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“I know the capability that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.”—Senator Frank Church on Meet The Press, 1975
If you give the government an inch, it will always take a mile.
This is how the slippery slope to all-out persecution starts.
Martin Niemöller’s warning about the widening net that ensnares us all, a warning issued in response to the threat posed by Nazi Germany’s fascist regime, still applies.
“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
This particular slippery slope has to do with the government’s use of geofence technology, which uses cell phone location data to identify people who are in a particular area at any given time.
First, police began using geofence warrants to carry out dragnet sweeps of individuals near a crime scene.
Then the FBI used geofence warrants to identify individuals who were in the vicinity of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
It wasn’t long before government officials in California used cell phone and geofence data to track the number and movements of churchgoers on church grounds during the COVID-19 lockdowns.
If we’ve already reached the point where people praying and gathering on church grounds merits this level of government scrutiny and sanctions, we’re not too far from free-falling into a total surveillance state.
Dragnet geofence surveillance sweeps can and eventually will be used to target as a suspect every person in any given place at any given time and sweep them up into a never-ending virtual line-up in the hopes of matching a criminal to every crime.
There really can be no overstating the danger.
The government’s efforts to round up those who took part in the Jan. 6 Capitol protests provided a glimpse of exactly how vulnerable we all are to the menace of a surveillance state that aspires to a God-like awareness of our lives.
Relying on selfies, social media posts, location data, geotagged photos, facial recognition, surveillance cameras and crowdsourcing, government agents compiled a massive data trove on anyone and everyone who may have been anywhere in the vicinity of the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Read More: Whitehead: First, They Spied On Protesters. Then Churches. You’re Next…
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