Journalist Annie Jacobsen: Biometrics and the Surveillance State

Journalist Annie Jacobsen is well known for her best sellers The Pentagon's Brain, Area 51 and Operation Paperclip. In her latest book, First Platoon, she investigates "warfare, good and evil in the age of biometrics, the technology that would allow the government to identify anyone, anywhere, at any time." Come for a discussion about the Pentagon's abilities to utilize iris scans, fingerprint scans, voice patterning, detection by odor, gait, and more to track human patterns, as well as the ethical questions raised by what Ms. Jacobsen calls "a burgeoning surveillance state."

This is a story that starts off close and goes very big. The initial part of the story might sound familiar at first: It is about a platoon of mostly 19-year-old boys sent to Afghanistan, and an experience that ends abruptly in catastrophe. Their part of the story folds into the next: Inexorably linked to those soldiers and never comprehensively reported before is the U.S. Department of Defense’s quest to build the world’s most powerful biometrics database, with the power to identify, monitor, catalogue, and police people all over the world.

Based on hundreds of formerly classified documents, FOIA requests, and exclusive interviews, First Platoon is an investigative exposé by a master chronicler of government secrets. Jacobsen reveals a post–9/11 Pentagon whose identification machines have grown more capable than the humans who must make sense of them. She says it's a Pentagon so powerful it can cover up its own internal mistakes in pursuit of endless wars; and people are at its mercy, in the last moments before a fundamental change so complete it might be impossible to take back.

Annie Jacobsen is the author of the Pulitzer Prize–finalist in history The Pentagon’s Brain, the New York Times bestsellers Area 51 and Operation Paperclip, and other books. She was a contributing editor at the Los Angeles Times Magazine. A graduate of Princeton University, she lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two sons.

NOTES
This is a free-for-members program. Members: Click on the "Buy Tickets" button above to order your tickets, and select the members link on the left side of the page. Your username is the email you used to sign up as a member. You can also request a password reset if needed. Discount will automatically be applied at checkout.

Post-event video will be available at no cost after the event for ticket purchasers and Commonwealth Club members.

Your portal allows multiple ticket purchases and registrations to Commonwealth Club events using a shopping cart and the ability to save your credit card information for a faster checkout process. Once you are in your member portal, you will be able to see the current status of your membership, update your membership contact information, and view all ticket purchases and donations you have made to the Club. You will also be able to easily renew your membership.

Copies of Jacobsen's book, First Platoon, may be purchased during registration (for shipment to U.S. domestic addresses only).

Main image Jacobsen photo by Sarah Gonzalez (SMG Photo).

JANUARY 21, 2021

SPEAKERS

Annie Jacobsen
Journalist; Former Contributing Editor, Los Angeles Times Magazine; Author, First Platoon

In Conversation with Max Brooks
Writer; Fellow, the Atlantic Council’s Brent Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and the Modern War Institute at West Point; Author, World War Z

[jacquelyndiamond]

She’s one of a very suppressed but desperately needed, true journalist and investigative reporter! Very perceptive & insightful when we need CLARITY more than ever!

[pamsotzin]

It appears that Annie Jacobsen is indeed a true journalist, intent on reporting the facts to increase our understanding. How I wish we had more real journalists today, whose objective is to inform and not propagate a narrative. Well done on choice of guest and interviewer, Commonwealth Club.

[justpyrite]

MAX BROOKS is just awful. But Annie's research is extremely important and interesting, so I suffered through.

[patrickromanowilliams]

I always find Mrs. Jacobsen's interviews enthralling.

[SixStringsAndBeyond]

Annie is an amazing journalist, taking on my favourite subjects. Her voice is also soothing which makes delivery of the crazy facts easier to digest

[rebeccaaldrich]

This author has such a great array of important topics that I find fascinating. Thank you for your wonderful curiosity. We need more like her.

[lors]

This Max guy is a bootlicker. Any time she points out the US military’s naive/nefarious schemes, he deflects to justify it. Btw Max, I don’t remember being asked if I was cool with giving up any of my rights to privacy for the sake of “the greater good.” The greater good is about cooperating with other nations and among our neighbors, not spying on and killing them. Love Annie Jacobsen’s very important work though! Everyone needs to learn about this. Thank you for sharing.

[dr.barrycohn]

Jacobsen always informs in her excellent presentations.

[kalanhitchens]

Loved her since her area 51 book, her intelligence and that voice man. That voice is something else

[beachbrettf]

I volunteered for the "BAT" course before deployment to iraq in 07 with 1bn/2d Marines. Thought it was amazing how much info I could log in, change, for any individual in the entire theater. Blood type, locations, known associates/relatives, etc. Little handheld guy that (if already logged by another unit) would pop up anything and everything about an individual through an iris scan, blood test, facial recog, etc.
The "BAT" just stood for biometric automated toolset. Came in something about the size of a pistol case.

[ethereal]

My grandfather was a US Army Air Force counter intelligence officer in the 1940s & 50s, stationed in Tuscon, Arizona. He was part of "Operation Paperclip", where they moved German scientists to the US after the war and started the US space program & NASA.
He was also part a small team that recovered space craft and extraterrestrial beings, both deceased and alive. He kept military documents of these events. There have been many more events than just the one crash that most people now know about.
  After he was killed while working on a related case, my mother kept the documents. I found them in her files in 1987. And despite the multitude of warnings of fines and imprisonment stamped on the envelope, I read them,   took them to my high school and showed my classmates. I was only 16 years old at the time and didn't fully understand the impact of what I'd come across. This was before  we had the internet and before people had heard about the incident at Roswell, NM (It was actually in Corona, NM & a second crash site at Horse Mesa, NM, discovered in 1949).
My grandfather had been involved in many covert activities during the war and after, what we now call "special access projects".  He had informed my mom that ETs existed. He had trained her in remote viewing from a very early age, after realizing she had strong innate abilities.
  My mother still has much of the original documents that my grandfather had obtained. And she has worked directly with Senator Pell and his aide, US Navy Commander Scott Jones, who was a member of DARPA & part of "The Aviary", a secret US government group that would to discuss crash sites and extraterrestrial events.
Extraterrestrial life forms do indeed exist and are here on our planet. And the US government has been lying to people about it because they don't want the technologies they are receiving to be available to the general public. It would disrupt all major industries. Especially the oil industry. They have zero point, clean unlimited energy available but won't release it because fossil fuels, coal would be obsolete. No one would pay for electricity, gas, etc. They are protecting the industries and the "elite", not the people. This is wrong on so many levels. But the truth is coming out.

[christ]

Annie and Max are very likeable authors and speakers of truth.
Thank you.

[MitziReed]

I came here to listen to Annie. Never heard if this Max dude, but he sure is one pompous snot nose kid who has a lot to learn. He, not the military, needs to get off his high horse. Thanks Annie for an intelligent interview.

[cydppalley]

Amazing people on your program right now. Annie you're the best stay safe.

[jong]

Omg this interviewer is quite literally a creep. Totally ruins this interview.

[kellysilva]

Thumbs up for this lady thank you so much

[mobelue]

Where is the DNA info going ghat is being collected from Covid tests? Could the idea of the Covid test be a mass DNA collection scheme?

[joeybenoit]

We need Edward Snowden! To shine the light on the truth!! Before humanity is crushed! God save us!

[mikeschwindt]

This is just what we know .. What really scares me is the technology we no nothing about that’s being used on us.

[sabrinafair]

Jacobsen is excellent. Max Brooks dominated and made this almost unwatchable..