In the age of technology, we have been conditioned to accept that surveillance is an ordinary (and supposedly necessary) part of everyday life. Undoubtedly, surveillance has contributed to a feeling of safety, particularly in larger cities where the police presence is inadequate to deal with every threat. Therefore, whether you agree with the principle or not, many people are happy to trade personal privacy for personal safety. Despite individual views on the subject, what is largely beyond doubt is the role that surveillance will play during the Tribulation Period, particularly in the hands of the Antichrist and his global governance structure. As the Antichrist will have little time to build any new surveillance apparatus, my interest is in examining existing surveillance capabilities which are likely to form part of the Antichrist’s overall toolkit.
One such mysterious surveillance partnership is simply known as “Five Eyes”, often abbreviated as “FVEY” in intelligence reports. Five Eyes is an intelligence sharing partnership between five countries – Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States of America. The origins of the partnership can be traced back to the post-World War II period when the Allies sought to lay out their goals for a post-war world. In simple terms, each nation in the partnership carries out “global eavesdropping” and then shares pertinent information with its partners.
One such program used by intelligence agencies is referred to as Echelon. Officially, Echelon does not exist. However, there is ample evidence to confirm its role in global intelligence collection from at least the 1990s. Echelon was primarily used to collect data via supercomputers. It does this by intercepting signals intelligence to flag any messages containing key words listed in the Echelon dictionary. For instance, in a post-9/11 world, Echelon’s dictionary would have been updated to capture words such as “hijack”, “plane”, “Bin Laden”, etc. Transmissions via phone, facsimile and e-mail containing those words were flagged and then reviewed by intelligence analysts to see if there was any credible information available from it.
The use of Echelon raised the ire of the European parliament in the late 1990s and early 2000s when it accused the partnership of passing industrial secrets to the US and Britain. Although the subsequent report from Europe did confirm the existence of Echelon, it had no concrete proof that Five Eyes partners were engaging in commercial espionage. Still, what it did prove to many who read the report was that global communications were being monitored. In fact, the vice-chairman of the Echelon parliamentary committee said, “People should treat their emails like seaside postcards; that is to say put anything you like on them but don’t be surprised if someone else reads them.”
But Five Eyes partners don’t simply spy on enemy combatants. Reports indicate that the intelligence agencies of Five Eyes partners will routinely spy on each other’s citizens in order to circumvent restrictive domestic regulations concerning surveillance of a nation’s own people. For example, US intelligence agencies may be legally restricted from spying on US citizens, but there is nothing stopping the Australian Signals Directorate from doing so and then passing along all relevant information.
Of course, many other nations are also very well advanced in the area of surveillance. The Chinese government already possesses perhaps the most agile, invasive, and omnipresent surveillance capabilities in the world. Additionally, China has no reservations about spying on its own citizens. In recent years, the Chinese government launched a surveillance program called “Sharp Eyes”, which aims to utilise local governments and its local population in its surveillance efforts. The name was inspired by former leader Mao Zedong who coerced citizens into looking out for neighbours not living up to communist values. Rather than relying on limited government manpower to scope out offenders, he recommended a reliance on people power because “the people have sharp eyes”. The goal of the Sharp Eyes program is to have 100% coverage of public spaces and although this may be concerning, surveillance coverage is not the biggest concern for Chinese citizens. The use of predictive policing technology is becoming more popular, with hopes that the technology will eventually be able to sweep a person’s bank transaction data, location history and social connections, so that it is able to make a determination as to whether a particular person is a terrorist or criminal threat.
God did not establish civil government so that it could turn on its people, use its people, surveil its people and track its people. Yet so many of us have become conditioned to the supposed need for surveillance that it no longer bothers the average person when these technologies become even more ubiquitous. What these technologies ultimately reveal is that the world is quickly becoming a high-tech prison. Worse, the ultimate “governor” of this prison will soon take up his post. The Bible refers to him as the Antichrist and he will be the most wicked and cruel tyrant the world has ever seen. Church-age believers in Christ will never meet him, nor be under his authority, for we will be raptured home before he is revealed to the world. So that you avoid meeting him as well, be sure that you have placed your faith in Jesus Christ as your personal Saviour.
