Posted by Kevin Carson
Stratfor internal documents posted on Wikileaks reveal that
Abraxas corporation — a security state contractor with close ties to the
spooks at the US National Security Agency — has developed a software
system networking countless public surveillance cameras with a facial
recognition database.
Meanwhile, the NSA is building a gargantuan data-crunching facility — the Utah
Data Center
— that it expects to become operational in 2013: “Flowing through its
servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all
forms of communication, including the complete contents of private
emails,
cell phone calls,
and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data
trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and
other digital ‘pocket litter.’”
Civil libertarian reactions to this stuff consist mainly — and quite
understandably — of horror at the newly augmented power of the automated
police state. In terms of the state’s intent and its legal figleaves
for justifying it, this is obviously yet another step in America’s slide
into full-blown security state authoritarianism a la the movie
“Brazil.”
