It is being sold to the masses in the guise of "anti-terrorism", "anti-crime", and other euphemistic names. But at the end of the day, its always the same- a 1984 George Orwell fantasy come true.
This!!
The country with the most surveillance, the purveyor of such ideas is the one that finds itself in more wars than any other. It says it is free and brave, yet it watches it's citizens and even jails them for dissent. It is not brave, when it wages wars on 3rd world countries and overthrows governments who dare say anything contrary to the prevailing narrative.
The fight for privacy and mitigating unwarranted and mass surveillance is as important as fight in this digital age as the fight against slavery or any other system that subjugated people the world over. When your own thoughts are not private and it is near impossible to have a conversation between two people exclusively. That is an issue that is core to your freedoms as a human being.
The reason this isn't discussed with the urgency it demands is simply because our understanding, context and knowledge of history is so vastly distorted and fabricated out of whole cloth in many instances; that such vile ideas like wholesale surveillance and its implications are lost upon us. We become willing participants in our own oppression and we view the world and it's happenings entirely from these subjective and nonsensical binary narratives.
As stated in earlier replies, the core issue here has always existed and the answer is always the same, however those with vested interests can construct a system within which we reason. Therefor the most obvious answers are lost to us. We have increased surveillance yet we live under greater threats than ever before. All the while you're told you should be okay with surveillance because it keeps you safe, despite the fact that all evidence runs contrary to this claim.
Words are powerful, because that's how we express ideas. Controlling this is controlling everything about us. Seeking to monitor people, their conversations and activities is not only about selling this data, but controlling and dictating what we think, say, how we act and what we believe. The very things that make us who we are. Once one controls this, you can make people buy into their own peril and even support it.
It is no wonder that the ones most susceptible to this are the ones who have not only been propagandized, but are now incapable of seeing reality and favor the fiction of freedom and democracy - which they never had.
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