Free Talk Live

You know, the reason “Big Brother Is Watching” is such a famous phrase is because it used to be viewed as paranoid fear mongering to suggest that the government would use some kind of high tech surveillance equipment to monitor the entire population. The book 1984 was viewed as beyond the pale, an impossibility that the American people would never tolerate.

Surveillance Society: New High-Tech Cameras Are Watching You
In the era of computer-controlled surveillance, your every move could be captured by cameras, whether you're shopping in the grocery store or driving on the freeway. Proponents say it will keep us safe, but at what cost?

Read more: Surveillance Society: New High-Tech Cameras Are Watching You - Popular Mechanics

TrapWire is a massive and technologically advanced surveillance system that has the capacity to keep nearly the entire population of this country under the watchful eye of government 24 hours a day. Using this network of cameras and other surveillance tools, the federal government is rapidly constructing an impenetrable, inescapable theater of surveillance, most of which is going unnoticed by Americans and unreported by the mainstream media.

Ten Years Later: Surveillance in the "Homeland"

A joint project between Truthout.org and ACLU

Ten years after the devastating attacks on New York and Washington, the fundamental promises of American democracy are hanging by a thin thread. Promoted by a culture of war and fear, the US government has steadily chipped away at those legal protections that enabled 'we the people' to rule ourselves. "Ten Years Later: Surveillance in the Homeland" charts the course of this shift, exposing the rapid advent of a technologically advanced surveillance state in the shadows of the Twin Towers.

A crowd-sourced mapping project to document the locations of surveillance camera! I can see this page being a VERY useful tool.

This winter, the Air Force is set to deploy to Afghanistan what it says is a revolutionary airborne surveillance system called Gorgon Stare, which will be able to transmit live video images of physical movement across an entire town.

The system, made up of nine video cameras mounted on a remotely piloted aircraft, can transmit live images to soldiers on the ground or to analysts tracking enemy movements. It can send up to 65 different images to different users; by contrast, Air Force drones today shoot video from a single camera over a "soda straw" area the size of a building or two.

The latest round of documents published by Wikileaks offers a rare glimpse into the world of surveillance products. The collection—which Wikileaks calls the Spy Files—includes confidential brochures and slide presentations that companies use to market intrusive surveillance tools to governments and law enforcement agencies... The group says that these files are only the first set of a larger collection and that more will be published in the future.

NYPD unveils new high-tech crime tracking system. Each camera can detect consumption of 16 oz. sugary sodas, salt, cigarettes and/or baby formula within a half-mile radius. "We are not your mom and pop's police department anymore," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said describing the Domain Awareness System for reporters. "We are leading the pack."

Military drones are already used to survey the border between the US and Mexico, but starting last week, another piece of military technology has made its way back home. The latest surveillance tool to be picked up by the Department of Homeland Security is the Kestrel wide-area camera system, which can capture miles of terrain in a single high-resolution image. The system was originally used in Afghanistan, where it watched perimeters and took pictures of insurgents at bomb emplacements.