8/15/19: MINORITY REPORT – FROM MY COLD DEAD HAND
MINORITY REPORT
FROM MY COLD DEAD HAND
MONOLOGUE WRITTEN BY CLYDE LEWIS
The technocrats believe that the smart cities of the future will be functional and inevitable. Many of us have watched the evolution of machines and how computers and social media are shaping our culture. We’ve gone from smart phones at the turn of the twenty-first century to smart fridges and smart cars. The revolutionary changes to our everyday life will no doubt keep barreling along.
Obviously, there is no way to stop progress.
Between 2019 and 2025 more than three million employees will work for “robo-bosses” and soon enough we or at least the wealthiest among us will be shopping in fully automated supermarkets and sleeping in hotels that are controlled by electronics. The rest of us will be shopping online and many businesses will have to change their business models in order to include both online and in-person shopping.
There are big plans waiting for us in the future and while the electronic innovations are being created to make our lives more sophisticated and convenient – we are also seeing moves to remove many of our human rights and freedoms and much of what will revoke our liberty is the overreach of law enforcement and abolishment of the constitutional right of due process.
The defenders and promulgators of data-driven, predictive policing, which is meant to anticipate crimes before they happen are now pushing their agenda of Red Flag policies and control which not only infringes upon Second Amendment rights but also the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment rights that guarantee due process.
These laws, also called “extreme risk protection orders,” (ERPO) allow courts to issue orders allowing law enforcement to seize firearms from people who’ve committed no crime but are believed to be a danger to themselves or others.
President Trump has signaled his backing of the bipartisan Senate legislation sponsored by Senators Lindsey Graham, and Richard Blumenthal.
Red Flag laws are essentially a form of pre-crime, a theme explored in the 2002 Steven Spielberg movie, Minority Report, based on a 1956 Philip K. Dick novel.
In what we call our perceived reality, crime is regarded principally as harm or wrong that is committed against a citizen. Investigations of criminal activity are usually investigated after the fact or post hoc.
Predictive policing methods, in varying stages of development across the US and around the world, have the same goal: authorities hope to anticipate crimes and act before they occur. Initial efforts work largely through computer algorithms or formulas that analyze years of criminal reports to predict where the next crime will likely transpire.
In the 1956 story, there are three mutants called “pre-cogs” who can see the future. Paradoxes and alternate realities are created by the precognition of crimes when the chief of police intercepts a precognition that he is about to murder a man he has never met. Like many stories dealing with knowledge of future events, “The Minority Report” questions the existence of free will.
We don’t have mutants making predictions as to who will commit a crime but Red Flag laws seem to be a one size fits all solution that violates constitutional rights.
The philosophy is “why wait for gun crimes to happen?” when algorithms working beyond the capabilities of human intuition can help prevent these incidents in advance.
But such an understanding wrongly assumes the neutrality of information. The picture of crime to come is based on pre-existing police data, which we know to be biassed and flawed.
We assume that accumulated data doesn’t lie and that it is foolproof — I contend that this is dangerous. It also is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to widespread suspicion of the populace.
It is yet again an introduction into what can be considered police state politics.
A “crime” is, basically, what and where the police say it is. The resulting statistics only serve to reinforce the focus, which has a criminalizing effect on residents of the area by processing them within the criminal justice system from an early age. The result is a police practice that essentially keeps whole locales and minority groups in everyday opposition to law enforcement. If predictive policing were effective in ending crime, things would look differently.
The same goes for predictive policing of guns.
Before the Parkland shooting in Florida, five states had Red Flag laws on the books. In the past year, nine more states passed them, and 25 states are considering them.
Most people haven’t heard of Red Flag laws until recently if they have at all but they aren’t new.
Connecticut enacted the nation’s first Red Flag law in 1999, followed by Indiana (2005). This means social scientists have had decades to analyze the effectiveness of these laws. And what did they find?
The Washington Post reports that California’s Red Flag laws went basically unused for two years after its passage in 2016. Washington, D.C.’s law has gone entirely unused. Other states, such as Florida and Maryland, have gone the other direction, seizing hundreds of firearms from gun-owners. Yet it’s unclear if these actions stopped a shooting.
