Rapidly advancing surveillance technology has allowed law enforcement at every level to conduct continuous, blanket surveillance of innocent American citizens. We don’t even notice it when they scan our license plate, search biometric databases that contain our image, or make use of the many other spy tools at their disposal. The fact that we don’t notice it is the insidious aspect of it. The Electronic Frontier Foundation points to a story of police conducting mass, dragnet-style surveillance of a popular, California gun show. The cops scanned license plates and ran them through a database, and all without the attendees aware that it was happening. There’s really no regulation on the books tying the hands of law enforcement in matters of mass surveillance, but there should be. A massive surveillance infrastructure is being built in the shadows, and it will soon contain the high-resolution images, history, and daily movements of every US citizen.
