Quote Originally Posted by Hanna View Post
Wow, that's brutal! And yes, I think you might be right, sadly. But I think it would happen slowly, and changes towards a police state will be introduced gradually in such a way that most people will not be suspicious - like "protection against terrorism" or something like that. It's particularly tragic when this kind of stuff happens in the USA, since most people there believe that the live in the ultimate democracy that stands for freedom and human rights... If you take Russians for example, they have no illusions and start out with a sceptical view. But one day, a decade from now, Americans might "wake up" and realise, "hey, the evil dictatorship I have been scared of all my life... I am living right in the middle of it...!"

And this is happenening elsewhere too:
I just went to renew my passport, an EU nationality. For the passport I had to take a very strange photo, with hair pulled back etc. So that the ear shows. Apparently this is a sort of unique feature. Then THEY TOOK MY FINGER PRINT!!!! I asked why the hell this was (am I a criminal or what???!) and they said it was a new international standard that had been set by the USA.

Trust Sweden to be the first country that starts following this ridiculous standard - the "friendly" big brother state. And people in this country are so brainwashed about the eternal goodness of the state, that it doesn't even occur to anyone that this might be abused (probably will be!) There was not even a public debate about it.

Good luck when this "international standard" is introduced in the UK - there will be a revolution! Brits completely refuse to even carry an ID card, or a proper drivers licence. That said, the secret police has virtually unlimited powers if someone is suspected of "terrorism" and there are CCTVs in every corner. But regular citizens are incredibly protective of their privacy.

Particularly the ever increasing surveillance is worrying me. Cameras everywhere computer records about everyone in a gazillion databases. And what the state doesn't have, some private corporation has.
There are still newspaper stories about organisations like the Stasi in East Germany. But from the picture I saw in the paper of such a file, it was really nothing compared to the stuff that is saved about people nowadays.

As you can probably tell - this is a question that really gets me worked up!
Hanna, I believe the ears thing is related to the technology by which a camera can assimilate facial features.. They claim it's well more accurate than any other ID system and famously "can't be fooled." They developed this tech last milennia, incorporated it first in 1. LONDON, UK and then in 2. MIAMI, FL and since then implemented it in many other places. Memory fails but there's a name for it I can find for you for citation if you like.

And, humbly, I disagree - we're not becoming a police state, - in fact internally a lot of the Bush-era totalitarian mindset is MELTING and room is opening up for more balanced laws and movements although hampered at every turn by FANATICAL warmongering republicans... no, we (US) are just showing the sort of behavior we're famous for when we're broke. A lot of the things people abroad are seeing/feeling/reading из-США are actually seeming to me like fallout from the ramping up of the ram-horn-headbutt war between our two political parties. Only my opinion.

If you look at the last two hundred years of US history you will, I wager, see that we ALWAYS act like brats when we run out of money. That's the saddest part, for me. =\