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December 16, 2005. Just nine days before Christmas day, a story was breaking that would prove so unthinkable and so un-American that few could believe it. While the country slept, Eric Lichtblau and James Risen of The New York Times were busy putting the finishing touches on an article so damaging to the White House, it read like a Robert Ludlum novel.

"Bush Lets U.S.

Spy on Callers Without Courts" screamed the front-page headline. Lichtblau and Risen go on to state, "Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials."(1)

Immediately, President George W. Bush went into defensive mode with numerous press conferences and official statements regarding the matter. "Domestic spying" was expeditiously replaced with "terrorist surveillance." Detractors were labeled with being un-American; even assisting the enemy.

The president made the justification that he is simply protecting the American people, and was following the Constitution and legal procedure pursuant to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The real justification, however, was the president's ostensibly unlimited wartime powers under what his administration had previously cited as the "Unitary Executive" rationale. In other words, the president had made himself "the decider," and nobody can question his inherent Executive powers.

Political maneuverings aside, society has absolutely become controlled by technology. Today, the American public has become complacent not only toward government monitoring of telephone calls, but also new initiatives that monitor citizens' Internet use as well. Private data-collecting firms possess enormous dossiers on each one of us with information so detailed, it would probably send a chill up our collective spines. Tracking citizens using credit card activity and using that data for marketing purposes is all too real. And at some point, tracking of human beings via RFID/GPS will sustain a relatively crime-free society as instant location and identification of every human being on earth will come at the click of a mouse button.

George Orwell's 1984 is often referred to due to its eerie vision of government intrusion into our everyday lives. But today, we have numerous technologies that would have made even Orwell's jaw drop to the floor. Will we one day see those nefarious government-spying interactive tele-screens in every household as Orwell set forth? The truth of the matter is, it will be worse; but not that obvious. RFID fused with GPS will serve as identifying and locating both people and objects through a new "Internet of things." Ubiquitous video cameras will provide additional surveillance capacity, albeit they will become secondary in nature since people can already be identified via active RFID affixed to their skin in the form of a tiny RFID/GPS dot.

While this may sound like a bizarre science-fiction tale, the reality is that numerous additional technologies exist or are otherwise in development that could potentially serve to further control our society in ways unthinkable to us today. But political leaders should take note that just because they can use technology to control the populace doesn't mean they should. Using technological tools to fight terrorism is one thing; but circumventing the laws of our country and the Constitution only serves to undermine the very democracy in which we live.

Source Notes:
(1) http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12 /16/politics/16program.html?_r =1&oref=slogin

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