Every regime has its own name for its secret police. Mussolini's OVRA carried out phone surveillance on government officials. Stalin's NKVD carried out large-scale purges, terror, and depopulation. Hitler's Gestapo went door-to-door ferreting out dissidents and other political "enemies" of the state. And in the U.S., it's the Federal Bureau of Investigation that does the dirty work of ensuring compliance, keeping tabs on potential dissidents, and punishing those who dare to challenge the status quo.

Whether the FBI is planting undercover agents in churches, synagogues, and mosques, is issuing fake emergency letters to gain access to Americans' phone records, is using intimidation tactics to silence Americans who are critical of the government, or is persuading impressionable individuals to plot acts of terror and then entrapping them, the overall impression of the nation's secret police force is that of a well-dressed thug, flexing its muscles and doing the boss' dirty work.

It's a far cry from the glamorized G-men depicted in Hollywood film noirs and spy thrillers. The government's henchmen have become the embodiment of how power, once acquired, can be so easily corrupted and abused.

"It's a future where you don't forget anything. ... In this new future, you're never lost. ... We will know your position down to the foot and down to the inch over time. ... Your car will drive itself; it's a bug that cars were invented before computers. ... You're never lonely. ... You're never bored. ... You're never out of ideas. ... We can suggest where you go next, who to meet, what to read. ... What's interesting about this future is that it's for the average person, not just the elites." - Google CEO Eric Schmidt on his vision of the future

Time to buckle up your seatbelts, folks. You're in for a bumpy ride.

We're hurtling down a one-way road toward the Police State at mind-boggling speeds, the terrain is getting more treacherous by the minute, and we've passed all the exit ramps. From this point forward, there is no turning back, and the signpost ahead reads "Danger."

Indeed, as I document in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, we're about to enter a Twilight Zone of sorts, one marked by drones, smart phones, GPS devices, smart TVs, social media, smart meters, surveillance cameras, facial-recognition software, online banking, license-plate readers, and driver-less cars - all part of the interconnected technological spider web that is life in the American police state, and every new gadget pulls us that much deeper into the sticky snare.

In this Brave New World awaiting us, there will be no communication not spied upon, no movement untracked, no thought unheard. In other words, there will be nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

We're on the losing end of a technological revolution that has already taken hostage our computers, our phones, our finances, our entertainment, our shopping, and our appliances, and now it's focused its sights on our cars. As if the government wasn't already able to track our movements on the nation's highways and byways by way of satellites, GPS devices, and real-time traffic cameras, government officials are now pushing to require that all new vehicles come installed with black-box recorders and vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications, ostensibly to help prevent crashes.