Police State America — Volume One

Chapter 5 — Other Surveillance

Chapter 6 — Searching for Anarchists, or Maybe Just Political Activists

Chapter 7 — Winning the Information War

Chapter 8 — Arbitrary and Unaccountable Law Enforcement

Chapter 9 — The Militarisation of the Police

Chapter 10 — Occupy Wall Street

Chapter 11 — Intimidating the Media & Subverting the Press

Chapter 12 — The Short Road: Democracy to Fascism

Chapter 13 — The Next American Revolution? Anticipated Civil

Police State America

Chapter 4 — Universal Public Surveillance

CHINESE ENGLISH

We have read about the NSA domestic espionage network, about the CIA and Google collecting data, about Facebook and Twitter, about Microsoft’s operating systems and most other software containing back doors for the NSA or other agencies, and of all the other personal data being collected and mined. But all these are only a small part of a comprehensive surveillance system that contains other and more frightening components, many with a physical presence and lethal capabilities.

IMSI catchers

IMSI (or ISMI) means ‘Mobile Subscriber Identity’. This is an inexpensive and relatively simple technology used to intercept mobile phone calls and text messages by imitating mobile phone towers. These devices mimic the signals from telecom towers and trick cellphones into reporting their unique registration information. But, having made contact, they do much more. They can listen to and record conversations, and disrupt calls. They can retrieve all data from replying phones including text messages and emails, contact data, communication history and photos. These devices have been used by the US military and intelligence officials since the early days of mobile phones, for more than twenty years, and are commonly used today in foreign countries where the CIA or NSA want to intercept communications between government or military officials. This was one of the first breakthroughs in covert surveillance by US agencies, and are used 24 hours a day within the US, attempting intercept communications from all foreign embassies and consulates, and all foreign dignitaries and diplomatic staff located in the US.

Naturally, the US government claims it uses this technology to locate criminals or, as always, “terrorists”, a claim that needs to be strongly ridiculed as the patent rubbish that it is. For one thing, if law enforcement wants to find a criminal, the sensible approach is to have the phone company monitor that one phone, not to indiscriminately and covertly contact millions of phones hoping to find that one. Secondly, there is no evidence that there are now, or have ever been, terrorists within the US, and there is no record of either law enforcement or the intelligence agencies having ever located even one such person during the past 25 years of spying. This is simply one more part of the extent to which fascism has infiltrated the US mentality. Previously, these agencies collected this data and more from the telecom firms themselves but, in final efforts to avoid the legal necessity of judicial oversight and the ‘paper trail’ left by using a middleman, they now collect the data privately with no trail and no accountability.

These devices, commonly known as ‘dirtbags’, used to be located on the ground, carried in vehicles that relentlessly scanned the immediate area for all signals that might be useful for American espionage against foreign government officials located within the US. One such device was known as a Stingray, and manufactured by Boeing Aircraft, and the US government spent tens of millions of dollars obtaining Stingrays for many local areas. However, these devices are now airborne in a major way. The US government has an entire fleet of small Cessna aircraft equipped with IMSI catchers that cover virtually all of the populated area of the US and operate on a daily basis, a far more sophisticated program than anything previously understood about covert use of such technology. Again, the Washington DC area is the one hardest hit with this program, the authorities using a wide array of aircraft and other airborne devices in their surveillance and monitoring of the activities of foreign diplomats in the city. Call interception and recording are high on their list
of objectives.

The category of “other airborne devices” is worthy of attention, since mini-drone aircraft are now fully capable of carrying one of these interception devices. These little drones are inexpensive, silent or virtually so, can fly much closer to the ground than can larger aircraft, and often go unnoticed by the public. Many of these are now used by private individuals for aerial photography, for news gathering and other useful purposes, with no easy way to distinguish espionage drones from any other. This is again one more ominous indication of the ‘Terminator Society’ that the US is rapidly becoming.

The US Congress has passed new laws permitting US airspace to be filled with unmanned military drones which will be used for unspecified “domestic operations”. The FAA claims that 30,000 or more drones will be airborne in the next five or six years. That’s 1,000 drones flying over each and every city with a population above one million, or 100 drones over every city with a population of 100,000 or more. The legislation demands the FAA arrange clearance, airspace and infrastructure for the highest possible number of drones to be active. Deployment and operational tests will be conducted by many agencies including NASA and the Department of Defense, and of course local police forces, but perhaps the primary deployment will fall to DHS – the Department of so-called Homeland Security. It is worth noting that many American educational institutions are involved in every stage of this new plan, including MIT with its long history of military research. Google and Facebook, being CIA clones, are hotly pursuing the extremely profitable commercial drone market to keep the technology in the family.

Authorities claim their initial plan is to give these drones “non-lethal weapons” capability, but we need no predictive ability to know they will very soon be firing lethal weapons and executing people on the ground, since there is no historical evidence of the US government or any of its branches ever drawing a line at non-lethal anything. These drone aircraft were developed as weapons for cowardly surveillance and targeted killings of civilians in foreign countries and will not change their purposes or methods when applied to domestic applications. Domestic law enforcement agencies appear excessively anxious to do broad scale civil surveillance, primarily to control civil unrest and political dissension such as street protests and the like. Firing tear gas and small-caliber ammunition, these drones are the perfect crowd-control devices, permitting the agencies to monitor and attack participants in a civil disturbance while sitting comfortably and risk-free in a control room that might be thousands of miles away. Using their CIA-Google face-recognition technology, they can also identify and target the leaders and will be able to pursue those who escape their initial attacks. Drones can carry scanners not only for facial recognition, but for license plates, thermal imaging, Wi-Fi and more. They can be armed, and can be as small as birds, in which case the numbers could become unlimited. The US is heading for a “Terminator-style” civil environment and I see nothing that will change the direction. The drones are already flying over the US, with laws being changed to permit unlimited air access and eliminate all restrictions on civilian surveillance. To look at all the current signs and connect all the disparate pieces, is frightening.

“These weapons fulfill the US Air Force’s fantasy of “death from above”, carried out by pilots working in the security and comfort of US bases who, acting as judge, jury, and executioner, destroy supposed enemies from computer consoles as if it were a video game. The cowardliness of wars of aggression being conducted against innocent people in dirt-poor lands by unseen “UAV pilots” in air-conditioned offices thousands of miles away cannot be over-emphasized. This is what unmanned aircraft have brought so far to the reputation of the United States – a new low in the entire universe of human ethics.”

Mr. Romanoff’s writing has been translated into 32 languages and his articles posted on more than 150 foreign-language news and politics websites in more than 30 countries, as well as more than 100 English language platforms. Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He is one of the contributing authors to Cynthia McKinney’s new anthology ‘When China Sneezes’. (Chapt. 2 — Dealing with Demons).

His full archive can be seen at

https://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/ and https://www.moonofshanghai.com/

He can be contacted at:

2186604556@qq.com

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