A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State (22 page)

Even store mannequins have gotten in on the gig. According to the
Washington Post
, mannequins in some high-end boutiques are now being outfitted with cameras that utilize facial recognition technology. A small camera embedded in the eye of an otherwise normal looking mannequin allows storekeepers to keep track of the age, gender, and race of all their customers. This information is then used to personally tailor the shopping experience to those coming in and out of their stores. As the
Washington Post
report notes, "a clothier introduced a children's line after the dummy showed that kids made up more than half its mid-afternoon traffic ... Another store found that a third of visitors using one of its doors after 4 p.m. were Asian, prompting it to place Chinese-speaking staff members by that entrance."
³⁹³

At $5,072 a pop, these EyeSee mannequins come with a steep price tag, but for storeowners who want to know more–a
lot more–
about their customers, they're the perfect tool, able to sit innocently at store entrances and windows, leaving shoppers oblivious to their hidden cameras.
³⁹⁴
Italian mannequin maker Almax SpA, manufacturer of the EyeSee mannequins, is currently working on adding ears to the mannequins, allowing them to record people's comments in order to further tailor the shopping experience.
³⁹⁵

Making this noxious mix even more troubling is the significant margin for error and abuse that goes hand in hand with just about every government-instigated program, only more so when it comes to biometrics and identification databases. Take, for example, the Secure Communities initiative. Touted by the Department of Homeland Security as a way to crack down on illegal immigration, the program attempted to match the inmates in local jails against the federal immigration database. Unfortunately, it resulted in Americans being arrested for such things as reporting domestic abuse and occasionally flagged U.S. citizens for deportation.
³⁹⁶
More recently, in July 2012, security researcher Javier Galbally demonstrated that iris scans can be spoofed, allowing a hacker to use synthetic images of an iris to trick an iris-scanning device into thinking it had received a positive match for a real iris over 50 percent of the time.
³⁹⁷

The Writing Is on the Wall

With technology moving so fast and assaults on our freedoms and privacy occurring with increasing frequency, there is little hope of turning back this technological, corporate, and governmental juggernaut. Even trying to avoid inclusion in the government's massive identification database will be nearly impossible. The hacktivist group Anonymous suggests wearing a transparent plastic mask, tilting one's head at a 15 degree angle, wearing obscuring makeup, and wearing a hat outfitted with infrared LED lights as methods for confounding the cameras' facial recognition technology
³⁹⁸

Yet for those who can read the writing on the wall, the message is clear: we're living in
The Matrix
of the corporate police state from which there is little hope of escape. The government has taken on the identity of the corporation, which exists to make money and amass power—not protect freedoms. Together, these surveillance tools form a toxic cocktail for which there is no cure. By subjecting Americans to biometric scans in public and other insidious forms of surveillance without their knowledge or compliance and then storing the data for later use, the government—in conjunction 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.

They Live

Ultimately the erection of the electronic concentration camp comes back to power, money, and control—how it is acquired and maintained, and how those who seek it or seek to keep it tend to sacrifice anything and everything in its name. In the meantime, like those caught within the confines of
They Live
, we are to conform and obey.

This is the same scenario that George Orwell warned about in
1984
. It is a warning we have failed to heed. As veteran journalist Walter Cronkite observed in his preface to a commemorative edition of
1984:

1984
is an anguished lament and a warning that vibrates powerfully when we may not be strong enough nor wise enough nor moral enough to cope with the kind of power we have learned to amass. That warning vibrates powerfully when we allow ourselves to sit still and think carefully about orbiting satellites that can read the license plates in a parking lot and computers that can read into thousands of telephone calls and telex transmissions at once and other computers that can do our banking and purchasing, can watch the house and tell a monitoring station what television program we are watching and how many people there are in a room. We think of Orwell when we read of scientists who believe they have
located
in the human brain the seats of behavioral emotions like aggression, or learn more about the vast potential of genetic engineering. And we hear echoes of that warning chord in the constant demand for greater security and comfort, for less risk in our societies. We recognize, however dimly, that greater efficiency, ease, and security may come at a substantial price in freedom, that "law and order" can be a
doublethink
version of oppression, that individual liberties surrendered for whatever good reason are freedoms lost.
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CHAPTER 17

Subduing a Populace:THX1138

Government by clubs and firing squads ... is not merely inhumane (nobody cares much about that nowadays); it is demonstrably inefficient and, in an age of advanced technology, inefficiency is the sin against the Holy Ghost."
⁴⁰¹

–ALDOUS HUXLEY

K
illing people is a messy thing–especially if it happens to be a government killing its own citizens. Shooting protesters who get rowdy for example, invariably attracts more media attention and bad press for the police. The solution? Weapons of compliance, such as tasers, which inflict pain and subdue dissidents but which don't incite quite as much public outrage.

