Panopticon

Don't you dare say or do anything against the state, you are always being watched. m/r

The Surveillance State Isn't Coming—It's Already Here - Reason.com

The national Panopticon is a messy work in progress, but it's already in place.

J.D. Tuccille | July 3, 2013

For weeks, headlines have trumpeted revelations about the National Security Agency's tracking of Internet traffic and phone communications and the secretive rubber-stamp court intended to provide us some illusion that our privacy and civil liberties are being respected, but whichapproves virtually every domestic spy scheme it reviews. It's almost... almost like we live in a surveillance state, we stammer as we blink at the brave new world revealed around us. But there's no "almost" about it; from the CIA spying through local cops, to FBI snooping through driver's license databases, to police departments tracking your movements with license-plate scanners, the NSA is only one part of the growing, unfinished, but very real surveillance state that the United States has become.

If intention automatically manifested itself in the real world, we'd already be living in the Panopticon. There's little doubt that many government officials lust after scrutiny and control. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-The Bunker) famously told reporters, "If I thought censoring the mail was necessary, I would suggest it." Graham's soulmate, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Deeper in the Bunker), joined other lawmakers in calling Edward Snowden's revelations about NSA snooping "treason." And, even as the NSA revelations unfolded, FBI Director Robert Mueller complained to the Senate Judiciary Committee that "there is a growing gap between law enforcement’s legal authority to conduct electronic surveillance, and its ability to conduct such surveillance" and asked for enhancements to the Bureau's already vast snooping capabilities—just two years after the FBI unilaterally revised its Domestic Investigations and Operation Guide to loosen restraints on intelligence-gathering.

Among the FBI's most powerful surveillance tools have beennational security letters,  ...

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