Many police departments have been federalized by DHS

(approx. 3:00 minutes into interview)

The government's war on the American people:

Police have been transformed into extensions of the military, towns and cities have become battlefields, and the American people have been turned into enemy combatants, to be spied on, tracked, scanned, frisked, searched, subjected to all manner of intrusions, intimidated, invaded, raided, manhandled, censored, silenced, shot at, locked up, and denied due process.

One such incident occurred when militarized, armed agents of the Bureau of Land Management were sent to collect a fee from long-time Nevada rancher Clive Bundy, or when heavily-armed SWAT police swept Boston residents from their homes in the aftermath of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.

Whitehead notes that these changes did not suddenly occur. In fact, he says, the shift to totalitarianism cannot be traced to a single event or a single person. Instead, the evolution has been so gradual and subtle that most citizens don't even know that it has taken place.

In small increments, police powers have been expanded, new weapons were added to the arsenals of police departments including automatic rifles and armored vehicles, and "one exception after another" has been made to historic standards of police training and restrained authority, says the book description.

Throw into that mix a small number of new internet mega-corporations working with federal spy agencies and you have a massive, 24/7/365 surveillance state and the potential for an "electronic concentration camp" that views the citizenry as mere "databits" as it slowly but surely takes control of our lives. Don't even think about stepping out of line, because if you do, you're likely to find one of those newly up-armed SWAT teams at your front door or in your hallway in the middle of the night.

"The outlook for civil liberties grows bleaker by the day, from the government's embrace of indefinite detention for US citizens and armed surveillance drones flying overhead to warrantless surveillance of phone, email and Internet communications, and prosecutions of government whistle-blowers," writes Whitehead. "The homeland is ruled by a police-industrial complex, an extension of the American military empire. Everything that our founding fathers warned against is now the new norm. The government has trained its sights on the American people. We have become the enemy" John Whitehead said.