You Are Being Watched
Now playing, The Circle (trailer above) is a gripping modern thriller, set in the not-too-distant future, starring Emma Watson (“Harry Potter”), Tom Hanks (“Sully”) and John Boyega (“Star Wars: The Force Awakens”).
When Mae (Emma Watson) is hired to work for the world’s largest and most powerful tech & social media company, she sees it as an opportunity of a lifetime.
As she rises through the ranks, she is encouraged by the company’s founder, Eamon Bailey (Tom Hanks), to engage in a groundbreaking experiment that pushes the boundaries of privacy, ethics and ultimately her personal freedom.
Her participation in the experiment, and every decision she makes begin to affect the lives and future of her friends, family and that of humanity.
On a very related note, here’s the start of a very informative article from ZeroHedge.com:
The headlines are awash with the recent tensions with North Korea, and most are focused intently upon this act of the play that has been running hot for several years, now. Akin to the proverbial frog in cold water, however, we are not paying as much attention to the surveillance state that is continuing to wrap its tentacles around us. Eurasia is our ally, Eastasia is our enemy…and nobody notices that the chocolate ration has been diminished. While everyone focuses on what is reported in the headline news, everybody misses what is happening right before their eyes.
Point of Sale is the new jail, the ubiquitous surveillance system that records your every purchase and stores it in a personal database…an algorithm…in the government storage facility in Utah. Look above that register. It doesn’t matter whether you have a debit or credit purchase or not. Paying cash? Your anonymity only lasts until your image is captured in the little black dome camera right above your head…right next to the register. The sale is recorded, as well as your image.
Now the biometrics are becoming advanced enough to be able to measure the spacing between your eyes, the shapes of the ears, and other idiosyncrasies that are peculiar to each individual. But these differences do not matter, as long as they can be catalogued. All the states pretty much have Real ID, now, with driver’s licenses all linked into a central database and passed through the fusion centers and police departments at local, state, and national level. 1984 is now.
Here is an excerpt from the Passports page of the State Department of January 12, 2016:
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced Friday that Real ID-compliant identification, such as a passport or a driver’s license from a Real ID-compliant state, will not be required to fly domestically until 2018.
Yes, this is serious. Laws are not in place yet to prevent you from disguising yourself or altering your appearance. Yet. They do make it a crime to alter your appearance in the commission of a crime. The question becomes when do they make it a crime to vary from their THX-1138 program for us and keep them from recording you?