Police State Update

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Astute commentators have often noted that the war on “terror” seems to be more of a war on American citizens’ civil liberties. The authorities are doing a number of things to get us used to the coming police state. Like the naïve frog in slowly heating water, we’re being conditioned to accept what would previously been unthinkable in the “land of the free.” As with the ten-year-old “Chemtrail” aerial spraying program that few seem to notice or care about, like sheep we soon accept each encroachment on our freedom as something natural and normal. (Chemtrail spraying seems to increase the levels of toxic heavy metals in the air we breathe.)

We used to mock the Soviet and Nazi checkpoints and their famous command: “Your papers, please!” But like Pavlov’s dogs, we’re being trained to compliantly fumble for our papers for any number of security guards in airports and public places. It’s all part of the “Homeland Security,” program, echoing the Nazi term “Fatherland” in their policing manuals.

Right after the 9/11 attacks, more affluent and educated Americans began their conditioning process as they went through the TSA lines to board an aircraft. They meekly gave up their pocketknives, toenail clippers and shampoo to TSA guards happy to have finally found a government job. The stories of abuse are legion, and soon guards will be able to ogle passengers with full body scans that leave nothing to the imagination.

I’ve recently seen reports of police with automatic rifles patrolling subways in New York City and Washington, DC (didn’t save the links). This week there is a weeklong “anti-terrorism” training exercise in Denver with military helicopters swarming all over the skies.

Senator Dodd’s new Housing bill contains a sweeping provision that would require the nation’s payment systems to track, aggregate and report information on nearly every electronic payment transaction to the federal government. I thought that all our financial privacy was already gone!

President Bush’s new NSPD 59 is called “Biometrics for Identification and Screening to Enhance National Security. “NSPD 59 goes far beyond the issue of biometric identification, it recommends the collection and storage of ‘associated biographic’ information, meaning information on the private lives of US citizens, in minute detail, all of which will be ‘accomplished within the law’:
‘The contextual data that accompanies biometric data includes information on date and place of birth, citizenship, current address and address history, current employment and employment history, current phone numbers and phone number history, use of government services and tax filings. Other contextual data may include bank account and credit card histories, plus criminal database records on a local, state and federal level. The database also could include legal judgments or other public records documenting involvement in legal disputes, child custody records and marriage or divorce records.’"

Federal and state authorities now want to take DNA samples from newborn babies to help build a DNA database. Police are now taking DNA samples during traffic stops and prostitution stings, as well as fingerprints during traffic stops.

Many of my friends shrug all this off with an air of inevitability, while the last 28% of the people who still believe George Bush is a great President defend these actions as part of the “war on terror” that is keeping us safe. As Jay Leno once said, let’s send our Constitution to Iraq; we’re not using it anymore. Especially the Fourth Amendment.

Be sure to watch these videos on why you should Never Talk to Cops.