Increasing Authoritarianism
In the Land of the Free

In the past several weeks, in fact, we have noted three significant new expressions in the United States:

1. Secret GPS Installations Upheld

On August 25, Time Magazine reported on a recent ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals that applies to California and eight other Western states. With no need for a search warrant or to inform vehicle owners, “Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go,” the magazine reported.

One dissenting judge wrote, “1984 may have come a bit later than predicted, but it's here at last.”

2. Mobile Airport-Style X-Ray Machines See Inside Cars

In his May study on authoritarianism, Alan Hall warned:

A single successful U.S. car bomb or improvised explosive device (IED) would expand airport-like security measures to a far broader landscape. The Department of Defense is already preparing for this eventuality.

Our forecast is coming to pass even despite the absence of such an attack. According to Forbes magazine on August 24, a Massachusetts company has sold U.S. and foreign government agencies:

… more than 500 backscatter X-ray scanners mounted in vans that can be driven past neighboring vehicles to see their contents … . Law enforcement agencies have also deployed the vans to search for vehicle-based bombs in the U.S.

The executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center calls the surveillance vans “one of the most intrusive technologies conceivable.”

3. Document Checks Well Inside the Northern Border

Fearful, xenophobic societies do their best to secure their perimeters—often at the expense of freedoms formerly held dear. On August 30, The New York Times reported a dramatic increase in U.S. Border Patrol transportation checks miles inside the United States’ northern border. The article describes increasing surveillance on a Chicago-to-New York City train—even though that train never crosses into Canada:

Armed Border Patrol agents routinely board the train, question passengers about their citizenship and take away noncitizens who cannot produce satisfactory immigration papers.

A University of Rochester international services director “whose foreign students, scholars and parents have been questioned and jailed” says, “It’s turned into a police state on the northern border … . It’s essentially become an internal document check.”

Socionomics saw this coming long ago. A list of prescient forecasts in the October 2003 Elliott Wave Theorist included these items:

“The U.S. will increase restrictions on immigration … . The U.S. will require internal travel papers.”

National Geographic’s Border Wars television series chronicles U.S. surveillance and control efforts along the U.S. Mexico border. Critics say the series sensationalizes the immigration problem and that advertisements “all work to invoke fear and reinforce stereotypes associated with immigrants." It is a resonant message in America today; the premiere episode scored the highest ratings in the history of the channel. Only a few years ago the National Geographic Channel kept its focus squarely on the Earth’s beauty and the diversity of its cultures. What a shift in values has been wrought by the long-term change in trend for social mood.