Don't go underestimating the government's ability to lock the nation down if the coronavirus turns into a pandemic, however. After all, the government has been planning and preparing for such a crisis for years now.
The building blocks are already in place for such an eventuality: the surveillance networks, fusion centers and government contractors that already share information in real time; the government's massive biometric databases that can identify individuals based on genetic and biological markers; the militarized police, working in conjunction with federal agencies, ready and able to coordinate with the federal government when it's time to round up the targeted individuals; the courts that will sanction the government's methods, no matter how unlawful, as long as it's done in the name of national security; and the detention facilities, whether private prisons or FEMA internment camps, that have been built and are waiting to be filled.
Now all of this may sound far-fetched to you now, but we've already arrived at the dystopian futures prophesied by George Orwell's 1984, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, and Philip K. Dick's Minority Report.
It won't take much more to push us over the edge into Neill Blomkamp's Elysium, in which the majority of humanity is relegated to an overpopulated, diseased, warring planet where the government employs technologies such as drones, tasers and biometric scanners to track, target and control the populace.
Mind you, while these technologies are already in use today and being hailed for their potentially life-saving, cost-saving, time-saving benefits, it won't be long before the drawbacks to having a government equipped with technology that makes it all-seeing, all-knowing, and all-powerful -- helped along by the citizenry -- far outdistance the benefits.
On a daily basis, Americans are relinquishing (in many cases, voluntarily) the most intimate details of who we are -- their biological makeup, our genetic blueprints, and our biometrics (facial characteristics and structure, fingerprints, iris scans, etc.) -- in order to navigate an increasingly technologically-enabled world.
Consider all the ways you continue to be tracked, hunted, hounded, and stalked by the government and its dubious agents:
By tapping into your phone lines and cell phone communications, the government knows what you say. By uploading all of your emails, opening your mail, and reading your Facebook posts and text messages, the government knows what you write. By monitoring your movements with the use of license plate readers, surveillance cameras and other tracking devices, the government knows where you go. By churning through all of the detritus of your life -- what you read, where you go, what you say -- the government can predict what you will do.
By mapping the synapses in your brain, scientists -- and in turn, the government -- will soon know what you remember. By mapping your biometrics -- your "face-print"and storing the information in a massive, shared government database available to bureaucratic agencies, police and the military, the government's goal is to use facial recognition software to identify you (and every other person in the country) and track your movements, wherever you go. And by accessing your DNA, the government will soon know everything else about you that they don't already know: your family chart, your ancestry, what you look like, your health history, your inclination to follow orders or chart your own course, etc.
Of course, none of these technologies are foolproof.
Nor are they immune from tampering, hacking or user bias.
Nevertheless, they have become a convenient tool in the hands of government agents to render null and void the Constitution's requirements of privacy and its prohibitions against unreasonable searches and seizures.
The ramifications of a government -- any government -- having this much unregulated, unaccountable power to target, track, round up and detain its citizens is beyond chilling.
Imagine what a totalitarian regime such as Nazi Germany could have done with this kind of unadulterated power.
Imagine what the next police state to follow in Germany's footsteps will do with this kind of power. Society is rapidly moving in that direction.
We've made it so easy for the government to watch us.
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