As the surveillance state expands around us, entangling us in a web from which there is no escape, what we used to call “privacy” is fast becoming a thing of the past.
The first device, a license-plate recognition scanner that can sweep a parking lot full of cars in under a minute, uses infrared cameras mounted on police cars to constantly scan nearby license plates and check them against police databases.
The second device, a mobile version of an airport full-body scanner, will soon be roaming America’s streets and neighborhoods. Mounted in nondescript delivery vehicles that enable police or other government agents to blend into urban and other landscapes, these roving x-ray scanners “bounce a narrow stream of x-rays off and through nearby objects, and read which ones come back,” thereby producing instantaneous photo-like images of whatever the van passes—whether it be cars, trucks, containers, homes or people. In other words, the government can now do drive-by strip searches of your person and your home, including monitoring what you are doing in the privacy of your home.
Together, these surveillance tools form a toxic cocktail for which there is no cure. By subjecting Americans to full-body scans and license-plate readers without their knowledge or compliance and then storing the scans for later use, the government—in cahoots 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.