Most people have denied the existence of total surveillance. George Orwell
has predicted it in the late 40’s when his novel 1984 was released. Just after
the public rumors that have been yielded due to Edward Snowden’s reveals
we really see ourselves confronted with Orwells perspectives nowadays.

While the USA are fighting a neverending war and thus are declaring a commercial war (patent lawsuits, embargos, other indistrial countries are still planning on how to set up a total surveillance of it’s own citizen or have already done so though not as successful as the USA does.

The NSA for instance is employing approx. 40’000 employees who all work for one purpose: Know everything about every U.S. citizen and also know everything about what’s going on worldwide. So what Snowden has revealed, was the fear many of us have already kept for a long time. Those who claim theirselves in security from the NSA surveillance when living in Germany or the U.K. for instance are now severely disappointed to know that the NSA is tightly working together with the MI:5 and the BND.

The list is long and if you ask yourself if there’s anything, the NSA doesn’t know then the answer is: It is probably those things you tak over with your friends when they’re at your place. But with all the modern technology around us, not even this is proven for sure.

As long as you’re not a POI (person of interest) for these security institutions, you don’t have to fear anything from their large mechanism and persons working for them. But as soon as you seem suspect to them and beginning to become a treat to them, hell will break over you.

The mild steps are sanctions or wild allegations against you and your family such as not being allowed to visit USA for instance (yes they have often refused visitors passing the U.S. border at the airport due to some unconfirmed possible threats) or making you a public fool. Simple trigger words that relate to terrorism on social media and the internet are enough to see a potential danger in you.

The harsher methods are incarceration upon arrival. You’re gently yet directly asked by Homeland security officers to follow them into a separate office where they can hold you down for several hours and audit you legally prohibiting you to make any phone calls or request for a lawyer!

If that is what the USA understand in hospitality towards tourists, then the USA is one country one would for sure not consider visiting!

But if you think, it’s only the internet where your behavior is inspected, then you’re ways wrong! Even phone calls are inspected and monitored for those trigger words. Funnily enough to see that modern terrorists wouldn’t for sure use the internet or telephone to discuss their next plans. They do that in a person-2-person manner (the mostly secure way).

If you think, encrytion of electronic data is the answer, then again there’s the big annoying buzz sound. If you use PGP to encrypt your mails then it’ll disappoint you that PGP publicly available has a possible backdoor for the NSA that allows it to breaach the encryption and still see what’s encrypted. The unofficial version of PGP not having this backdoor is illegal in the USA and should the border security notice your electronic device being encrypted that way, they give you three choices: Either unlocking it, leaving it there for inspections or destroying or you can straight take the next plane home. The same is valid for TrueCrypt. Being known as the only trusted encrytion tool that cannot be hacked by NSA and Co., you’ll find yourself confronted with the given situation at U.S. borders.

Knowing that, you’ll have to bite the bullet and either use a completely dedicated device not containing any private stuff you don’t want them to know to process your videos and pictures taken during your USA-vacation or completely relinquish them in order to avoid any conflicts.

No other country so far has such harsh travelling preferences. The paranoia of the USA since 9/11 is unbeaten. But the question is, how long will it take for other countries to adapt this paranoia and start terrorizing innocent travellers?

The only thing that could break this paranoia is when tourism as a branch falls far down below the respective country’s expectations leaving a big hole in the finances. Since the USA relies on tourism and some foreign companies already warn their employees taking their PDA, smartphone or notebook with them the company gives to them for work, when they travel to the USA, the government of the USA should reconsider their Homeland security concept once more. The image and repuation have suffered a lot by now as more and more incidents about property destruction and personal threats have hit the media. Once the USA have been a real tourism attraction. But since 9/11 and their real harsh treatment of tourists, their toursim boom has sunken real low. Now other countries are expecting high traveller stats. Mostly asian countries are reporting one record after the next.

But back to why total control of the citizen is not the answer to terrorism fight.

Sure, the CCTV model, the U.K. is using, has decreased the crime rate at a measurable factor. But at the price that most people feel somewhat spied on for no reason and thus feeling uncomfortable with.

Officially, CCTV in the USA isn’t well-documented but unverified sources say that the USA is running about five million cameras for surveillance countrywide. I bet that this number is even bigger!

Only the U.K. have an even tighter CCTV network, counting over 1.8 million installed cameras which comes to one camera per 32 citizens! Freightening, right? I’m shivering, too, when thinking about some unknown persons spy on me all the time and monitoring all the steps I do.