Over at Charlie’s Diary, guest blogger Ramez Naam has an interesting, and hopeful, take on avoiding a surveillance state dystopia. Naam makes the point that despite the doom and gloom we hear about the creeping encroachments on our freedom, we are, in fact, more free than we were in, say, 1984.
The reason for that is that the technology that enables government snooping is cheap and widely available to citizens as well. We can organize and inform each other in ways we couldn’t even a few years ago. One of the ideas that informed Orwell’s 1984 was the notion, taken from the events in Stalin’s USSR, that the government could lie to its citizens and thus rewrite history. The idea terrorized Orwell. Today, it’s much, much harder for the government to lie successfully.
Take a look at Naam’s post and the comments that accompany it. Perhaps you’ll feel better. At the very least, it’s thought provoking and will give you a new view on government surveillance.