Washington D.C. President Obama just announced his pick for the position of “federal Chief of Information Technology;” it will be Steven Van Roekel, formerly a tech guru at Microsoft. Sounds like a boring government appointment? Guess again. Mr. Van Roekel comes from the same Microsoft Corporation that has developed surveillance-data (“activity-based navigation”) technology that can be imbedded in your cell phone, so that every step you take in your house, from floor to floor and room to room, indeed every activity you undertake can be tracked according to a report in Wired. Developers claim that their intent is good – that it can be used for tracking some one lost in the “wilderness.” But the potential for tracking otherwise innocent and unknowing citizens in their homes or places of business, or to their local church or place of recreation certainly exists. Van Roekel, a political supporter of President Obama, says his chief aim is to bring the “innovations” of private business (like Microsoft) into the hands of the federal government. President Obama has been pushing for unprecedented powers of the federal government to control the Internet, to shut down the web down at will, and to have citizens obtain user ID’s in order to utilize Internet broadband, among other things. Meanwhile, the U.S. is joining 56 other nations this summer as they work together toward creating a global “cyber security” merger of information resources and data-sharing among those countries. The agreement would cover the governments in North America including the U.S., as well as all of Europe, and Central Asia, which also includes Russia, a nation itself suspected of widespread cyber crimes and computer hacking offenses against other nations. In the light of this, our futuristic fictions series, starting with last year’s Edge of Apocalypse, and the recently released Thunder of Heaven, are looking more and more like fact. In these novels we show the dangers of an American government being absorbed into a global scheme that threatens basic liberties. We are currently working on the third book in the series which will delve into the shadowy image of a global police state – including cyber surveillance of American patriots, like our fictional hero Col. Joshua Jordan and his lawyer-wife Abigail, who are tagged as “enemies of the state” by an international network of power that stretches from Washington to the ends of the earth.
© 2010 Tim LaHaye and Craig Parshall
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