shh...i'm busy watching my neighbor

BROOKINGS: COMING SOON, UBIQUITOUS PRECRIME SURVEILLANCE
According to a report released by the Brookings Institution's Center for Technological Innovation Dec. 14, the technology will soon exist to make possible the ubiquitous surveillance of anyone--and everyone. 

Every phone call, instant message, email, social media interaction, text message, movements of people and vehicles, and public surveillance video will be stored. 

``For example, if an anti-regime demonstrator previously unknown to security services is arrested, it will be possible to go back in time to scrutinize the demonstrator's phone conversations, automobile travels, and the people he or she met in the months and even years leading up to the arrest,'' according to the report written by John Villasenor, a senior fellow at Brookings and a professor of electrical engineering at UCLA.

``These enormous databases of captured information will create what amounts to a surveillance time machine.... This will fundamentally change the dynamics of dissent, insurgency and revolution,'' the report says.

Couched in almost value-free terms, the report, ``Recording Everything: Digital Storage as an Enabler of Authoritarian Government,'' ignores the implications for the domestic United States, its Declaration of Independence, and its obliterated Constitution and Bill of Rights. 

Instead, it says, ``The coming era of ubiquitous surveillance in authoritarian countries has important implications for American foreign policy. 

Strategies for engaging with these countries will benefit from specific consideration of the presence, growth and increasing impact of these enormous digital databases. 

This will impact human rights, trade, export control, intellectual property security, and the operation of multinational businesses with in-country facilities, subsidiaries, or subcontractors. ''

The full report is available at http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/rc/papers/2011/1214_ digital_storage_villasenor/1214_digital_storage_villasenor.pdf