this is the moment where we must ensure our need for security is not overstepping its bounds.

If the government can go so far as to spy on conversations and keystrokes as a means of detecting possible threats to security, they will. That would mean that everyone in the US could be spied on at all times. Maps would display colored dots where each color represents a threat level. Let us say the threat levels move progressively in order from the least threatening individual to the most threatening, starting with green, then moving to blue, purple, yellow, orange, and red. Every citizen is assigned a green dot at birth.

Source: fwi.co.uk

Regional maps would display colors by county of places where the highest threat levels are present. The government could then zoom in on any area down to a single house and see the colored dots inside of it representing the number of individuals in that building and the threat level of each. Vibration sensors could pick up the conversations and keystrokes of anyone in that building.

Source: https://zaboujojo.wordpress.com/tag/surveillance/

Technology has given us the tools to draw ourselves out of the enslavement of our barbaric past. Unless it is kept in check, though, we risk being subordinated to a more modern barbarism by our not-so-benevolent overlords in government.

(1). http://www.thetakeaway.org/story/eavesdropping-using-vibrations-bag-potato-chips/