A Representation of a Future Micro Autonomous Robot
(BAE Systems)
Many models of small robotic fliers have been developed by the military since World War II. As far back as the 1970s the CIA was working on an "insectothopter," a gasoline-powered dragonfly-style aerial surveillance drone. A 2007 article in the Washington Post used reported sightings of dragonfly drones at protests in Washington, D.C. and New York as the springboard for an in-depth look at the government's ability to utilize robobug technology.91 That same year, Japanese scientists at the International Symposium on Flying Insects and Robots unveiled radio-controlled drones resembling hawk moths, complete with four-inch wingspans.92
Gadgets
These are but a few of the technological devices now in the hands of those who control the corporate police state. Will we be able to evade these "gadgets" and those that will follow? Hide from them? Refuse them? If not, then the future we face is a rather frightening one, especially now that fiction, in essence, has become fact.
Remember, we all look like suspects to police state surveillance cameras and computers. Before long, we all may be mere extensions or appendages of the police state–all suspects in a world commandeered by "gadgets."
CHAPTER 6
Smiling at Big Brother
"What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared we would become a captive audience. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared that we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate would ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us."93
-PROFESSOR NEIL POSTMAN
Long before there was Steven Spielberg's Minority Report or any of the other futuristic films and books prophesying a totalitarian future, there were George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Published decades ago as political satires, both novels have become nothing short of political prophecies–prophecies that are being fulfilled in our own times.
Both novels present differing blueprints for how police states come into power. In the Orwellian scenario, the culture conforms to a prison complete with terror, storm trooper raids, and detention camps. The Huxleyan scenario presents a culture so consumed with and distracted by entertainment (and/or technological gadgets) that the citizenry does not realize they occupy a prison until it is too late. Both scenarios rely on the education system to instill compliance in young minds.
Orwell or Huxley?
Visualizing the total loss of freedom in a world dominated by technology and its misuse, and the crushing inhumanity of an omniscient state, Orwell's 1984 portrays a global society of total control in which people are not allowed to have thoughts that in any way disagree with the corporate state. There is no personal freedom, and advanced technology has become the driving force behind a surveillance-driven society. Snitches and cameras are everywhere, and people are subject to the Thought Police, who arrest and "re-educate" anyone guilty of thought crimes. The government, or "Party," is headed by Big Brother, who appears on posters everywhere with the words: "Big Brother is watching you." Orwell's story revolves around Winston Smith, a doubter who turns to self-expression through his diary and then begins questioning the ways and methods of Big Brother before being "re-educated."
Huxley's Brave New World provides a different vision about how a totalitarian society arrives. It is one dominated by a consumer society driven by entertainment–thus, lessening the need for the coercion evident in Orwell's 1984. As professor Neil Postman writes:
What Huxley teaches is that in the age of advanced technology, spiritual devastation is more likely to come from an enemy with a smiling face than from one whose countenance exudes suspicion and hate. In the Huxleyan prophecy, Big Brother does not watch us, by his choice. We watch him, by ours. There is no need for wardens or gates or Ministries of Truth. When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk: culture-death is a clear possibility94
Television and the Internet (as it extends itself through cell phones, laptops, and tablets) are the new mediums that equip those who control society with an efficient program for change. Huxley believed, as Postman writes, that we are in "a race between education and disaster, and he wrote continuously about the necessity of our understanding the politics and epistemology of media. For in the end, he was trying to tell us that what afflicted the people in Brave New World was not that they were laughing instead of thinking, but that they did not know what they were laughing about and why they had stopped thinking."95 Nevertheless, they kept smiling.
Here and Now
Coupled with the Huxleyan vision, much of what Orwell envisioned in his futuristic society has now come to pass. Surveillance cameras are everywhere. Government agents listen in on our telephone calls and read our emails. Political correctness (a precursor to "thought crimes")–a philosophy that discourages diversity and challenges the right of certain people to speak–has become a guiding principle of modern society. The courts have eviscerated the Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures of our bodies, homes, and personal possessions. In fact, SWAT teams battering down doors without search warrants and FBI agents acting as a secret police that investigate and "detain" dissenting citizens have become all-too-common occurrences in contemporary America. We are increasingly ruled by multi-corporations wedded to the police state. And much of the population is either hooked on illegal drugs or legal ones marketed heavily by the pharmaceutical industry.
