Though it has remained officially unsaid, the powers that be have all-but-officially designated the American people as their
enemy in a foggy battleground that has become global, nebulous, highly technological
and extremely paranoid.
Homeland Security and FBI protocol have set the stage for
profiling Americans as potential threats, while the rising police state have
often cracked down with a heavy hand and perhaps a SWAT raid. The War on
Terror, global jihad, cyber attacks and a new Cold War have all contributed
the necessary pretexts for an atmosphere of control and preemptive suspicion
that seemingly justifies total surveillance of the population.
USCYBERCOM, activated by the federal government in 2009
and operated by the director of the NSA, adds a whole new dimension to that,
by bringing home – to computer screens and devices everywhere – the cyberwar.
And since that time, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange became the first
civilian designated, according to declassified information, as a military-designated “enemy of the state.” Many SWAT raids, FBI and
police visits have now resulted from alleged threatening or offensive Internet
activity. Likewise, StuxNet became the first major cyber attack against Iran,
a (perceived) military threat. More recently, we’ve seen major cyber warfare
exchanges with North Korea, resulting in an Internet blackout there following
the SONY hacking scandal and diplomatic standoff over a Hollywood film.
As Daniel Taylor, of Old Thinker News, points out, the
militarization and weaponization of the digital space has been a long time
coming, and it might mutate into a conflict wide enough to involve you and
your online activities. His article, “NSA Cyber War Will Use Internet of
Things as Weapons Platform; Your Home is the Battlefield” argues:
As time goes on it will be readily apparent to the masses that the
monumental surveillance architecture that will catalog and track the
population is nothing more than an attempt at full spectrum domination.
[...]
New Snowden documents recently revealed that the NSA is getting ready for
future digital wars as the agency postures itself in an aggressive manner
towards the world. “The
Five Eyes Alliance“, a cooperation between United States, Canada,
Britain, Australia, and New Zealand, is working hard to develop these weapons
of Cyber Warfare.
So called “D” weapons, as reported
by Der Spiegel, will paralyze computer networks and infrastructure that
they monitor. Water supplies, factories, airports, as well as the flow of
money are all potential targets.
Simultaneously, while handing out tech goodies to consumers, the American people have also become their dupes, their sheep and
their eyes. Through the digitalization of the planet, cyberspace has
brought home a front that is equal parts transformative, enticing and eerily
grim.
The Edward Snowden leaks constituted notice to the world that all things
digital are subject to surveillance – a total and complete surveillance that
includes the participation of the population who, through carrying various
“smart” devices that capture data, images and audio for meta-analysis – are
feeding the powers that be with vast catalogs of spy information – including
valuable proprietary consumer data. Taylor notes:
The NSA’s Cyber Weapons program will undoubtedly exploit these devices,
which include household appliances, and, frighteningly, medical devices that can
be hacked. Pacemakers can be remotely stopped, and insulin pumps can be
made to deliver a lethal dose of insulin. With the advent of implantable
devices that communicate via Wifi, the potential for manipulation and hacking
is growing exponentially.
If the developers of these internet connected devices don’t willingly work
with the NSA to place back-doors in the technology, the agency is hard at
work trying to find and exploit them.
Through the emerging Internet of Things (IoT), household appliances, smart
meters, street lights and more will create a total digital picture of life,
capturing real time data per appliance that creates a total information grid.
Taylor writes:
The Der Spiegel report does not mention the wider issue of the expanding
network of everyday objects and appliances that are connected to the internet.
According
to CIA chief David Patraeus the Internet of Things will have a monumental
impact on “clandestine tradecraft.” Richard Adhikari writes for Tech News
World that the Internet of Things is “…ripe for exploitation by the NSA”
Consumer appliances are now becoming activated and “smart.” RFID chips and
wireless internet connections enable devices like televisions, refrigerators,
printers, and computers to communicate with each other and generally make
life easier for us. This comes at a price, however. Your privacy is
eliminated.
[...]
Think the idea of your appliances spying on you is crazy? According to Samsung’s
new privacy policy, their smart TV can monitor your conversation. The
policy states, “Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or
other sensitive information, that information will be among the data
captured and transmitted to a third party through your use of Voice
Recognition.”
This digital surveillance age does not make spying on persons of interest
merely possible or probable in any theoretical sense. Instead, it is a living
matrix that defaults to spying. It is set up to flag aberrant and eccentric
behavior and patterns, and will prompt a due response – whether you have done
anything wrong or not.
The scheduled blurring of legitimate military targets and average civilian
members of the population will present a different type of war, with
weaponized information and data. Putting it all in perspective, Taylor cites
a media pioneer from a time before the digital age had dawned:
“World War III is a guerrilla information war with no division
between military and civilian participation.” – Marshall McLuhan, Culture
is Our Business, 1970
Such a war will likely be the ultimate battle between the individual and
the state. Unless stopped or slowed, it will accomplish,
systematically, what no Cold War secret agency working on the ground and in
the shadows could ever hope to gain.
