By Michael Maharrey
Nobody reads George Orwell’s 1984 and says, “Man, that’s the kind of future I want,” right? But have you ever stopped to think that the people who lived in that fictional world didn’t want to live in it either?
So, how did they get to that point?
They crept there one little step at a time.
Consider this: at some point in the past, Orwell’s fictional world would have probably looked a lot like ours. Big Brother wasn’t watching every citizen’s every move. There weren’t cameras on every corner and microphones in every building. It wasn’t like the people of that society woke up one day and found Big Brother peering into their living rooms. Step-by-step, over time, society and the government evolved into the totalitarian surveillance state we experience in the novel.
Are we on a similar path right here in the good ol’ US of A?
The problem is that a lot of people are perfectly fine with the incremental steps that eventually lead to that point.
They want ICE to use facial recognition technology to “ferret out illegal immigrants.” They want the NSA to vacuum up cellphone calls and emails to “protect them from the terrorists.” They want police to use stingray devices to track down “dangerous criminals and drug dealers.”
After all, “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.”
Do you want to know how we get to an Orwellian surveillance state? This is exactly how we get to an Orwellian surveillance state.
One step at a time. One new surveillance technology at a time. One small violation of the Fourth Amendment at a time.
Creeping toward tyranny – eventually, you end up with Big Brother in your living room. When you get to that point, it’s too late.
It the same with any violation of your liberty. Once you give an inch, government will take a mile — even if you gave that inch for a “good cause.”