With additional states passing Red Flag laws, researchers will soon have much more data to analyze. But before passing expansive federal legislation that infringes on civil liberties, lawmakers should have clear and compelling empirical evidence that red flag laws actually do what they are intended to do.
The Constitution mandates that no one shall be “deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.”
Seizing the property of individuals who have been convicted of no crime violates this provision. Gun control advocates claim due process is not violated because people whose firearms are taken can appeal to courts to reclaim their property. But if we take that position and allow for pre-crime tactics, we then reduce the Constitution to a document of privileges.
In theory, Red Flag laws are supposed to target individuals who pose a threat to themselves or others. In practice, they can work quite differently.
“It is worth emphasizing that while a seemingly urgent need for [the law] derives from recent egregious and deadly mass shootings, [the law’s] reach goes far beyond any efforts to address such extraordinary incidents,” the authors said. Individuals who find themselves involved in these proceedings often have no clear constitutional right to counsel.
“As written, a person could be subject to an extreme risk protective order (ERPO) without ever having committed, or even having threatened to commit, an act of violence with a firearm.”
Though comprehensive information is thin, and laws differ from state to state, anecdotal evidence suggests Rhode Island’s law is not unique. A University of Central Florida student, for example, was hauled into proceedings and received a year-long RPO risk protection order for saying “stupid” things on Reddit following a mass shooting, even though the student had no criminal history and didn’t own a firearm. The student also was falsely portrayed as a “ticking time bomb” by police.
Another man was slapped with an RPO for criticizing teenage gun control activists online and sharing a picture of an AR-15 rifle he had built.
Individuals who find themselves involved in these proceedings often have no clear constitutional right to counsel.
The idea that the government can prevent crimes before they occur may sound like a sci-fi fantasy, which it is but the threat posed to civil liberties is quite real.
If this sounds far-fetched, consider that the president recently called upon social media companies to collaborate with the Department of Justice to catch “red flags” using algorithmic technology.
Can you imagine getting a knock at your door at three am and there is a group of policemen at your demanding your firearms based on an algorithm that picks up some kind of indication that you are depressed or angry and a danger because you own a firearm?
This is what we are facing – and we should be very suspicious of this move.
It’s clear that laws of this magnitude should not be passed as an emotional or political response to an event, even a tragic one.
Who gets to decide who is too mentally unstable to own a firearm? And how is that decision made? Most newly adopted laws (six such laws have been signed this year) and newly proposed laws (two dozen have been introduced in various states) require some kind of certification from a mental health professional that a judge can then use to confiscate someone’s firearms.
To put it bluntly, this puts your right to own a firearm into the hands of the American Psychological Association or the American Psychiatric Association, who will set the standards for the mental health community.
If mental stability becomes the issue, anyone who is on any kind of prescription psychotropic medication from antidepressants on up will be suspect.
Does anyone realize that ADHD is considered as a red flag as proposed in this pre-crime legislation? If you want to know the future of gun control it is estimated that 6.4 million American children ages 4-17 have been diagnosed with ADHD. The incidence of ADHD is higher in some states than others.
Now they are a little young to be considered potential criminals unless they are destined to become juvenile offenders but thanks to Red Flag laws they could be kept from ever owning a firearm when they are old enough.
What if political views become an issue? Then we stand to create political prisoners much like what they have in Communist China.
In the United States, there seems to be this nudge or this shove of political end game strategies that are similar to these “crisis-ridden” countries where the system is destined to fail in order for our leaders to provide a solution that they feel is necessary to allegedly keep the peace.
Many times we have pointed out that much of what we see transpiring has all been written about before in books like ‘1984′ and ‘Brave New World.’
The elite have developed this passion for what can only be termed mental fingerprinting, possibly to monitor their progress in creating a traumatized populace that eventually can all be medicated to as Huxley put it, enjoy their chemical enslavement.
Meanwhile, there is a silent group of people that secretly wonder if the entire world has lost its mind and whether or not people will awaken to the injustices and criminality of government before it is too late.
The trouble is, it may be a logical assumption that it is already too late and that it may be time to adapt to the changes and then find a way to work out of them and try to correct the social ills of a nation through meaningful dialogue and legal action.
Propaganda is altering perception and steering the population to an approximate goal by the elite.
