Imagine someone was watching you. Eavesdropping on your entire family. Reading every email, text, thought, idea, peeking at your photographs, listening to every phone call.
Imagine how you’d feel.
Then imagine that when you challenged them, they bullied you — and your loved ones — because they were bigger, smarter, richer, more articulate, more powerful, more popular.
Angry yet?
What if I said it’s happening right now.
Just that no one bothered to tell you.
You are being watched.
Most people, once aware of such abuse, would be outraged. They’d fight back. Or at the very least find someone who could.
For decades, whenever these lines were crossed, the Fourth Estate — newspapers, magazines, TV, mainstream media — fought on our behalf. They safeguarded civil rights by exposing scurrilous behaviour and shining light on injustice.
And when they failed us, the Fifth Estate — bloggers, independent sites, social media voices — rose up to shout loud.
But right now, the Fourth and Fifth Estates, along with every one of us, are under attack.
Freedom of speech. Privacy. The right to stand up for yourself, or for those who can’t.
Under threat.
What happened to the US First and Fourth Amendments?
Or to the basic dignity of private citizens anywhere?
Governments, led by the US NSA, have moved beyond protecting us from terror or gross violations of decency. They’ve become spying eyes — with search and seizure on an epic scale, recording our communications wholesale.
Through systems like the NSA’s PRISM and the UK’s TEMPORA, the ‘Five Eyes’ nations — USA, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand — have infiltrated pretty much everything.
And who voted for that?
We did, indirectly, by electing people lacking the backbone to resist shadowy groups craving power and control.
George Carlin put it best:
“It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it. The owners of this country… they own everything. The land, the corporations, the judges, the media — so they control just about all the news and information you hear. They spend billions to get what they want: more for them, less for you. They don’t want critical thinkers. They want obedient workers.”
Years ago, I naively said:
“A man called Marshall McLuhan once talked about the Global Village — a world where everyone could talk freely. The authorities didn’t like that much. Now they don’t have the choice.”
How wrong I was.
They do have the choice.
And where they didn’t, they invented new laws and surveillance machines to snoop on us all.
Orwell warned us in 1984 about thought police and doublethink. He wrote:
“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”
And in Animal Farm he showed how we’d let the truth be rewritten.
They’ll tell you:
“If you’re doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear.”
Where have we heard that before? From brown shirts to the worst tyrants in history.
Doing nothing wrong is one thing.
Doing nothing is something to fear.
As you recline, you can watch your privacy, freedom and liberty vanish — hidden under the very blanket that was meant to protect you.
How right Orwell was.
What mistakes we’ve made, letting weak leaders sell us out to Big Brother and lull us into Huxley’s Brave New World stupor.
Ask yourself:
Do we control the government, or does the government control us?
Maybe we’re outgunned.
Maybe the press will hang us out to dry.
But since when did bullies deserve free reign?
Lincoln at Gettysburg said governments should be:
“of the people, by the people, for the people.”
So what can you do?
Start small.
Make people aware.
Spread the word.
Support the companies pushing back — denying the NSA access, defending your data, protecting confidentiality. They’re flying in the face of enormous pressure.
Do it for your children, so they don’t grow up thinking this is normal.
Remember: freedom and liberty were paid for in blood.
Your apathy means they died in vain.
Watch the watchers.