Newly-released documents obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) reveal that the US Depart of Homeland Security has been working on plans to roll out a new wave of mobile surveillance technologies at train stations, stadiums and streets. These new technologies will track your eye movements, capture and record your facial dimensions for face-recognition processing, bathe you in X-rays to look under your clothes, and even image your naked body using whole-body infrared images that were banned from consumer video cameras because they allowed the camera owners to take “nude” videos of people at the beach.
Most importantly, many of these technologies are designed to be completely hidden, allowing the government to implement “covert inspection of moving subjects.” You could be walking down a hallway at a sports stadium, in other words, never knowing that you’re being bathed in X-rays from the Department of Homeland Security, whose operators are covertly looking under your clothes to see if you’re carrying any weapons.
Roving vans to “track eye movements”
According to a Forbes.com article (http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenbe…), one project pursued by DHS using technology from Siemens would “mount backscatter x-ray scanners and video cameras on roving vans, along with other cameras on buildings and utility poles, to monitor groups of pedestrians, assess what they carried, and even track their eye movements.”
Another project involved developing “a system of long range x-ray scanning to determine what metal objects an individual might have on his or her body at distances up to thirty feet.”
We already know that the U.S. government has purchased 500 vans using covert backscatter technology to covertly scan people on the streets (http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenbe…). They’re called “Z Backscatter Vans, or ZBVs.”
This is all part of the U.S. government’s new wave of police state surveillance that aims to track and irradiate innocent civilians who have committed no crime. Under the new Janet Napolitano regime, all Americans are now considered potential terrorists, and anyone can be subjected to government-sanctioned radiation scanning at any time, without their knowledge or approval.
And don’t think these efforts will be limited merely to backscatter technology: The TSA is now testing full-power, deep-penetrating X-ray machines (like the ones that deliver chest X-rays in hospitals) in order to check people for bombs they may have swallowed. Yes, Janet Napolitano now wants to look inside your colon! And they’re willing to X-ray everyone — without their consent — in order to do that.
Read the documents yourself
If you have trouble believing the U.S. government is unleashing a new wave of police state covert scanning vans on to the streets of America, you can read the documents yourself — all 173 pages. They’re available on the EPIC website at: http://epic.org/privacy/body_scanne…
EPIC calls these vans “mobile strip search devices” because they give the federal government technology to look under your clothes without your permission or consent. It’s also being done without probable cause, so it’s a violation of the Fourth Amendment protections that are guaranteed to Americans under the Bill of Rights.
“It’s a clear violation of the fourth amendment that’s very invasive, not necessarily effective, and poses all the same radiation risks as the airport scans,” said EPIC attorney Ginger McCall, in the Forbes article (above).
Huge health risks to the population
It’s not just the privacy issues that raise red flags here, of course: It’s also the fact that the U.S. government has no respect whatsoever for the health of its citizens who are being subjected to these radiation emitting devices. Even while the TSA refuses to release testing results from its own naked body scanners, DHS keeps buying more machines (and more powerful machines) that will only subject travelers to yet more radiation.
The U.S. government doesn’t seem to care what happens to your health. Their position is that their “right” to know what you’re carrying under your clothes or inside your body overrides your right to privacy or personal health. All they have to do is float a couple of fabricated terrorism scare stories every few months, and then use those “threats” as justification for violating the Constitutional rights of U.S. citizens are very turn.
The real question in all this, of course, is how far will this go? The TSA is already reaching down your pants and feeling up peoples’ genitals as part of the “security” measures. Will DHS soon just start subjecting people to body cavity searches as a necessary security requirement before entering a football stadium, for example? Will Americans now be X-rayed with cancer-causing ionizing radiation — without their awareness or consent — merely because they are walking down the street or boarding a train?
That seems to be the case. And as you can readily tell from all this, it’s getting harder and harder for the fast-dwindling group of deniers to claim America isn’t already a police state. The USA is fast becoming a high-tech version of the very worst police state tyrannies witnessed throughout human history. The only difference is that now they have “science” on their side with the coolest new technology that can violate your rights and irradiate your body in a hundred different ways, with high-resolution images and digital storage devices.
I suppose if all this were being done to really stop international terrorists, that might be one thing. But what has become increasingly clear in observing the government’s behavior in this realm is that the U.S. government now considers Americans to be the enemy — especially those who have the gall to defend their Constitutionally-protected freedoms or question the unjustified centralization of power taking place right now in Washington.
The DHS is America’s new secret police. And their cameras are pointing inward, into the everyday lives of Americans; not outward, aimed at international terrorists.
When the price of security becomes forfeiting your liberty, the source of the “terror” is no longer the terrorists but your own government. Isn’t this the lesson that history has taught us well?
Watch the talk by Naomi Wolf, who explains all this extremely well:
http://eyeswideblind.com/bigbrother/5234/
This video will open your eyes to what’s really happening today. It has all happened before in recent history, and the patterns are undeniable. Watch the videos to learn more.
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