Tuesday, February 24, 2009 Posted by Shattered Paradigm
Welcome to the United Kingdom - "the most surveilled democracy in the world".
The sad things is that most residents don't even seem to care much as a literal "1984 society" is being rapidly built around them.
For example, a gigantic government database containing the details of every single phone call, email and internet site visited by the public is being implemented in the U.K. as part of the fight against terrorism.
In addition, the U.K. government is going to make sure that you are going to be "environmentally friendly" whether you like it or not. Under a new government plan, energy experts in the U.K. are going to visit every home in the country in order to "help them go green".
It is being called "The Great British Refurb" and it is part of a sweeping U.K. government plan to reduce carbon emissions.
Ed Miliband, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, has announced that teams of "energy advisers" will go "house by house, street by street" to tell people what they must do in order to become eco-friendly.
Not only that, the government in the U.K. has become absolutely obsessed with garbage. If you don't believe us, the next time that you are in the U.K. toss a piece of garbage carelessly on to a city street and watch what happens.
The reality is that Big Brother's cousin, "Green Brother", has arrived in the U.K.
So who is expected to pay for all of the "eco-friendly" improvements?
Well, yes, there are going to be "loans" and "tax incentives", but in the end it is the homeowners who will be expected to foot the bill.
The truth is that those who live in the U.K. don't live in a "free" society any longer.
Not that the U.S. is much better.....
For instance, the NSA is now creating an artificial intelligence system called "Aquaint" that will literally pull information from thousands of databases to figure out not only what you are doing, but also what you are thinking.
Aquaint ("Advanced QUestion Answering for INTelligence") is being designed to pull information from your phone calls, credit card receipts, social networks such as Facebook and MySpace, GPS devices, cell phones, Google searches, Amazon book purchases and even E-Z Pass toll records to give users of the system information on where you are, what you are doing and what you are thinking.
Oh, you didn't think that the government could do that?
Oh, you didn't think that the government was ALLOWED to do that?
Welcome to the 21st century - the century of Big Brother.
Acquaint is so incredibly intrusive that at least one researcher has left the project because of concerns about what it is becoming.
Imagine what a technology like this could mean if it fell into the wrong hands.
For some time we have been saying that we are nearing the end of the "open society".
Every day we sink deeper towards a scientific technocracy where "Big Brother" will rule all, but people do not seem to care.
Did you know that there is a new Google application called Google Latitude that you can use to track your friends through their cell phones wherever they go?
So now you can be "Big Brother" too!
But of course your friends can track and trace you too.
Isn't that fun?
The reality is that Google knows way more about you than you would dare to think.
Someday technologies such as this will not only be able to determine what you are doing, saying and thinking, but they will also be able to control you as well.
The reality is that we are moving into times that science fiction writers never even dreamed of.
Are you ready for that?