When all is said and done, however, "An Orwellian world is much easier to recognize, and to oppose, than a Huxleyan. Everything in our background has prepared us to know and resist a prison when the gates begin to close around us." As professor Neil Postman writes in Amusing Ourselves to Death:
We take arms against such a sea of troubles, buttressed by the spirit of Milton, Bacon, Voltaire, Goethe, and Jefferson. But what if there are no cries of anguish to be heard? Who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements? To whom do we complain, and when, and in what tone of voice, when serious discourse dissolves into giggles? What is the antidote to a culture's being drained by laughter?96
CHAPTER 7
1984
"The very first essential for success is a perpetually constant and regular employment of violence."99
–ADOLPH HITLER, Mein Kampf
The stomping boot is something most people never really thought they would see in America, but like all authoritarian trends in government, it has crept up on us while we were unaware.
"What happened here," observed historian Milton Mayer, "was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security."100 Although Mayer was writing about how authoritarianism rose to power in Nazi Germany, his description of the emergence of a police state echoes what we are seeing in modern America.
Big Brother–a euphemism for Big Government–is here.
In fact, it looks as if the government is taking George Orwell's novel 1984 and implementing it as government policy.
George Orwell saw what might come to pass and it frightened him–a society where thinking the wrong thing (a "thought crime"), disagreeing with the prevailing view of society, or being the wrong skin color and/ or from the wrong social class would bring the stomping boot down upon you. In a police state, you're either part of the state's ruling elite or you're its subject. As police chief Bryant says to Rie Deckard when trying to recruit him to return to police work in the 1982 film Blade Runner: "You're either a cop or little people." Likewise, when Winston Smith decides to subtly resist Big Brother in 1984, he finds out rather quickly what it means to be "little people"–isolation, torture, and "re-education."
Yet it is not Big Brother that defeats us in the end. It is what we fear that subdues us. We have been conditioned to fear the criminal, the terrorist, the protester, the police, and now even our next-door neighbor. "An atmosphere of fear is itself a powerful force," writes former presidential advisor Bertram Gross in his book Friendly Fascism. "Present fears, to recall Macbeth's words, are even 'less than horrible happenings.' With but slight expectations of force, an all-pervasive sense of fright may be produced in the invisible spheres of life. An ounce of actual violence can yield a pound of terror."101
SWAT team raids occurring across America? Protesters tasered, pepper sprayed, beaten, and shot? The military on American streets? Yes, it is here. And it is definitely time to realize that what we call "the government" is not what it seems. Unfortunately, most Americans have come to believe that the zookeeper is friendly. All the while, freedom continues to diminish. We had better wake up or we will become the Winston Smiths of our time.
CHAPTER 8
America's New Way of Life
"Uncontrolled search and seizure is one of the first and most effective weapons in the arsenal of every arbitrary government... Among deprivations of rights, none is so effective in cowing a population, crushing the spirit of the individual and putting terror in every heart."102
–JUSTICE ROBERT JACKSON
Chief U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials
The role of law enforcement, especially local police officers, has drastically changed from when I was a child in the 1950s. The friendly local sheriff in The Andy Griffith Show has been replaced by grim-faced, armed warriors quick to do the government's bidding, with little to no thought for the Constitution.
The changing face of law enforcement
(Thinkstock)
One clear distinction between local police and military forces used to be the kinds of weapons at their disposal. With the advent of modern police weaponry and the introduction of SWAT teams into almost every police force in the nation, that is no longer the case. Standard SWAT team weaponry includes battering rams, ballistic shields, "flashbang" grenades, smoke grenades, pepper spray, and tear gas. Moreover, while "non-lethal" weapons such as tasers, stun guns, rubber bullets, and other weapons of compliance might pale in comparison to the arsenal of deadly weapons available to local law enforcement, their effect on our freedoms is no less severe.
Permanent Armies
Undoubtedly, as the militarization of law enforcement continues to grow, armed police officers (and federal agents armed to the hilt) have become a force to be reckoned with. Consequently, at all levels–federal, local, and state–the government and the police have merged. In the process, they have become a "standing" or permanent army, one composed of full-time professional soldiers who do not disband.
These permanent armies are exactly what those who drafted the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights feared. They knew that despotic governments have used standing armies to control the people and impose tyranny. For example, James Madison, in a speech before the Constitutional Convention in the summer of 1789, warned: "A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home."103 As Madison foresaw, "instruments of tyranny" can be used by a government to wage war against its citizens.
Tanks on Main Street
In communities large and small across America, local law enforcement are arming themselves to the teeth with weapons previously only seen on the battlefield.104 Local police–clad in jackboots, helmets, and shields and wielding batons, pepper spray, stun guns, and assault rifles–have increasingly come to resemble occupying forces in our communities. As investigative journalists Andrew Becker and G.W. Schulz point out, "Many police, including beat cops, now routinely carry assault rifles. Combined with body armor and other apparel, many officers look more and more like combat troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan."105
The fifty-person police department in Oxford, Alabama, for example, has acquired $3 million worth of equipment, including M-16s, infrared goggles, and an armored vehicle.106 All of these new toys lead to specious SWAT team raids that eviscerate the Fourth Amendment, conditioning us to the vision of police in jackboots with assault rifles patrolling our streets.
