By Jeremiah Johnson

March 28, 2017 - The headlines are awash with recent tensions with North Korea, and most are focused intently upon this act of the play that has been running hot for several years now. Akin to the proverbial frog in cold water, however, we are not paying as much attention to the surveillance State that is continuing to wrap its tentacles around us. Eurasia is our ally, Eastasia is our enemy, and nobody notices that the chocolate ration has been diminished. While everyone focuses on what is reported in the headline news, everybody misses what is happening right before their eyes.

Point of Sale is the new jail, the ubiquitous surveillance system that records your every purchase and stores it in a personal database - an algorithm - in the government storage facility in Utah. Look above that register. It doesn’t matter whether you have a debit or credit purchase or not. Paying cash? Your anonymity only lasts until your image is captured in the little black dome camera right above your head right next to the register. The sale is recorded, as well as your image.

Now the biometrics are becoming advanced enough to be able to measure the spacing between your eyes, the shapes of the ears, and other idiosyncrasies that are peculiar to each individual. But these differences do not matter, as long as they can be catalogued. All the States pretty much have Real ID now, with driver’s licenses all linked into a central database and passed through the fusion centers and terrorist pig thug cop departments at local, state, and national level. 1984 is now.

Laws are not in place yet to prevent you from disguising yourself or altering your appearance. Yet. They do make it a crime to alter your appearance in the commission of a crime. The question becomes when do they make it a crime to vary from their THX-1138 program for us and keep them from recording you? Probably very soon.

It is an ongoing rollercoaster with each regime and the amount that each can push the peoples’ perceptions of what is intolerable. The political Party doesn’t matter, the surveillance State inches forward in increments: steadily and without respite. We are in a “slow” phase right now. President Donald Trump is “in,” and the people are riding the crest of their “newfound freedoms,” right? Not so fast. Bush, Jr. was certainly better than Clinton; however, his actions enabled the Warner Defense Act of 2006 and the abrogation of constitutional rights in that 100-mile buffer zone around the Continental Fascist Police States of Amerika. The USA PATRIOT Act had already been in place, and many refinements were made to alter limitations on presidential actions concerning disclosure on actions overt and covert initiated by the Commander-in-Chief.

Obama came in and took the driver’s seat, and took away so many more of our individual rights and protections that the staggering populace is just now beginning to realize exactly what he did. Those actions have not been negated, and may even be promulgated. Most of the limaceous public is unaware, because the handouts and entitlements keep them stultified and obedient to whatever politicians throw them the free Gaines Burgers.

The surveillance State is almost ubiquitous, and it has been made so through the efforts of our own complacencies.

Let us return to the point of sale. It isn’t simply for “inventory”. The main reason these corporations claim to store your demographics is for “marketing purposes,” but all of them are (at a minimum) “back-doored” by the NSA and other agencies that are scanning your information. They also have that cellular telephone to work with, the one that transmits a “pulse” every 4 seconds and stores information - metadata for large groups of people or geographic peculiarities - and personal information.

The happy cell phone is off and in your blazer, but it has sent a pulse out with your GPS location in front of Cabela’s. When you go in and buy the ammo, the camera records your image and there’s a tie-in with the real-time purchase on your receipt. You’re known. Your vehicle is known, your itinerary for the day is known. It is also recorded.

All your shopping habits, everywhere you drive, where you shop for gas, and stop for a coffee break. All the cameras are recording. In addition, our fellow citizens are always communicating with you and photographing things with their little cameras. All of your activities, all of your banking, your entire life’s actions are all right there for them to paint a picture of you and catalogue you for a later date - information stored and ready at their fingertips to access.

Edward Snowden spilled the beans concerning the surveillance that is becoming even more out of control. The satellites are being fine-tuned and honed, and it is occurring all over the world. Whole generations are being taught to conform now, while they are in their youth - in the schools that are merely cages where children are taught only what they need to be functional. Children are made into obedient little beasts of conformity that can be controlled later by those with power and money who were schooled to think creatively and to actually think instead of regurgitating useless bits of information.

The funding for all these actions come right from your taxes. You pay our jailers to create larger, more ingenious prisons to control us. Eventually come the chains for the ankles, and the abattoir materializes. There is less of a gap between total surveillance and Soylent Green than most people realize.

This stuff is happening now. Just because we are rid of Obama does not mean we are rid of the globalist agenda and the transformation of our nation into a complete surveillance State. It is almost in place. Almost. The important thing is to know about it and not be lulled into a false sense of security that all is well, when it is not. It hasn’t happened yet, but “yet” can mean that it happens tomorrow. It is going to depend on us seeing it for what it is, and refusing to go “gently into that good night”.

Jeremiah Johnson is the nom de plume of a retired Green Beret of the United States Army Special Forces (Airborne). Mr. Johnson is also a Gunsmith, a Certified Master Herbalist, a Montana Master Food Preserver, and a graduate of the U.S. Army’s SERE school (Survival Evasion Resistance Escape). He lives in a cabin in the mountains of Western Montana with his wife and three cats. You can follow Jeremiah’s regular writings at SHTFplan.com.