Thursday, December 26, 2013

"Snowden cites Orwell in Christmas message"

"Speaking directly into the camera from Moscow, where he took refuge after leaking vast troves of information on NSA spying, Snowden said government surveillance methods far surpass those described in Orwell’s dystopic novel “1984.”

“The types of collection in the book — microphones and video cameras, TVs that watch us — are nothing compared to what we have available today. We have sensors in our pockets that track us everywhere we go,” he said. “Think about what this means for the privacy of the average person.”

New York Post via Drudge tweet (Read more for video)

Video SparkNotes: Orwell's 1984 Summary

10 comments:

Chip Ahoy said...

I'm flabber gasted. I had a dream about this a long time ago. Weird too because I woke up in the dream on the escalators at a mall in somebody else's body. Ended up in his parents house. The way I knew it was all wrong on the escalator was that my hair was so incredibly annoying. Way too long on one side and constantly falling in my face. The end of it was me going into his parents room explaining the situation. I'm actually a grown man not a teen and this electronic intrusion into your bedroom I notice is unacceptable. Your television is observing your domestic life not just delivering entertainment and I ripped out the cable. Unproductive argument ensued, and that's where it ended.

And now it's happening!

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Pelosy had it right about the wrong thing.
I think we have to loose it, in order to find out what's in it. Privacy.

john said...

I think we passed Orwell long ago and are decidedly travelling with Huxley.

edutcher said...

The kid is low on imagination if he doesn't understand how technology has changed collecting the info, but we're still a long way from the doubleplusungood society of Oceania.

Hagar said...

But we don't want to go there either.
A big factor in Hitler's rise was that hardly anyone would believe he actually meant it and was going to do it.

Anonymous said...

I'm conflicted on Snowden. Many of my friends consider him a hero for exposing the extent of the NSA snooping and scooping.

I get that, but if you didn't know the NSA was doing that stuff, you weren't paying attention.

I'm not crazy about people going Daniel Ellsberg on the US. Who knows how what secrets Snowden may still have and what damage he might do.

Furthermore, it would be just like Obama to tie the hands of the NSA *after* Obama leaves office.

William said...

Don't the existence of Manning and Snowden offer proof that the net is not all that tightly meshed?......I guess the potential for abuse exists, but, as the Obamacare rollout demonstrates, Obama is not exactly a Bond villain when it comes to effectuating his schemes.

Hagar said...

Manning disclosed names of agents in the field.
Snowden that the NSA has large buildings with all our phone-calls on file and computers to search them.
It is not the same thing. Do not conflate.

Anonymous said...

Hagar: William's point was that US secrets, of whatever sort, are not so well guarded when vast chunks of them can be absconded with by the likes of Manning and Snowden.

Also, Snowden is withholding, for the present at least, caches of even more sensitive information which could well include the names of agents in the field or worse.

This is a big reason for why I am not a Snowden fan.

Do not assume.

ken in tx said...

I posted this on TOP. Government snooping without a warrant is not new. When I was in high school, in the 60s, one of my classmates brought some Klan literature to school. One item was a slip of paper, with the words, “The KKK is watching you.” printed in red ink. As a joke, I mailed one of these to a friend of mine in another town. After that, for years, my mail was opened and resealed—not so skillfully. The postal inspectors and FBI probably still have a file on me today. Then, like today, any info obtained like that cannot be used in court. I suppose it could have been used to blackmail me—if I cared.