Will We Be Under Total Surveillance?

by Charles Ostman

Imagine a world in which every aspect of your life, past and present, is encrypted on a personal ID card and stored on a nationwide data base. Where virtually all communications media-soon to be 100% digital-are automatically monitored by computerized phone taps and satellites from control centers thousands of miles away. Where self-training neural net and artificial intelligence data search systems scan for undesirable lifestyles and target you for automatic monitoring.

Personal privacy was once considered the most sacred of our constitutional rights; agencies were severely limited by law. All that's about to change drastically thanks to a deadly combination of extremely sophisticated surveillance technology, ubiquitous digital information collection, and centralized interagency data exchange.

Until recently the "supersecret" National Reconnaissance Organization did not exist-even though it has the largest budget of any intelligence agency. They are responsible for the design, development and procurement of all US reconnaissance satellites and their continued management once in orbit. Recently photos have surfaced in the press of its huge new complex being completed in Chantilly, Virginia. (Senator John Warner-Lix Taylor's ex- has described the one million square foot complex as a "Taj Mahal.") The NRO is eagerly implementing such technologies as ultra-high storage capacity holographic films (allowing huge amounts of personal information to be present on your ID card) and self-training artificial intelligence software that tracks your personal data without human intervention. A new era of ubiquitous surveillance is dawning.

A struggling military-industrial complex searching for new markets for their technologies has merged forces with a government obsessed with ever tighter control over the activities of the general public. Congresswoman Barbara Jordan has proposed a "National Employment Verification Card" that will be required for all employment in the U.S. The card will, of course, have a magnetic data strip, and altering of counterfeiting the card will be a federal felony offense.

There is a dedicated and aggressive effort underway to chart various genetic features as part of one's personal information set. The fed's goal is to have the ability to screen individuals for everything from behavioral characteristics to sexual orientation, based on genetic information embedded in your personal (and required) national ID card.

Biometric signature technologies have been developing apace. There is even a technique available to translate human DNA into bar codes for efficient digital transmission between agencies.

Are these science fiction story lines or the ravings of a paranoid lunatic? I wish they were. As a former research engineer at Lawrence Livermore Labs and other government labs, I watched some of these mad schemes being hatched. This technology is on the street today or about to leave the labs and believe me, it goes way beyond Orwell's worst nightmares. Listen up and hunker down.

A fundamental shift in the legal definition of personal privacy is occurring right now. A court-issued warrant used to be a universal requirement for personal surveillance, such as phone tapping, observing physical papers, and probing financial or medical records. Now, in this new age of AI-driven monitoring and data tracking systems, there are no pesky people in the loop.A computer doesn't need to seek a court warrant to monitor every aspect of your private life. A self-training automated surveillance system doesn't need permission to observe your movements or communications.

Total data tracking is already commonplace for financial institutions and private security operations. Tomorrow, it will be commonplace for all of us. The technical elements of a massive surveillance engine are in place. It's just a matter of turning the key to fire it up. Let's examine these elements and why you should be concerned.

Universal Encryption Chip

Is sounds logical. The feds want to preserve privacy, so their story goes, so they've announced that an encryption chip will go into all phones and computers that they buy. But what do they really want in the long run?

How about a government-issue encryption chip in all personal computers and communication devices? That way, the feds can deal with drug smugglers, terrorists, kiddie porn merchants, and other miscreants who use encoded messages.

Of course, they'd have to prevent tampering with the chip. In fact, the technology to do just that has already been developed at Sandia National Laboratory. Scientists there have developed an optical sensor that uses a powdered silicon optical absorption layer in an optical waveguide embedded in a chip. A micro photodetector detects even the slightest intrusion into the chip package by measuring a slight change in the photonic conduction through the waveguide. It can then send an alert via modem to a central monitoring system to notify an interested party that the device has been tampered with. Sandia is also developing a microchemical intrusion detector that would be sensitive to the chemical signature of human fingertips.

Is this all part of some master plan, or what?

In fact, in the near future, all encryption hardware and software will be subject to federal registration/authorization. Possession of unauthorized encryption/decryption capability will be punishable as a federal felony. In other words, if it doesn't have a handy back door for NSA snoops, it ain't legal.

We can further speculate that the feds will embed chips in all equipment sold for use in data transmission, digital phone calls and all other frequencies. Note: all new phone systems wired and wireless will be digital in the next three years.

Intelligent Video

Nor would you know what's watching you. Security cameras are becoming standard in corporate and government facilities. They may soon even be required. Why? Ostensibly because they want to recover losses in cases of theft, keep insurance premiums down, monitor petulant employees and keep intruders out.

But the new genre of video cameras now coming out of the labs do a lot more than that. They're intelligent. They can recognize faces, motion, and other interesting characteristics. In fact, they behave a lot like a human eye, with intelligent preprocessor abilities.

Intelligent cameras are needed because a security guard or cop can't monitor the dozens or hundreds of video cameras in a large facility (or dozens of satellite video surveillance channels). Intelligent cameras use artificial intelligence-based object and motion recognition. They scan for what a trained security guard looks for: certain motions, clothing, faces; the presence of people in off-limits places. Instead of watching 100 cameras, only a few at any time send pictures. A single guard or a computer can deal with that.

In fact, a steady data stream from multiple intelligent cameras can be uploaded to computerized monitoring facilities anywhere, coupled with other automated observation systems.

The next big thing in intelligent cameras will be "content-addressable" imagery. That means they'll automatically detect the content of sophisticated patterns, like a specific person's face, by matching it against a digital "wanted" poster, say. New software that can even run on cheap personal computers makes that possible. MatchMaker from Iterated Systems (Norcross, GA), for example, uses a fractal algorithm that converts image data into mathematical form, automatically recognizing and categorizing realtime "targets"-untouched by human hands and tied into a centralized monitoring facility!