/. [Has Orwell's '1984' Come 22 Years Later?]

[Eugen Leitl]

Link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/29/0223253
Posted by: Cliff, on 2006-07-29 03:55:00

   [1]gabec asks: "This weekend my mother bought a grille lighter,
   something like this [2]butane lighter. The self-scanner at Kroger's
   locked itself up and paged a clerk, who had to enter our drivers
   license numbers into her kiosk before we could continue. Last week my
   girlfriend bought four peaches. An alert came up stating that peaches
   were a restricted item and she had to identify herself before being
   able to purchase such a decidedly high quantity of the dangerous
   fruit. [3]My video games spy on me, reporting the applications I run,
   the websites I visit, the accounts of the people I IM. My ISP [4]is
   being strong-armed into a two-year archive of each action I take
   online under the guise of catching pedophiles, [5]the companies I
   trust to free information are my enemies, [6]the people looking out
   for me are being watched. As if that weren't enough, [7]my own
   computer spies on me daily, [8]my bank has been compromised, [9]my
   phone is tapped--has been for [10]years--and [11]my phone company is
   A-OK with it. What's a guy that doesn't even consider himself paranoid
   to think of the current state of affairs?" The sad state of affairs is
   that Big Brother probably became a quiet part of our lives a lot
   earlier. The big question now is: how much worse can it get?

   Am I just accustomed to old ways? Does the new generation, born with
   these restrictions, feel the weight of these bonds and recoil from my
   fears as paranoia? What can I, a person with no political interests--a
   person that would really rather think that the people in office are
   there because they're looking out for us, our rights, and our freedoms
   and not because their short-sightedness is creating a police state--do
   to stem the tide?"

References

   1. mailto:cooperg.myrealbox at com
   2. http://www.broilkingbbq.com/grillpro/products.asp?CID=16
   3. http://www.rootkit.com/blog.php?newsid=358
   4. http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/02/1238237&tid=158
   5. http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=17180
   6. http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/15/1922209&tid=158
   7. http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20060608002958907
   8.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/23/AR20060623001
67.html
   9. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5399264
  10. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=abIV0cO64zJE&refer=
  11. http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/21/1718219&tid=158

----- End forwarded message -----
--
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.ativel.com
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