Military Tanks Used Domestically (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
"Today," notes Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury and associate editor of The Wall Street Journal, "17,000 local police forces are equipped with such military equipment as Blackhawk helicopters, machine guns, grenade launchers, battering rams, explosives, chemical sprays, body armor, night vision, rappelling gear, and armored vehicles. Some have tanks."107
Thus, what began with the militarization of the police in the 1980s during the government's war on drugs has snowballed into a full-fledged integration of military weaponry, technology, and tactics into police protocol. For example, in 1981 Congress passed the Military Cooperation with Law Enforcement Act, which granted the military the power to help local police forces wage the "war on drugs" by sharing equipment, training, and intelligence. In 1997 Congress approved the 1033 Program, which allows the Secretary of Defense to transfer surplus military supplies and weapons to local law enforcement agencies without charge–the only thing that local police departments have to pay for is shipping and future maintenance. And police departments aren't just getting boots and medkits–they're receiving assault rifles, mini-tanks, grenade launchers, and remote controlled robots.
Since 1997 more than 17,000 agencies have taken advantage of the federal government's 1033 Program, acquiring $2.6 billion dollars' worth of weapons and equipment,108 and demand is only getting higher. In fact, a record-setting half a billion dollars' worth of military equipment flowed from the U.S. Department of Defense to local police in 2011, with another $400 million worth of equipment reaching local police by May 2012.109
As Becker and Schulz report, more than $34 billion in federal government grants made available to local police agencies in the wake of 9/11 "ha[ve] fueled a rapid, broad transformation of police operations ... across the country. More than ever before, police rely on quasi-military tactics and equipment."110 For example:
If terrorists ever target Fargo, N.D., the local police will be ready. In recent years, they have bought bomb-detection robots, digital communications equipment and Kevlar helmets, like those used by soldiers in foreign wars. For local siege situations requiring real firepower, police there can use a new $256,643 armored truck, complete with a rotating turret.111
Moreover:
No one can say exactly what has been purchased in total across the country or how it's being used, because the federal government doesn't keep close track. State and local governments don't maintain uniform records. But a review of records from forty-one states obtained through open-government requests, and interviews with more than two-dozen current and former police officials and terrorism experts, shows police departments around the United States have transformed into small army-like forces.112
For example:
In Montgomery County, Tex., the sheriff's department owns a $300,000 pilotless surveillance drone. In Garland County, Ark
., known for its pleasant hot springs, a local law enforcement agency acquired four handheld bulletproof protective shields costing $600 each. In East Baton Rouge, La., it was $400 ballistic helmets. In Augusta, Maine, with fewer than 20,000 people and where an officer hasn't died from gunfire in the line of duty in more than 125 years, police bought eight $1,500 tactical vests. And for police in Des Moines, Iowa, it was two $180,000 bomb robots.113
High-Flying Drone (AP Photo)
The purchases get even more extravagant the deeper you go. For instance, police in Cobb County, Georgia, have an amphibious tank,114 while Richland County, South Carolina, police have a machine-gun-equipped armored personnel carrier called "The Peacemaker," the likes of which had previously only been seen in war zones.115 One popular piece of equipment, the BearCat, a "16,000-pound bulletproof truck equipped with battering rams, gun ports, tear-gas dispensers and radiation detectors," which costs $237,000, has been sold to over 500 local agencies.116 Police in Hanceville, Alabama, (population 3,000) have acquired $250,000 worth of equipment.117
While these so-called "free" surplus military weapons may seem like a windfall for cash-strapped communities, the maintenance costs for such extraneous equipment can quickly skyrocket. For example, police in Tupelo, Mississippi, spent about $274,000 over five years servicing a helicopter that flew an average often missions per year.118
In addition to the military equipment acquired by police departments via the 1033 Program, police agencies are also beginning to use drones–pilotless, remote-controlled aircraft that have been used extensively in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan–domestically. In fact, the Federal Aviation Administration has already issued testing permits to local police agencies across the country seeking to employ drone technology.119 AeroVironment, Inc., a manufacturer of drones, intends to sell 18,000 five-pound drones controlled via tablet computer to police departments throughout the country.120 They are also touting the "Switchblade," a small, one-use drone that has the ability to track a person from the air and then fly down to their level and explode.121 Moreover, some police officials are already discussing outfitting these spy drones with "nonlethal" weapons.122
A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State Page 6