Norris McDonald | Who watches JDF’s ‘Big Yeye’ while it a watch we?

“ You can shackle the feet of men, But you can never chain their minds!” – Marcus Garvey

Jamaica is rushing natty headfirst into a high-tech surveillance era, tracking citizens with biometric databases, artificial intelligence (AI) spyware, and police body cameras. While state-of-the-art technology is sold as a tool for safety, it also hides hidden dangers.

The Government is rapidly expanding cocked ears and peeping-eyes powers while furtively keeping the country in the dark about what these systems can actually do and who is keeping them in check.

The new interconnected biometric and cyber technologies will form a massive, untrammelled surveillance network. This will allow the State to track, analyse, and, possibly, act, in breach of law, human rights and justice, against ordinary citizens.

BIG YEYE AND THE POLITICS OF CYBER FEAR

Protecting national computer systems from hackers can create common-sense national security. The real danger then lies in the mysterious, panicky, digital network being built under the guise of “cyber protection”

This is “Big Yeye” - Big Eye - a massive, invasive peeping network to spy on the nation.

While the Government argues that this is progress, the level of secrecy leaves critical questions either unanswered or deliberately ignored.

For example: What information are these systems actually harvesting? What legal guardrails exist to stop overreach? What fundamental freedoms are citizens being forced to give up to gain a false sense of security?

Without those safeguards, Jamaica’s “Big Yeye” may inevitably creep far beyond its stated intent.

THE FOREIGN BACKYARD

Look no further than the State’s contract with ELTA Systems and the Government’s biometric agreement with the United States. ELTA is a wholly owned subsidiary of Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) - a company owned lock, stock, and barrel by the Israeli government.

They do not specialise in consumer tech. They specialise in electronic warfare, radar, and mass surveillance.

When you stack Israeli battlefield technology with US cyber and biometric-sharing agreements, the reality becomes chillingly clear: What Jamaica can end up with is a complex “Bra Anancy web” that is spun to channel our intimate national vital records into a centralised, globally accessible ‘Trojan horse’ spyware system that is accessible to foreigners.

This is actively surrendering national sovereignty to imperialism’s craven dictates.

CIA PENETRATION AND THE MIU

This cosying up to foreign intelligence isn’t a modern innovation, It is a dangerous, recycled history lesson. Declassified documents already expose a murky legacy of foreign infiltration inside Jamaica’s security apparatus.

The US Office of the Historian has documented occurrences during the 1970s and 1980s under the Michael Manley government, including disloyal, covert instances of senior officers within our own Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) Special Branch feeding clandestine information directly to the CIA - completely bypassing Jamaican government oversight.

So, how do we know this modern surrender of digital sovereignty isn’t simply the continuation of an ugly historical pattern?

For decades across the Global South, Washington has treated local security forces as proxy extensions of its own intelligence web. Is Jamaica making the same mistake by not having strong independent civilian oversight of police and military intelligence?

Peonic genuflection appears to be a requirement for political survival in this aggressive imperialist Trumpian world.

JDF CYBER CORPS

Let us not forget that the Jamaica Defence Force Military Intelligence Unit (MIU) carries a dark, toxic legacy in Jamaica’s military and political history. For decades, the MIU’s name has been reportedly linked with unchecked secrecy, political violence, and a total lack of civilian oversight. The 1978 Green Bay Massacre was one clear example.

The MIU’s core culture from its inception has been built on two things: bending the knee to external entities like the CIA and suppressing dissent at home.

Naturally, in my opinion, its modern spectre - the JDF Military Cyber Corps - can inherit this same culture of unaccountability.

Why should the average Jamaican care if our domestic “Big Yeye” is quietly whispering our data into American national security or immigration ears?

THE GLOBAL DRAGNET

The terrifying case of Lorenzo Thompson serves as a blaring fire alarm for our national integrity. This black Jamaican national was snatched – effectively kidnapped – by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents directly off a Southwest Airlines aircraft where he worked as a flight attendant while his immigration paperwork was actively being processed.

Under President Donald Trump, the US has institutionalised a predatory immigration bounty system that routinely treats domestic laws and human rights with utter contempt. In this lawless, Wild West spectacle, individuals navigating the legal system properly, such as Thompson, are subjected to a law-abusing ‘grab and snatch’ routine with zero regard for due process.

Armed with harvested location data and compromised phone records, this dragnet threatens countless others trapped in the same legal purgatory - those whose cases are pending before immigration courts, just as Thompson’s was. The moment they dare to call home to check on their families, they risk walking straight into the next trap.

Can anyone genuinely expect to escape this web? Who watches JDF’s Big Yeye while it a watch we?

George Orwell warned us that the modern surveillance state never announces itself as an authoritarian monster. It arrives under respectable banners: fighting crime, protecting critical infrastructure, and modernising national security.

And that is precisely why we should be wary. Jamaica has witnessed the dangers of state power operating without transparency or accountability. We must, therefore, reject this Babylon system before ordinary citizens are set up for abuse by foreign imperialist powers.

Look at the ghosts of our past: the 1978 MIU-conspired Green Bay Massacre and the 2010 Tivoli Gardens incursion. During the tragedy in Tivoli, regardless of the official excuses, an American military surveillance plane circled directly, streaming live data overhead while roughly 70 civilians were killed.

The tech may change, but the conniving imperialist plot remains identical. Which brings us right back to the inescapable question: Who will watch ‘Big Yeye’ while it a watch we?

Norris R. McDonald is an author, economic journalist, political analyst, and respiratory therapist. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.