Big Profits from Big Brother
Pastor Dale Morgan
Big Profits from Big Brother*
Apr 15th, 2007 8:23 AM
BAE's Onboard Threat Detection System
April 15, 2007
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
The War on Terror is a marketing campaign for security industries and
terrorism experts. The latter are pulling in the consulting fees, and
the former are rapidly inventing new products that enable "our"
government to watch our every move and to know our location at every moment.
Although it should be working on its corporate ethics, BAE Systems is
working on an "Onboard Threat Detection System." The system consists of
tiny cameras and microphones implanted in airline seats. The Onboard
Threat Detection System records every facial expression and every
whisper of every passenger, allowing watchful eyes and ears to detect
terrorists before they can strike. BAE says its system is so
sophisticated that it can differentiate between nervous flyers and real
terrorists.
Think about this for a moment. Aside from the Big Brother aspect, the
Onboard Threat Detection System is either redundant or the security
authorities have no confidence in the expensive and intrusive airport
security through which passengers are herded.
We have reached the point where we can no longer fly with more than
three ounces of lotions, shampoo, toothpaste, and deodorants, because
the government pretends that we might concoct a bomb out of the
ingredients. Three ounces of shampoo is safe, but three and one-half
ounces blows the airliner to smitherins.
We must shed coats, shoes, and belts to pass through airport security.
We are wanded and patted down. Luggage is X-rayed and searched. IDs and
boarding passes are endlessly checked as we proceed from check-in to
gate. And we still need an Onboard Threat Detection System to monitor
our expressions and words.
Other firms are developing chip implants that identify a person to
scanning machines and allow our movements to be monitored by GPS
systems. Still others are developing ID cards that have retina scans and
our DNA. No doubt we will be required to have both.
All of this is to protect us from terrorists.
No thought is given to whether the intrusion from the protection is a
greater threat than possible terrorist acts by foreigners protesting
American hegemony over their own lives. If American hegemony has this
big a price, I can do without it.
Some of us remember when it was possible to read a book in an airport
while waiting on a flight. Today it can't be done without ear plugs. TVs
blaring the latest propaganda compete with incessant repetitive
terrorist warnings interrupted by announcements of flight cancellations
and gate changes. The cacophony of sound is maddening. If only we could
go back to the days of crying babies and screaming children.
Once a terrorist warning is produced, it lives forever. Every US airport
endlessly plays the same ancient warning from decades ago instructing
passengers to carefully watch their luggage and not to accept items from
other people to carry aboard flights. This warning dates from
pre-security days when the explosion of an airliner in flight was blamed
on a passenger accepting a parcel from a stranger to carry to a person
waiting at the flight's destination. Allegedly, the parcel was a bomb.
To hear this warning today thirty or forty times after passing through
security makes a person wonder about the efficiency of airport security.
Were all those warrantless searches pointless?
The greatest problem confronted by marketers of anti-terrorist products
is the shortage of terrorist attacks. The only terrorist events
Americans have experienced are the attacks on the World Trade Center and
the Pentagon. As for 9/11, we still don't have a good explanation of how
so much security failed in one morning.
To prime the market for anti-terrorism products, the Bush administration
used 9/11 to invade Afghanistan and Iraq. The Bush administration has
been attempting to occupy both countries for several years at a cost to
taxpayers estimated at 1,000 billion dollars.
The main result of the military action has been to stir up resentment
among Muslims in the hopes that the resentment will find expression in
terrorist acts in the US. We have been made less safe in order that
entrepreneurs can make big bucks protecting us with new security
products. It would have been much better just to give the 1,000 billion
dollars to the security firms and not invaded the two countries.
Keep that in mind when you are being monitored in your airliner seat and
are blinking too much because you still wear the old hard contact lenses
or are suffering from allergies. Excessive blinking is a telltale sign
of stress and means that the blinker is about to commit a terrorist act.
When you are arrested don't bother arguing with the foolproof Onboard
Threat Detection System. Just be thankful that your senators and
representative received enough campaign donations from security firms to
be concerned with your security.