By John & Nisha Whitehead May 08, 2024
“The privacy and dignity of our citizens is being whittled away by sometimes imperceptible steps. Taken individually, each step may be of little consequence. But when viewed as a whole, there begins to emerge a society quite unlike any we have seen—a society in which government may intrude into the secret regions of man’s life at will.”—Justice William O. Douglas
The spirit of the Constitution, drafted by men who chafed against the heavy-handed tyranny of an imperial ruler, would suggest that one’s home is a fortress, safe from almost every kind of intrusion.
Unfortunately, a collective assault by the government’s cabal of legislators, litigators, judges and militarized police has all but succeeded in reducing that fortress—and the Fourth Amendment alongside it—to a crumbling pile of rubble.
We are no longer safe in our homes, not from the menace of a government and its army of Peeping Toms who are waging war on the last stronghold of privacy left to us as a free people.
The weapons of this particular war on the privacy and sanctity of our homes are being wielded by the government and its army of bureaucratized, corporatized, militarized mercenaries.
Government agents—with or without a warrant, with or without probable cause that criminal activity is afoot, and with or without the consent of the homeowner—are now justified in mounting virtual home invasions using surveillance technology—with or without the blessing of the courts—to invade one’s home with wiretaps, thermal imaging, surveillance cameras, aerial drones, and other monitoring devices.
Just recently, in fact, the Michigan Supreme Court gave the government the green light to use warrantless aerial drone surveillance to snoop on citizens at home and spy on their private property.
While the courts have given police significant leeway at times when it comes to physical intrusions into the privacy of one’s home (the toehold entry, the battering ram, the SWAT raid, the knock-and-talk conversation, etc.), the menace of such virtual intrusions on our Fourth Amendment rights has barely begun to be litigated, legislated and debated.
Consequently, we now find ourselves in the unenviable position of being monitored, managed, corralled and controlled by technologies that answer to government and corporate rulers.
Indeed, almost anything goes when it comes to all the ways in which the government can now invade your home and lay siege to your property.
Consider that on any given day, the average American going about his daily business will be monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways, by both government and corporate eyes and ears.
A byproduct of this surveillance age in which we live, whether you’re walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency is listening in and tracking your behavior.
This doesn’t even begin to touch on the corporate trackers that monitor your purchases, web browsing, Facebook posts and other activities taking place in the cyber sphere.
Stingray devices mounted on police cars to warrantlessly track cell phones, Doppler radar devices that can detect human breathing and movement within in a home, license plate readers that can record up to 1800 license plates per minute, sidewalk and “public space” cameras coupled with facial recognition and behavior-sensing technology that lay the groundwork for police “pre-crime” programs, police body cameras that turn police officers into roving surveillance cameras, the internet of things: all of these technologies (and more) add up to a society in which there’s little room for indiscretions, imperfections, or acts of independence—especially not when the government can listen in on your phone calls, read your emails, monitor your driving habits, track your movements, scrutinize your purchases and peer through the walls of your home.
Without our realizing it, the American Police State passed the baton off to a fully-fledged Surveillance State that gives the illusion of freedom while functioning all the while like an electronic prison: controlled, watchful, inflexible, punitive, deadly and inescapable.
Nowhere to run and nowhere to hide: this is the mantra of the architects of the Surveillance State and their corporate collaborators.
Government eyes see your every move: what you read, how much you spend, where you go, with whom you interact, when you wake up in the morning, what you’re watching on television and reading on the internet.
Every move you make is being monitored, mined for data, crunched, and tabulated in order to amass a profile of who you are, what makes you tick, and how best to control you when and if it becomes necessary to bring you in line.
Cue the dawning of the Age of the Internet of Things (IoT), in which internet-connected “things” monitor your home, your health and your habits in order to keep your pantry stocked, your utilities regulated and your life under control and relatively worry-free.
The key word here, however, is control.
In the not-too-distant future, “just about every device you have—and even products like chairs, that you don’t normally expect to see technology in—will be connected and talking to each other.”
By the end of 2018, “there were an estimated 22 billion internet of things connected devices in use around the world… Forecasts suggest that by 2030 around 50 billion of these IoT devices will be in use around the world, creating a massive web of interconnected devices spanning everything from smartphones to kitchen appliances.”
As the technologies powering these devices have become increasingly sophisticated, they have also become increasingly widespread, encompassing everything from toothbrushes and lightbulbs to cars, smart meters and medical equipment.
It is estimated that 127 new IoT devices are connected to the web every second.
These Internet-connected techno gadgets include smart light bulbs that discourage burglars by making your house look occupied, smart thermostats that regulate the temperature of your home based on your activities, and smart doorbells that let you see who is at your front door without leaving the comfort of your couch.
