Virtual Home Invasions: We’re Not Safe From Government Peeping Toms

Authorized by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

“The privacy and dignity of our citizens is being whited distant by sometimes imperative steps. Taken individually, each step may be of small convenience. But erstwhile viewed as a whole, there starts toemerge a society rather unlike any we have see—a society in which government may intrude into the secret regions of man’s life at will.”

Justice William O. Douglas

The spirit of the Constitution, Drafted by men who chafed against the heavy-handed tyrant of an imperial roulette, would propose that one’s home is simply a fortress, safe from almost all kind of invasion.

Unfortunately, a collective assemble by the government’s cabal of legislators, litigators, judges and militarized police has all but succed in reducing that fortress—and the 4th Amen along it—to a crembling saw of ruble.

We are no longer safe in our homes, not from the menace of a government and its armies of Peeping Toms who are weighing war on the last stronghold of privacy left to us as a free people.

The weathers of this frequent war on the privacy and sanctity of our homes are being grown by the government and its armies of bureaucratized, corporated, militarized Mercedes.

Government agents—with or without the consensus of the homeowner—are now justified in mounting virtual home invasions utilizing surveillance technology—with or without the blessing of the courses—to invest one’s home with viretaps, thermal imaging, surveillance cameras, aerial drones, and another monitoring devices.

Just recently, in fact, the Michigan ultimate Court gives the government the green light to usage warpless aerial drone surveillance to snoop on citizens at home and spy on their private property.

While the courses have given police crucial way at times erstwhile it comes to physical intrusions into the privacy of one’s home (the toehold entry, the batterying frame, the SWAT raid, the knock-and-talk conversation, etc.), the menace of specified virtual intrusions on our 4th Amenments rights has barely begun to be litigated, legislative and debated.

Consecently, we now find ourselfves in the unenviable position of being monitored, managed, coordinated and controlled by technologies that answer to government and corporate roulette.

Indeed, almost anything goes erstwhile it comes to all the ways in which the government can now invasion your home and lay Siege to your property.

Consider that on any given day, the average American going about his regular business will be monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different Ways, by both government and corporate eyes and ears.

A byproduct of this surveillance age in which we live, who you’re walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and household on the phone, you can be certain that any government agency is listening in and tracking your behavior.

This does’t even begin to contact on the corporate trackers that monitor your purchases, web browsing, Facebook posts and another activities taking place in the cyber space.

Stingray devices mounted on police cars to warrantly track cell phones, Doppler radar devices that can detect human breaking and moving within in a home, licence plate readers that can evidence up to 1800 licence plates per minute, sidewalk and “public space” cameras coupled with facial designation and behavior-sensing technology that lay the groundwork for police “pre-crime” programs, police body cameras that turn police officials into roving surveillance cameras, the net of things: all of these technologies (and more) add up to a community in which there’s small area for insights, imperfections, or acts of independence—especially not erstwhile the government can list in on your telephone calls, read your emails, monitor your driving possessions, track your movements, scratch your purchases and peer through the walls of your homes.

Without our realizing it, the American Police State passed the bar off to a full-bledged Surveillance State that gives the illusion of freedom while functioning all the while like an electronic prison: controlled, watchful, inflexible, punitive, deadly and inescapable.

Nowhere to run and know to hide: this is the mantra of the architects of the Surveillance State and their corporate collaborators.

Government eyes see your all move: what you read, how much you spend, where you go, with who you interact, erstwhile you wake up in the morning, what you’re watching on tv and reading on the internet.

Every decision you make is being monitored, mined for data, crunched, and tabulated in order to order a profile of who you are, what makes you tick, and how best to control you erstwhile and if it becomes essential to bring you in line.

Cue the dating of the Age of the net of Things (IoT), in which internet-connected “things” monitor your home, your wellness and your habits in order to keep your pantry stocked, your utility regulated and your life under control and comparatively dead-free.

The key word here, however, is control.

In the not-too-distant future, “just about all device you have—and even products like chains, that you don’t usually anticipate to see technology in—will be connected and talking to each other.”

By the end of 2018, “there were an estimated 22 billion net of things connected devices in usage around the world... Forecasts propose that by 2030 around 50 billion of these IoT devices will be in usage around the world, creating a massive web of interconnected devices spanning everything from smartphones to kitchen applications.’

