This is Not a Test

Among the unbelievable heap of events and developments piling up all at once, there are a few that I'd like to highlight. These are structures or programs whose impending intent is to gain control over large groups of people by using either fetishes, fear, or guilt to pry open the grip we still hold on our natural freedom.

* The first:
Google I/O 2011: Google wants to control your home - May. 11, 2011

 

"Connected devices like home media equipment, dishwashers, cars, and lights could soon be able to be controlled using the new platform....The chief obstacle to making that happen across all connected devices is finding a single, open standard to control everything you own," said Joe Britt, head of the Android@Home team.

Eric Holland, a vice president of LED manufacturer Lighting Science, added: "The advantage of Android@Home is that any developer can write an application to control the lights. They don't need to learn any proprietary protocol... one app could control fixtures from all participating lighting companies... Robots powered by Android smartphones and tablets were wandering around the conference... 

"Soon, you may be using your phone to interact with all the devices in your home -- whether they beg you to or not." 

Of course, the concern goes beyond the fear of butt-dialing your dishwasher. If plugged-in items can be controlled by your cell phone, whose data is being tracked and recorded right now, they can just as easily be utilized in reverse by your provider. And as these operations are being consolidated into fewer hands, it becomes more incumbent upon those hands' integrity to restrain from misusing their power.

 If it sounds like a page out of 1984, it practically is:

"Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live - did live, from habit that became instinct - in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and... every movement scrutinised." 

* From Droids to Drones...

By 2013, the FAA plans to have regulations changed to allow police across our country to use unmanned drones for surveillance and law enforcement in their own municipalities. ...What could possibly go wrong?

The government only kind of kills thousands of civilians in countries where we are - and aren't (namely Pakistan, where 1700 were killed by drones in 2010) 

But that couldn't happen in the U.S...  Honestly, don't we all have that one friend who is all to quick to villainize our government and leaders? Surely they are unnecessarily wound-up. This new administration is supposed to be about transparency and rolling back the warrantless surveillance we believed was the previous administration's agenda...

Turns out the new boss is very much like the old boss - and U.S. citizen or not, if you are a suspected "terrorist", you're on the list.

"The sheer power of some of the cameras that can be mounted on them is likely to bring fresh search-and-seizure cases before the courts, and concern about the technology’s potential misuse could unsettle the public."   ...As well it should. 

Recently, a small Southwest town known for its resistance to military operations over its skies, has experienced persistent aerial activity, despite attempts by a group called Peaceful Skies to fend off the use of its air space for military and government activities. 

Meanwhile, this same traditionally activist community just revealed plans to host a Department of Homeland Security simulation of a disaster event involving weapons of mass destruction.

 

The coincidence with our current provocation of Pakistan and destabilization of Iran's neighboring allies is too ideally timed not to imagine that there is something known by our leaders that we aren't being told. Both of these nations are known to possess certain ... um.... reactive technologies. Poke a bees' nest enough and they're bound to put up their defenses. 

* The flurry of inane "news" permeating media orifices - from the world's ridiculous fascination with the most boring union of two people I couldn't possibly care less about, to the improv storytelling that cast our fearless leader as victor over our long-sought villain, to a giant middle finger from the white house directly to America and anyone with eyes (particularly those of us with any geeky graphic background) - should scream WAKE UP. 

Those in power think we are hapless morons. And in talking to many people since, I hear them believing themselves to be part of a great "idiocracy." We are not idiots. We must immediately value ourselves and our future. If we keep believing these self-defeating suggestions, we will become the dispensible class of people they hope to eliminate or control. 

Simplicity is Genius. Responsibility is Resistance.