We live in a unique time of technological advancements. Companies now have the power to track each and every one of us at a massive scale. This has resulted in less and less private life for the average citizen something most people don’t seem to care or reflect over.
Edward Snowden exposing the extensive surveillance done by the NSA came as a shock to all people. In the name of security and national defence governments around the world have removed some of our most basic human rights namely our right to privacy.
What scares me about national surveillance is that it is like a pandora’s box and when it is opened you can’t undo the effect it has. What scares me is not that the government can see all my search results on google it is that the government decides what is right and wrong. It seems as if with each passing year we as a society come closer to the idea of thoughtcrime a term coined in George Orwell’s book 1984. It is possible that for the modern person human rights are meaningless since we haven’t fought over them, died over them.
Well, some might say that if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear. To those people, I can agree to some extent however the scary fact is that I leave it up to the government to decide what I should and should not learn/see. Seems like a slippery slope to totalitarian china in which a simple search can deny you the right to apply for a mortgage.
What is the most frustrating to me is that so many people have not realised the fact that we are moving towards totalitarianism. It is like a frog in boiling water. If you increase the heat slowly the frog does not realise it is being cooked to death. So we have to be wary every time the temperature increases and share every time a government tries to extend these immoral laws. For example, in Sweden, the government wants to expand the FRA law (surveillance). Increasing the temperature another couple of degrees.
I will end with this quote “Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say” – Edward Snowden