As the technologies powering these devices have become increasingly sophisticated, they have besides become creatively wide, enabling everything from toothbrushes and lightbulbs to cars, smart meters and medical equipment.

It is estimated that 127 fresh IoT devices are connected to the web every second.

These Internet-connected techno reptiles include smart light bulbs that discourage burblars by making your home look occupied, smart thermostats that regulate the temperature of your home based on your activities, and smart doors that let you see who is at your front door without leaving the comfort of your coach.

Nest, Google’s suite of smart home products, has been at the forecast of the “connected” industry, with specified technologically savvy conventions as a smart lock that tells your thermostat who is home, what temperatures they like, and erstwhile your home is unocupied; a home telephone service strategy that interacts with your connected devices to “learn erstwhile you come and go” and alert you if your kids don’t come home; and a sleep strategy that will monitor erstwhile you fall asleep, erstwhile you wake up, and keep the home noises and temperature in a sleep-conductive state.

The aim of these internet-connected devices, as Nest proclaims, is to make “your home a more thoughtful and constructive home.” For example, your car can signal ahead that you’re on your way home, while Hue lights can flash on and off to get your attention if Nest defend senses something’s wrong. Your coffeemaker, relying on data from fitness and sleep sensors, will brow a strongr pot of coffee for you if you’ve had a restless night.

Yet given the velocity and trajectory at which these technologies are developing, it won’t be long before these devices become government informants, reporting independently on anything you might do that runs after the Nanny State.

Moreover, it’s not just our homes and individual devices that are being reordered and reimagined in this connected age: it’s our workplaces, our wellness systems, our government, our bodies and our innermost thoughts that are being plugged into a matrix over which we have no real control.

It is expected that by 2030, we will all experience The net of Senses (IoS), enabled by Artificial Intelligence (AI), Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), 5G, and automation. The net of Senses ties on connected technology interacting with our senses of grey, sound, taste, sense, and contact by way of the brain as the user interface. As writer Susan Fourtane exploits:

Many foretell that by 2030, the lines between thinking and doing Will blar. Fifty-nine percent of consumers believe that we will be able to see maps routes on VR glasses by simply reasoning of a destination... By 2030, technology is set to respond to our thoughts, and even share them with others... utilizing the brain as an interface could mean the end of keyboards, mice, game controllers, and eventual user interfaces for any digital device. The user needs to only think about the commands, and they will just happen. Smartphones could even function without contact screens.

Once technology is able to access and act on your thoughts, not even your innermost thoughts will be safe from the thought Police.

Thus far, the public consequence to deals about government surveillance has increased to a collective shrug. Yet erstwhile the government sees all and knows all and has an abundance of laws to render even the most seemingly upstanding citizen a criminal and lawbreaker, then the old address that you’ve got got nothing to worry about if you’ve got got nothing to hide no longer requests.

To our description, we are fast approaching a planet without the 4th Declaration, where the lines between private and public property are so blurred that private property is reduced to small more than something the government can usage to control, manipulate and harass you to suit its own purchases, and you the homeowner and citizen have been reduced to small more than a tenant or serf in bondage to an inflexible Landlord.

When people talk about privacy, they mistakenly presume it protects only that which is hidden behind a wall or under one’s covering. The courses have been established this missing standing with their constantly shifting delineation of what constitutes an “expectation of privacy.” And technology has furthered muddy the waters.

However, privacy is so much more than what you do or say behind locked doors. It is simply a way of surviving one’s life companies in the belief that you are the master of your life, and barring any immediate danger to another person, it’s no one’s business what you read, what you say, where you go, who you spend your time with, and how you spend your money.

As Glenn Greenwald notes:

“The way things are supported to work is that we’re supported to know virtually everything about what [government officials] to: that’s why they’re called public service. They’re supported to know virtually nothing about what we do: that’s why we’re called private individuals. This dynamic—the hallmark of a healthy and free community—has been radically reversed. Now, they know everything about what we do, and are constantly building systems to know more. Meanwhile, we know little and little about what they do, as they build walls of secret behind which they function. That’s the impalance that needs to come to an end. No democracy can be healthy and functional if the most consecential acts of these who large political power are complete unknown to these to whom they are expected to be accountable.”

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, none of this will change, no substance which organization controls legislature or the White House, due to the fact that despite all of the work being done to aid us buy into the fantasy that things will change if we just elect the right candidate, we’ll inactive be journalists of the electronic concentration camp.