Nest, Google’s suite of smart home products, has been at the forefront of the “connected” industry, with such technologically savvy conveniences as a smart lock that tells your thermostat who is home, what temperatures they like, and when your home is unoccupied; a home phone service system that interacts with your connected devices to “learn when you come and go” and alert you if your kids don’t come home; and a sleep system that will monitor when you fall asleep, when you wake up, and keep the house noises and temperature in a sleep-conducive state.
The aim of these internet-connected devices, as Nest proclaims, is to make “your house a more thoughtful and conscious home.” For example, your car can signal ahead that you’re on your way home, while Hue lights can flash on and off to get your attention if Nest Protect senses something’s wrong. Your coffeemaker, relying on data from fitness and sleep sensors, will brew a stronger pot of coffee for you if you’ve had a restless night.
Yet given the speed and trajectory at which these technologies are developing, it won’t be long before these devices become government informants, reporting independently on anything you might do that runs afoul of the Nanny State.
Moreover, it’s not just our homes and personal devices that are being reordered and reimagined in this connected age: it’s our workplaces, our health systems, our government, our bodies and our innermost thoughts that are being plugged into a matrix over which we have no real control.
It is expected that by 2030, we will all experience The Internet of Senses (IoS), enabled by Artificial Intelligence (AI), Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), 5G, and automation. The Internet of Senses relies on connected technology interacting with our senses of sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch by way of the brain as the user interface. As journalist Susan Fourtane explains:
Many predict that by 2030, the lines between thinking and doing will blur. Fifty-nine percent of consumers believe that we will be able to see map routes on VR glasses by simply thinking of a destination… By 2030, technology is set to respond to our thoughts, and even share them with others… Using the brain as an interface could mean the end of keyboards, mice, game controllers, and ultimately user interfaces for any digital device. The user needs to only think about the commands, and they will just happen. Smartphones could even function without touch screens.
Once technology is able to access and act on your thoughts, not even your innermost thoughts will be safe from the Thought Police.
Thus far, the public response to concerns about government surveillance has amounted to a collective shrug. Yet when the government sees all and knows all and has an abundance of laws to render even the most seemingly upstanding citizen a criminal and lawbreaker, then the old adage that you’ve got nothing to worry about if you’ve got nothing to hide no longer applies.
To our detriment, we are fast approaching a world without the Fourth Amendment, where the lines between private and public property are so blurred that private property is reduced to little more than something the government can use to control, manipulate and harass you to suit its own purposes, and you the homeowner and citizen have been reduced to little more than a tenant or serf in bondage to an inflexible landlord.
When people talk about privacy, they mistakenly assume it protects only that which is hidden behind a wall or under one’s clothing. The courts have fostered this misunderstanding with their constantly shifting delineation of what constitutes an “expectation of privacy.” And technology has furthered muddied the waters.
However, privacy is so much more than what you do or say behind locked doors. It is a way of living one’s life firm in the belief that you are the master of your life, and barring any immediate danger to another person (which is far different from the carefully crafted threats to national security the government uses to justify its actions), it’s no one’s business what you read, what you say, where you go, whom you spend your time with, and how you spend your money.
As Glenn Greenwald notes:
“The way things are supposed to work is that we’re supposed to know virtually everything about what [government officials] do: that’s why they’re called public servants. They’re supposed to know virtually nothing about what we do: that’s why we’re called private individuals. This dynamic—the hallmark of a healthy and free society—has been radically reversed. Now, they know everything about what we do, and are constantly building systems to know more. Meanwhile, we know less and less about what they do, as they build walls of secrecy behind which they function. That’s the imbalance that needs to come to an end. No democracy can be healthy and functional if the most consequential acts of those who wield political power are completely unknown to those to whom they are supposed to be accountable.”
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, none of this will change, no matter which party controls Congress or the White House, because despite all of the work being done to help us buy into the fantasy that things will change if we just elect the right candidate, we’ll still be prisoners of the electronic concentration camp.
ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
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Supreme Court Sides With Biden Regime — Denies InfoWars Host Owen Shroyer’s Appeal Against Sham J6 Conviction — Despite Never Entering Capitol Building!
By Ben Kew Jun. 4, 2024
The Supreme Court has denied an appeal from InfoWars host Owen Shroyer against his conviction related to the January 6th protests.
Shroyer, a hugely popular commentator, and activist with Alex Jones’s InfoWars, was convicted of a misdemeanor and received a 60-day prison sentence after pleading guilty to engaging in “disruptive and riotous behavior” at the Capitol Building, despite the fact he never went inside.
His appeal was rejected as part of a routine list of orders released on Monday morning, with no Justice dissenting or commenting on the decision.
