This story leaped out at me as I read my morning copy of the USA Today a few days ago. Some readers had the same response as several emailed me the first link. This is an important development, and all readers should realize this new technology exists. For two years, the US Marshals Service and the FBI have been using a technology that allows its agents to “see” people inside a house and what they are doing. This motion-detection technology is so sensitive that it can even detect as slight a movement as breathing. If it can detect as tiny a movement as that, it can surely also “see” people going to the bathroom or engaging in any kind of intimate behavior inside their homes. What a blackmail tool this would be! Up to 50 US police forces now also have bought this technology. The hand-held devices that can perform such sensitive surveillance can be bought for as little as $6000. Now that the technology has been revealed, I’m sure it is only a matter of time until the blueprints for this device are stolen and foreign intelligence agencies, drug lords, etc. also have this same technology. Possession of this type of device needs to be licensed to a “need to use” basis only.
Amazingly, awareness of this snooping technology has been largely concealed from both the US Judiciary and the US Congress. Only recently was the existence of this technology made known as part of a legal case in Colorado. This technology was first used by the US military abroad, where it would be invaluable in house-to-house fighting situations, hostage retrieval missions, etc. However, its use by the US federal government against American citizens has created an understandable firestorm of objections. As the first link notes, “The US Supreme Court ruled in 2001 that the Constitution generally bars police from scanning the outside of a house with a thermal camera unless they have a warrant, and specifically noted that the rule would apply to radar-based systems that were then being developed” (emphasis added). This story obviously begs the question: How many times have federal agents or police officers used this technology without a warrant? This technology clearly runs roughshod over the 4th Amendment of the US Constitution unless a search warrant exists that was granted after the presentation of a “probable cause” necessity to a Judge. As the first link observes, how could this technology have been deployed “without public scrutiny?”
Apparently, the “public scrutiny” will now come. The second link reports that the deployment of this snooping technology vs. Americans in domestic use without warrants has angered two key US senators. Senator Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and Senator Leahy, ranking minority member of that committee, have signed a letter to US Attorney General Holder objecting to the use of the technology. They are not the only ones objecting to the use of this technology. The Judges in a federal Appeals Court in Colorado also noted that the use of this snooping tool “poses grave Fourth Amendment questions,” according to the second link’s story. Apparently, Attorney General Holder had no qualms about running roughshod over the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution in cases where this technology was used by federal agents without a warrant.
Don’t get me wrong. I can see that this technology would be invaluable in some federal or local law enforcement circumstances: rescuing a kidnapped victim or victims, locating homeless people in an abandoned building to get them to a heated shelter, watching the members of any “sleeper cell” that may be assembling bombs or conducting activities pursuant to a planned terrorist attack, etc. However, in all circumstances, the law enforcement agencies should get search warrants from a local judge before using this very invasive technology. In such legitimate circumstances, I’m sure any judge will give that permission. Indeed, warrants should be obtained for the legal protection of the officers or agents themselves. Without such a warrant, officers or agents using this technology will be vulnerable to civil lawsuits for violating people’s rights without due cause or legal due process.
It is truly amazing how technology is advancing so rapidly that it has outpaced the legal framework for using it. Since this technology was being used for two years vs. Americans in domestic applications without anyone knowing about it, it makes one wonder how many other snooping technologies are also being used already that have not yet come to the attention of the Congress, the courts or the people.
Revelation 13:11-17 prophesies that in the latter days, technology would be so far advanced that a global currency or money system could be systemically implemented that “no man [or woman] might buy or sell” without it. In this prophecy, the Bible anticipated the invention of the Internet and all its attendant social media and shopping applications. Without the Internet and the proliferation of electronic media of all kinds, this prophecy could not have been fulfilled. Furthermore, if technology was prophesied to be that far advanced in the economic/currency arena, it is logical that surveillance and control technologies would be invented/implemented for all other forms of human activities as well. The prophesied “beast” system to emerge in the future will certainly utilize all these new spying and monitoring technologies to implement wall-to-wall surveillance and/or control of the global populations of all nations. However, the plans of the beast power may be severely limited by the powers of the Two Witnesses when they come on the world scene with what sound like unlimited powers delegated to them by God himself (Revelation 11:5-6). The Two Witnesses may order the “beast” system of global government to dump illegally-gathered data on all people, stop using spying technology except for legitimate law enforcement reasons, etc. That will really anger the control freaks who will be drawn to the beast system’s bureaucracy. As Revelation 11:3-6 prophesies, the Two Witnesses will have power to plague anyone they want, whenever they want during their prophesied ministry of 1260 days. After the first few plagues hit the intended targets of the Two Witnesses and after troops or operatives sent to kill them get Divinely vaporized (Revelation 11:5), I think the governments will start listening to the Two Witnesses when they give orders to the nations and peoples all around the world. Indeed, this begs the question: How interventionist will the Two Witnesses be? We don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see. I do feel safe in making one prediction: The more the Two Witnesses are angered by their enemies, the more “interventionist” they will become.
- http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/01/19/police-radar-see-through-walls/22007615/
- http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/01/22/police-radar-leahy-grassley-letter-holder/22172597/
