Farewell to privacy: life in a surveillance state

Love him or hate him, Edward Snowden forever disabused us of the notion that certain things in life are still private. Reaction to his disclosures is directly proportionate to the level of support or disgust over the growing surveillance establishment.

In spite of the fact that the odds of becoming the victim of a terrorist attack in the U.S. are 20 million to 1, the global war on terror continues to be used as the pretext for taking away any remnants of our fragile privacy. It’s been estimated that during the last decade the U.S. spent $7 trillion dollars to fund this endless battle. The fear of a phantom bearded terrorist, waving a pitchfork out of a desert cave in a distant land is also being used to silence any criticism over ourextrajudicial drone murders, foreign policy, as well as domestic and international spying.

While the U.S. is more than willing to sacrifice the lamb of our privacy at the throne of the ubiquitous “war on terror”, we openly support Sunni extremists all over the world, grant asylum to murderous Chechen terrorists, arm Al Qaeda affiliates in Syria and encourage our allies to do the same.

It also bares mentioning that the definition of terrorism is in the eye of the beholder. The Department of Homeland Security’s intelligence assessmentswarn government officials to be on a lookout for American veterans, anti-war protesters and those who dare to reject federal authority in favor of state or local authority. Speaking out against corruption or simply voicing your disagreement with our official foreign policy on heavily-monitored social networks is very likely to turn you into a target of warrantless surveillance.

Let’s examine what it’s like to live our lives under the microscope. In the morning, when you open the refrigerator, crank up your coffeemaker, use a toaster or any other kitchen gadget, your movements become a part of a larger network. Surveillance-minded Big Brother has been eyeing “dumb appliances” for years. Now that most of them contain sensitive electronics, items of interest can be “located, identified, monitored, and remotely controlled through technologies such as radio-frequency identification, sensor networks, tiny embedded servers, and energy harvesters - all connected to the next-generation internet using abundant, low-cost, and high-power computing,” explained General David Petraeus.

Read more at:-

http://www.examiner.com/article/farewell-to-privacy-life-a-surveillance-state