Orwellian World: Part Trois

By William R. Toler

Even working in the news industry, I still seem to miss big stories.

If it wasn’t for Infowars.com, I never would have seen a story out of my home state about spying streetlights.

I was planning to write another post about how we’re heading toward the world of George Orwell’s 1984, citing the Emergency Alert System test held earlier this month, but other developments of intrusion were brought to my attention which I feel compelled to share.

FOX Charlotte reported earlier this month that new, high-tech streetlights known as Intellistreets could soon be spying on us as we stroll through some of our bigger cities, including Detroit and the Queen City. ABC-7 reports that the lights are able to “provide entertainment, save energy, make announcements, and even counts people for police.” Even more frightening is that they can take pictures and record conversations.

Now, while I support the notion that there is no real expectation of privacy in public places (for First Amendment reasons), we shouldn’t have the government spying on us in a free society.

Despite concerns from privacy advocates and those fearing Big Brother tactics, the company issued a press release to try and make us feel better.

In its fullest form, Intellistreets also includes the collection and reporting of information immediately and completely so that first responders (police, fire and EMS) can react very quickly in moments of danger for an individual or an entire community; and, in other cases, pedestrian and vehicular traffic can be safely routed away from danger in an orderly manner.

That’s why we proudly reached out to the Department of Homeland Security to share our technology. DHS needs American entrepreneurs to develop the technologies that can better keep our citizens safe. Importantly, DHS is intrigued by Intellistreets’ potential. They see the tremendous opportunity to add a level of safety and security into our public environments utilizing infrastructure that already exists. To date, no funding from the DHS has been either offered or accepted by us.

Again, more propoganda trading liberty for a little bit of alleged safety.

Across the country in the Lonestar State, police are using drones similar to those employed in our several wars…right here at home. The drones are not only capable of survellience, but may also be equiped with tasers or grenade launchers.

As mentioned earlier, the government attempted to break into all radio and television broadcasts this month to test out the Emergency Alert System, a way to bring up-to-date information during emergency situations, including hurricanes and dreaded terror attacks.

But, thankfully that test didn’t go very well.

When I first heard about plans for the test and the system, it cojured more images from 1984, reminding us that we’ve always been at war with Eurasia and it’s time for the two-minute hate.

If you havn’t read Orwell’s book, I think you should. You’d probably be surprised at how life is imitating art.