In his petition to the court, Shroyer’s lawyers argued that the District Court had failed to recognize his “unique role” as a journalist and had violated his First Amendment rights.
“The precedent has been set. You can be arrested & sentenced for legal & lawful speech,” Shroyer wrote on the X platform after his appeal was rejected. “My case was the precedent. The message is clear. Speak out against government & risk arrest.”
While Shroyer did not enter the Capitol, he had previously signed a deferred prosecution agreement after interrupting a House Judiciary Committee hearing during Donald Trump’s impeachment proceedings back in 2019.
As part of the agreement, Shroyer had agreed not to “utter loud, threatening, or abusive language or engage in any disorderly or disruptive conduct” anywhere on the U.S. Capitol Grounds with the “intent to disrupt the orderly conduct of any congressional session.”
After he attended the Stop the Steal rallies on January 6th, prosecutors targeted Shroyer and accused him of being responsible for the events that took place because of his “violent rhetoric” beforehand.
“The Democrats are posing as communists, but we know what they really are,” he said at the time. “They’re just tyrants, they’re tyrants. And so today, on January 6, we declare death to tyranny! Death to tyrants!”
“Shroyer helped create January 6,” the prosecutors wrote at the time. “Shroyer cannot light a fire near a can of gasoline and then express concern or disbelief when it explodes.”
Fortunately for Shroyer, the nightmare of his imprisonment and persecution by the Biden regime is over, at least for the time being. However, the fight for justice for the hundreds of other patriots who stood up against the fraudulent 2020 presidential election continues.
Matt Gaetz Questions AG Merrick Garland About Coordinated Lawfare
June 4, 2024 | Sundance
Congressman Matt Gaetz seemingly cuts across the UniParty grain at key moments; perhaps today is another example. The better part of good public questioning is not just what question is asked, but also how the question is asked.
The back-and-forth questioning does not need to be performative to be substantial, it only needs to express the same frame of mind that a viewer would have on the subject matter. If your gut has a sense about an issue and the questioner conveys that same gut-level sentiment honestly, it puts the person being questioned into a non-pretending corner.
AG Merrick Garland says it’s a “dangerous conspiracy theory” to allege that the Department of Justice is communicating with state and local prosecutions against Trump. But former senior DOJ official Matthew Colangelo was appointed Senior Counsel to District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office to “get Trump” – as detailed in Mark Pomerantz’s book. Congressman Matt Gaetz asks the non-pretending version of the questions. WATCH:
There should be no respect granted to a U.S Attorney General who disrespects the intelligence of the American people. They work for us, we should all focus on remembering that.
Dr. Phil on the Weapanization of the Goverment Against President Trump “If You Let Your Hatred for Donald Trump Compromise Your Ability to Find True North on Your Moral Compass, Shame on You”
By Margaret Flavin Jun. 4, 2024
On Thursday, June 6, “Dr. Phil Primetime” will air a special two-hour event featuring President Donald Trump.
The first hour will be a one-on-one candid interview between Dr. Phil McGraw and President Trump from Mar-a-Lago.
Following the interview, Dr. Phil will host a live town hall with his Dallas studio audience to discuss the interview, the recent trial, and the broader implications for America’s future.
Monday night’s show focused on how this conviction is a judicial travesty. Closing the episode, McGraw discussed his concerns about the weaponization of the government against President Trump and other political rivals of the current regime and the potentially catastrophic implications it has for democracy.
“I wanted to share my final thoughts about this.”
“This weaponization of our great institutions, the FBI, Justice Department, and individual states’ similar institutions, will lead to one of two outcomes. One is more of the same from the other side, tit for tat. That may seem deserved, but that is not the right way forward for America. The other is what I call on you to demand from your politicians today. An end to this craziness in order to save the soul and sanity of our country.”
“The Pope has actually given us the right approach in his new book when he says, ‘We are all brothers and sisters, and there must be no resentment among us. For any war to truly end, forgiveness is necessary.’ That is true of any war, including our current cultural war. We need our Justice Department to return to the business of meting out justice and not running the political agendas of those currently in power, blindly seeking convictions, warranted or otherwise, and attacking political opponents.”
“That requires a very few important things from each of you, from all of us. Finding your voice, forgiveness, and focus on the way forward. ‘Forgive them, for they know not what they do.’ Forgiveness, and at the same time requiring better.”
“We are not some Banana Republic for God’s sake.”
*****
“I don’t like what I see happening in our country.”
“I don’t like seeing the weaponization of our justice system, agencies, and powerful government actions, that frankly just make my skin crawl, for all of us and for my grandchildren. And let’s be honest, this is so not just about Trump.”
“If you let your hatred for Donald Trump compromise your ability to find true North on your moral compass, shame on you.”
Watch:
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