From time to time, the effects of immersing yourself in the news and trying to report corruption and lies can lead people into cognitive disillusionment. This is common to everyone. You either take action to find a solution or you do nothing and wait for things to happen that will change your attitude.
Like it or not, our beliefs about the world are interconnected with other beliefs we have been programmed to accept. As one thing is revealed, there are more that follow and you can either lie to yourself and say that it is a form of persecution or deception or you can learn more about what the facts are.
It takes a great deal of strength in order to let go of one’s preconceived ideas and accept new and factual data. I wish it was easy to not compare independent sources with the mainstream narrative but of course, the network narrative is gospel to the majority of those we associate with.
Since the media guides, controls and even at times hijacks the zeitgeist, we sometimes forget that we have not defeated those who oppress us – we have simply enabled them by ignoring their nefarious activities.
I have been dismayed at the fact that the word divisive has been used to describe actions that are hell-bent on bringing down this country when they are certainly destructive. There is no excuse for bending or even breaking constitutional law in order to get the desired outcome of the elite and the sad thing is the majority of the people are unaware of how oblivious they have become because they have put blinders on in order to participate in corrupt Identity politics.
Policing where and when a crime is most likely to occur entails predicting what sort of people might commit it. It’s akin to the profiling entailed in the Obama administration’s use of “disposition matrices” to target drone strikes, and we all know what Obama did with drones and he found them useful to kill and American citizen.
The Midwest has been under surveillance by the Pentagon as they are testing new surveillance blimps in order to promulgate the surveillance state.
It appears the first set of flights were approved by the FCC last year, while the most recent documentation shows approval for operations running from mid-July until September. Outfitted with sophisticated radars, the balloons are able to track multiple vehicles at day and night in all weathers.
The balloons which are being flown by United States Southern Command, also carry small vehicles containing sensors and communications equipment. The loadout includes a synthetic aperture radar designed to be able to detect every single moving car or boat active in a 25-mile field beneath the balloon.
The craft operates as a network, fitted with advanced mesh networking technologies meaning they can communicate with one another. The balloons can pass information, including video, to each other and to receivers on the ground.
The Pentagon has used this technology on tethered surveillance blimps in Afghanistan.
Does this send an alarm as to what is happening in the United States? If they use these devices in a war zone like Afghanistan what are they expecting to happen here in the United States?
Keep in mind that the military is doing these tests for predictive policing and surveillance agendas.
We are all told when we are young that America is a nation of laws and not men; that America is ruled by the law that justice is blind and that it does not discriminate. That’s a myth.
America is a nation of men who use the law. The law is the standard of the most powerful class of society made into a social, political and economic code of behavior for all.
However, the US has 5% of the world’s population but 25% of its prisoners.
Here in Oregon, in order to send a message to the rest of the country about how we are now handling civil insurgency – members of Patriot Prayer, a protest group, are being arrested on trumped-up charges in order to keep them from appearing at a scheduled brawl that will occur on Saturday the 17th of August.
Many of us believe that political prisoners only exists in communist China, but Joey Gibson, Haley Adams, and Russell Shultz were visited by the U.S. Marshall for questioning and arrest.
I spoke with Joey Gibson about his charges and he explained that he was being arrested for standing on a sidewalk during an incident that happened at a bar called ironically “Cider Riot.”
His very presence was seen as a potential threat for a violent demonstration.
Other members are also being arrested – Russell Shultz was arrested and detained and Haley Adams was considering turning herself in to authorities because of a warrant for her arrest.
All are being charged for merely being in the wrong place at the wrong time. They are being detained because of potential violence that may become worse with their presence at a scheduled illegal riot.
Again, this is an example of a person being charged for a potential problem that may happen in Portland in the midst of a threat of violence between Proud Boys and Antifa.
There have been no arrests of detainment of Proud Boy members or members of Antifa. You may remember that Antifa members attacked journalist Andy Ngo giving him brain damage.
It appears that Portland uses pre-crime, in order to create political prisoners.
The United States has dozens of political prisoners that have been incarcerated primarily because of their political beliefs.
Human life and human rights are no longer a priority in the United States and what is being proposed is evident of the tyranny that is running amok.
