Written: 12/18/2002
Published in The People’s Civic Record, a monthly, Wilmington, NC based progressive magazine.
According to President Bush the “war on terrorism” is supposed to last many years and most of it will take place in secret. The government will tell us all we need to know. There is no objective end in sight. Everyone seems to be willing to give up certain liberties if need be….
The U.S.A. Patriot Act, hastily passed shortly after 9-11-01, and certain executive orders, allows the government to monitor religious and political institutions or federal prison jailhouse conversations between attorneys and clients. It allows the government to search and seize your papers and effects without probable cause. It allows the government to jail you indefinitely without a trial, without right to legal representation, without being charged, or without being able to confront witnesses against you.
Now, there is a new office in the Defense Department’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. It is called the Information Awareness Office and it is charged with creating “Total Information Awareness” about every U.S. citizen….
This office is headed by John Poindexter, the man behind the illegal Iran-Contra affair under President Reagan. The stated purpose of assembling this “virtual, centralized grand database” of information is to increase the chance of spotting potential terrorists before they act.
The database will include your passport, driver’s license, credit card purchases, e-mails, website visits, medical prescriptions, travel records, academic records, court records, toll booth records, bank deposits….
The logo for this new department is the all-seeing eye over the pyramid in the reverse of the Great Seal of the United States looking out over the earth. The Latin below it reads; “Scientia Est Potentia” (Knowledge is Power).
According to their site; “the most serious asymmetric threat facing the United States is terrorism, a threat characterized by collections of people loosely organized in shadowy networks that are difficult to identify and define.”
Considering this statement, it is interesting that they would pick a logo which has so often been associated with the Illuminati and whose initials; I.A.O. have a meaning in Aleister Crowley’s mysticism. Not to mention the obvious similarities to George Orwell’s book, 1984, which included the all-seeing eyes of Big Brother, watching out over the populous, protecting them from a “vast shadowy army, an underground network of conspirators dedicated to the overthrow of the State.”
Freedom of movement has been restricted with increased security checks. Public spaces are being taken over with camera surveillance. The possibility of requiring all citizens to obtain a National Identity Card is being discussed….
We are conducting a war to have peace. We are sacrificing freedom for security. And the ignorance of the public about what is going on, gives us the strength to defend our country…
“War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength” are looking more and more like slogans we could adopt for the duration – or maybe beyond….
As we rush to our telescreens (computers) where Big Brother may be watching, we are not sure exactly who we are at war with this week because the “Enemy of the People” keeps changing. The war involves “mostly highly trained specialists,” the fighting “takes place on vague frontiers” and, if we incur “the displeasure of the Party,” we might get “disappeared” and no one will know what happened to us….
“Of course we can’t afford to take chances,” agreed Winston dutifully.
“What I mean to say, there is a war on,” said Parsons.
It looks like 1984 came a little later than expected.
UPDATE #1: The website for the Information Awareness Office has removed the biographies of those assigned to this office and removed the logo as it is rendered above. The logo, can still be found there – smaller and in a slightly altered form – if you look closely at some of the images explaining how the department gathers information.
UPDATE #2: The Total Information Awareness Office has changed its name to Terrorist Information Awareness and claims that it will not gather information on U.S. citizens and their site now has a new look, which included a change in the logo. These actions may be a result of pressure from Congress and civil liberties groups and may only have driven it underground. It seems that while DARPA may be backing off tracking citizens through its Total Information Awareness Office, it has started a new program called LifeLog which plans to pick up where the Total Information Awareness Office left off.
UPDATE #3: John Poindexter resigns.