A far more effective way to subdue a population, more so than through the use of compliance weapons, is to numb them with drugs, which come in all shapes and sizes. Of the many drugs available, legal and illicit alike, the drug of materialism–the endless pursuit of consumerism–is the most effective at distracting the populace from what is happening around them. Coupled with the wall-to-wall corporate entertainment complex and the distractions of everyday life, it's a wonder that there is any resistance at all to the emerging police state.

Then there are the actual prescription drugs that permeate American society. For example, the National Center for Health Statistics released a report in 2010 indicating that there has been a steady increase in the number of Americans taking at least one prescription drug. According to the study, 48% of Americans are on at least one prescription drug, 31% are on two or more, and 11% are on five or more. One in five children are on a prescription drug and 90% of older Americans use prescription drugs. Adolescents most commonly use "central nervous systemstimulants," such as those used to treat conditions such as ADD/ADHD. Middle aged individuals most often use antidepressants.

In 2008, $234.1 billion were spent on prescription drugs, twice the amount spent in 1999.
⁴⁰²
At the same time, we have seen an increase in the pharmaceutical corporations advertising directly to "consumers." For example, Oxycontin advertising spending increased to $30 million annually between the years 1996 and 2001.
⁴⁰³
The manufacturers of these dangerous drugs are basically legally protected drug dealers, except that their impact is much more widespread and deadly than the guy selling marijuana on the corner.

Such is the scenario in director George Lucas'
THX 1138
, where the use of mind-altering drugs is mandatory. In this future world, narcotics-prescription drugs, that is–are critical in both maintaining compliance and for ensuring that the citizenry can endure the mindless but demanding jobs required of them. In this futuristic world, people no longer have names but letters and numbers such as THX 1138, who works in a factory producing android policemen. Eventually, THX 1138, with the help of a girl who weans him off the drugs, begins to wake up to the monochrome reality surrounding him. From there, THX 1138 tries to escape, chased by robots and android cops.

Unlike THX 1138, the great majority of Americans, while being fed a diet of bread, circuses, and prescription drugs, don't seem to want to escape. All the while, the corporate state is erecting an electronic concentration camp around us. And to those who dare complain and take active steps in exercising their rights, the police are armed with a whole host of stinging devices to corral them.

Welcome to the battlefield that is America.

CHAPTER 18

Tactics of Intimidation

I was astonished, bewildered. This was America, a country where, whatever its faults, people could speak, write, assemble, demonstrate without fear. It was in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. We were a democracy ... But I knew it wasn't a dream; there was a painful lump on the side of my head ... The state and its police were not neutral referees in a society of contending interests. They were on the side of the rich and powerful. Free speech? Try it and the police will be there with their horses, their clubs, their guns, to stop you. From that moment on, I was no longer a liberal, a believer in the self-correcting character of American democracy. I was a radical, believing that something fundamental was wrong in this country–not just the existence of poverty amidst great wealth, not just the horrible treatment of black people, but something rotten at the root. The situation required not just a new president or new laws, but an uprooting of the old order, the introduction of a new kind of society–cooperative, peaceful, egalitarian."
⁴⁰⁴
–HOWARD ZINN

W
e're entering the final phase of America's transition to authoritarianism, a phase notable for its co-opting of civilian police as military forces. Not only do the police now look like the military–with their foreboding uniforms and phalanx of lethal weapons–but they function like them, as well. As we have seen, in many instances, no longer do they act as peace officers guarding against violent criminals. And no more do we have a civilian police force entrusted with serving and protecting the American people. Instead, today's militarized law enforcement officials, have, it seems, shifted their allegiance from the citizenry to the state, acting preemptively to ward off any possible challenges to the government's power.