Surviving The Digital Dragnet

Privacy is on the ropes. And governments are working flat out to make sure that we have no privacy at all. Total surveillance at all times seems to be the short-term goal. Enslavement to the wishes of government is the end game. The key for individuals is to explore ways to preserve privacy and avoid the government net. That may be one of the most important crisis survival techniques in the years ahead.

This is not a new state of affairs. Governments have always wanted to control opinions of their citizens and the availability of information to the public. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is intended to prevent this abuse but the fact that the amendment was considered necessary shows that the censorship impulse was not far below the surface even in the early days of the United States.

Abuses Are Escalating

Here’s a litany of recent government abuses, intrusions on free speech and attempts at censorship:

• The most audacious attack on free speech is the pursuit of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). These are being pushed on the basis that digital payments are more convenient, faster, cheaper and more reliable than cash, credit cards or debit cards. There’s some truth in those claims but they are just a façade for the real purpose. Once governments have CDBCs, they will know how you spend your money – what books you buy, what charities you support, what candidates you donate to, what shows you see and much more. With that information and artificial intelligence (AI) it’s easy to profile you and determine if you are an enemy of the people as Joe Biden labeled MAGA supporters. Those who are deemed political enemies can expect tax audits, search warrants aimed at them, and eventual arrest. It also a short step to ban the sales of guns, ammunition and other goods by disabling the digital payments of those deemed enemies of neo-Marxist Democrats and progressives.
• George Galloway, an outspoken UK politician and public intellectual was arrested at Heathrow Airport when he returned to the UK days ago. He was told that he wasn’t accused of a crime but he was not free to go. The London police took his mobile phone and other electronic devices. No doubt they downloaded the contents. This was an effort to identify his contacts and correspondents so they could be subject to illegal surveillance and harassment also.
• The UK government and other governments around the world are trying to impose digital ID cards on all citizens. These would contain extensive personal information and would be required to be presented for boarding trains and planes, buying tickets, attending sporting events and concerts or even routine shopping. The government could disable your digital ID as required to prevent you from moving about freely and pursuing everyday activities.
• The World Health Organization (WHO), a UN organization effectively controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is pushing a global digital health ID card. This could be used to stop freedom of movement or international travel for those who do not take mandated vaccines.
• The U.S. “Quiet Skies” program was supposed to be an anti-terrorist watch list program to keep suspected terrorists off flights. Under Biden, it morphed into a way to punish political enemies by putting them on watch lists even though there was no indication of any terrorist activity at all. As an extreme example, Tulsi Gabbard was placed on a Quiet Skies watchlist. Today she is Director of National Intelligence and is working hard to reform this program.
• There has been extensive abuse of emergency powers by politicians trying to dictate to citizens. Some emergencies are real such as natural disasters, chemical spills and extreme weather. But other emergencies are invented to give politicians an excuse to intervene in markets. The New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Mikie Sherrill wants to declare a “State of Emergency” in response to high electricity prices in New Jersey. Her solution will no doubt include price controls that will make matters worse. The point is that emergencies are being declared to give unwarranted power to politicians.

What’s happening now (and getting worse) is a continuation of the attacks on free speech and the wave of censorship that swept over the country before and during the pandemic.

How To Escape the Surveillance State

To be clear, surveillance is pervasive and it’s difficult to identify a space that’s not being filmed due to home security systems, door cams, body cams and the rest. Of course, your internet message traffic is continually recorded and stored by the major tech companies and the National Security Agency (NSA). Still, there are some easy measures you can take to escape the digital dragnet:

Use cash. Intelligence agencies use credit card payments and online payments to track the whereabouts of targets. Cash is easy to use and non-digital so it cannot be traced. It’s one way out of digital tracking.

Use Faraday sacks. One of the most pervasive ways that you are tracked is by the GPS and cell tower signals coming from your mobile phone. Even turning the phone off does not limit the signal. A Faraday sack is a leather or synthetic pouch lined with metallic fabric that blocks electronic signals. If you turn your iPhone, iPad and laptop off and store them in Faraday sacks during travel, your digital trail will go cold.

Get an old car. Either buy an old car (twenty years old or older) or keep the one you have. New cars are loaded with the same digital signaling devices contained in your mobile phone. Older cars don’t have these. When you drive in an old car, you are not a mobile signaling device letting the government track you down.

Keep off the interstate highways. The interstate highways, bridges and state turnpikes are likely to have digital toll systems. Those systems don’t only collect tolls; they photograph your vehicle and license plate. There’s no way around this if you’re on those major throughways. But the country has a network of U.S. Highways (developed in the 1920s and later before the interstate highway system) and state highways that do not collect tolls. This means they have fewer surveillance checkpoints in place.

Reduce license plate exposure. A related technique to keeping off interstate highways is to remove the front license plate from your car. Some states require it, some don’t. Check local law, but most cops don’t care as long as you have the rear license plate mounted. There are also license plate holders that have an opaque plastic cover. Cops can read the license plate at close range, but many surveillance cameras can’t get a clear view from camera distance.

Other techniques include rejecting cookies on new websites, not using any more apps than completely necessary, using taxis instead of UBER, and taking the train or bus instead of flying when you can.

No one of these techniques is a complete answer to digital surveillance. But such surveillance systems rely on large aggregates of data combined with artificial intelligence (AI) to profile you. The less information you hand over, the more difficult it is to complete the profile.

Good luck avoiding the digital dragnet. It’s not possible to avoid it entirely but every little bit helps.