I recommend to readers this link which is a Fox News video segment about the FBI’s fleet of spy planes which have been deployed over American cities. The report indicates that FBI spy planes have been deployed over a number of US cities so far, and the segment includes a map showing which cities are known to be on the list. Readers can check the list to see if your city is already on that list.
Curiously, the report states that the FBI has used 90 planes for about 115 known flights, which would be terribly cost-ineffective as that works out to an average of less than 1 and 1/2 flights per plane (unless this is the number of flights over a selected and limited period of time). The planes are reported to be Cessnas with extensive aerials and antennae so they can capture targeted video or cell phone signals. With that specialized electronic equipment, they should stand out at all airports wherever they land and take off. The report further indicates the FBI operates these spy planes via “shell companies” which are not registered to the FBI, obviously. However, the report shows one of the planes and it includes a plane registry number, which I’m sure many aviation aficionados have already checked appropriate lists to see what airplane company this particular plane is registered to.
Unlike reports that the NSA is capturing only the number of calls made between American phone numbers and the durations of such calls, this report infers that the FBI is actually listening to the content of cell phone or videophone calls. As long as the FBI has obtained search warrants from judges and demonstrated “probable cause” to judges for those search warrants, that doesn’t bother me. We, as citizens of the USA, want federal agencies to be able to obtain search warrant to help catch terrorists, drug dealers, kidnappers, monitor rioting and looting, etc. as that is part of their law enforcement duties. However, it is troublesome that the Fox News story indicates that the FBI doesn’t always obtain search warrants for using these spy planes. We do want federal agencies to perform their duties in a legal manner with necessary search warrants.
It is striking what surveillance societies the USA and other western nations are becoming. It seems like nothing is secret or private any longer. Biblically, this is a logical prelude to what is prophesied in Revelation 13:16-18 to come to pass in the latter days. It foretells that an eventual “beast” power will use very extensive databases and electronic capabilities of all kinds to be able to not only monitor, but control, the financial activities of every financial transaction on earth. This prophecy may imply that we will eventually have a global cashless society to make this possible, but it is hard to envision absolutely all financial activities being subject to the beast’s scrutiny. There are so many backward, primitive and aboriginal regions around the earth where barter is the basis of commercial activity that I think the Revelation 13 prophecy likely applies only to all electronic transactions in the developed world. I doubt that even the beast power will care if two aborigines in, for example, the Amazon Basin trade some fish for an animal skin between two parties. We want to keep the prophecy in Revelation 13 in context, and not apply it on too vast a scale.
What is clear is that electronic capabilities and databases are being established and built that will be used by the global beast power when it is established on the earth. It will be an ultimate “Big Brother” society that none of us likely look forward to seeing happen. On the other hand, the beast power’s surveillance society may be so electronically based that it is largely unobtrusive and barely noticed under most conditions. Who knows, maybe we are almost to such a state of affairs already.
