Obama Quietly Signs Abusive Spy Bill He Once Vowed to Eliminate

[JReed]

70. It still matters

One last point is about empire and it's tendency to become fascist. In the BBC series "The Last Enemy" an England of the near future is described where surveillance has been carried to a suffocating level with the implementation of the (wait for it) Total Information Awareness system in England. Sound familiar? It should, as it was the pet project of Adm. John Poindexter in the first Bush term. This was the project in which Americans were asked to spy and inform on people that they thought were acting suspiciously. Plus it involved the creation of vast databases about the citizenry. Although it was largely defunded as a complete program there are still parts of it that survive. People seem to have gotten used to the fact that their emails and phone calls can be monitored at any time and their very locations can be determined if they are carrying a cell phone. In England right now there are more than 500,000 surveillance cameras in London and millions around the country.