From Sovereign Man:
One of the most terrifying aspects of George Orwell’s seminal work 1984 was his description of how society had turned into one giant police agency. People were encouraged to rat each other out, groomed since childhood to be unpaid government spies:
“[Children] adored the Party and everything connected with it… All their ferocity was turned outwards, against the enemies of the State, against foreigners, traitors, saboteurs, thought-criminals. It was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children.”
The Department of Homeland Security’s “If you see something, say something…” is not too far off from this paradigm – encouraging citizens to rat each other out to the police for the mere suspicion of potential wrong-doing.
… In the financial system, there are droves of civilian agencies that have been coerced into becoming government spies. As we discussed a few weeks ago, everyone from bankers to brokers to gold dealers are obliged to submit “suspicious activity reports” to the federal government. They even have minimum quotas.
What’s more, these so-called “SARs” must remain top-secret. It’s a crime for your banker to inform you that you were the subject of a suspicious activity report.
Yesterday, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), the federal agency which oversees the legions of unpaid government spies, added a few more businesses to the list…
