Big brother is watching you. Unfortunately, big brother in the year 2023 is not our federal government. Not yet anyway. Big Brother in our
internet age is the FAANG: Meta (formerly Facebook), Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Alphabet (formerly Google). Microsoft should be added as the sixth culprit on the list. We are living in George Orwell’s world of 1984, only our situation is 10 times worse than the conditions he describes in his book, written in the year 1949. We are 40 years beyond the year Orwell envisioned this mysteriously totalitarian world and his prognostication was correct in a sense. With the help of the internet, Big brother will eventually come to know everything about each of its citizens, every thought, every word spoken, every action taken. Our Orwellian world is here but it will only get worse. Except in 2023, we are relinquishing our private identity to private companies but eventually our Big Brother will become our federal government.
“The story takes place in an imagined future in the year 1984, when much of the world is in perpetual war. Great Britain, now known as Airstrip One, has become a province of the totalitarian super state Oceania, which is led by Big Brother, a dictatorial leader supported by an intense cult of personality manufactured by the Party's Thought Police. Through the Ministry of Truth, the Party engages in omnipresent government surveillance, historical negationism, and constant propaganda to persecute individuality and independent thinking.
The protagonist, Winston Smith, is a diligent mid-level worker at the Ministry of Truth who secretly hates the Party and dreams of rebellion. He keeps a forbidden diary and begins a relationship with his colleague Julia, and they learn about a shadowy resistance group called the Brotherhood. However, their contact with the Brotherhood turns out to be a Party agent, and Smith is arrested. He is subjected to months of psychological manipulation and torture by the Ministry of Love and is released once he has come to love Big Brother.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four
This Orwellian world currently exists in China. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) controls every aspect of the life of its citizens and has become Big Brother. President Xi has established the Thought Police who censor what is seen on the internet and the news consumed by the public. Large cities are covered with facial-recognition cameras and technology which surveils the whereabouts and activity of each citizen. The CCP initiated a social credit score system. Each citizen has a national credit rating. If a citizen racks up a poor rating, they are placed on a blacklist complied by the CCP. Your score effects the schools you can attend, the home you can buy, the trains you can ride, airline ticket you can purchase and even job opportunities. The People’s Bank of China is developing the digital yuan, a central bank digital currency (CBDC) that aims to replace all cash in circulation. China has already started real-world trials in a number of cities including Shenzhen, Chengdu and Suzhou. The CCP is officially atheist, but it recognizes five religions: Buddhism, Catholicism, Daoism, Islam, and Protestantism. The religious police closely monitor these groups, registering and unregistering them as whim dictates. Xi appoints Catholic bishops and has overtaken the responsibility of the Pope. (St. Peter must be turning in his grave.) Many Protestant denominations have been run out of the country. Big Brother has a large population of religious prisoners, including Uyghur Muslims, who are placed in concentration camps to be reprogramed through psychological manipulation and torture by the Ministry of Truth. Everyone in China must follow the communist line and come to love Big Brother. Otherwise, a rebellious citizenry will face the ostracism and persecution of the Ministry of Love. How is that for an oxymoron.
In the United States, currently, FAANG plus Microsoft has become our Big Brother. The information we are surrendering about ourselves to these private concerns would require search warrants if the federal or state governments wished to inquire into our lives to such an extent. Making matters more alarming, these six companies design their products to work in harmony with each other so that they can effectively capture every bit of data possible. And they share this information between themselves. Because of our connectivity, we are unwittingly giving our information freely without restraint. Everyone is attached to the internet in some form or fashion either through a smart phone, iPad, lap top, automobile or desktop computer. Even televisions are becoming more “connected.” These six companies track every move we make and store all of this gleaned information in huge databases. They store our locations, our phone calls, our text messages, our email messages, our internet browsing histories, our instant messages, our pictures and recordings, our vacations, our shopping trends, our store purchases, our business travel and even the documents we create. On top of that, they create Apps which access this information that collect even more detailed information. (Did you know that Microsoft has the “One Drive” which Windows forces the documents you create to be stored in the Cloud and Google records conversations in your home with Alexa?) They currently claim to use this information for business purposes such as advertising, but concerns persist. The real concern is with our information getting into the hands of bad actors. Evil foreign governments and hackers can probably get into any of the big six databases with a concerted effort. For example, the DNC servers were hacked during the 2016 elections. (Or they were leaked by Seth Rich who was killed for his treachery.) Hillary Clinton’s “secure” private server in her basement was hacked by foreign hackers revealing top State secrets. What is even more concerning is that they control the information we request to examine and search for on the net. Google gives you the search results which it deems best, not necessarily what you may be looking for. Facebook and Twitter are accused of silencing people who differ from their woke, liberal, political views. If an opposing view is broadcast on conservative sites, the left will cancel and boycott the person. If these companies want the internet to remain free, then they need to ensure that the processes remain pure. Once tainted by human intervention, biases will always occur. Artificial intelligence will no doubt make matters worse.
Our federal government is joining in on this power grab. The Biden administration was working with Twitter and Facebook to throttle back information they didn’t want disseminated such as covid irregularities, the Hunter Biden laptop story and the story of a stolen election. FBI officials recently admitted that the agency colluded on a weekly basis with Facebook to flag and take down posts that were critical to the Biden administration. They were censoring Americans’ speech in the name of “misinformation.” In actual fact, they were censoring the truth that was conflicting with their political agenda. Now we have Biden bucks. Executive Order 14067 was signed by President Joe Biden on March 9, 2022. Section 4 instructs various federal government agencies to explore the benefits and risks to the U.S. financial system of issuing digital government currency (central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs), and report how such a system would be implemented. Over 80% of central banks worldwide are currently exploring Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), and 40% are testing proof-of-concept programs. This is our future – replacing the physical U.S. dollar with a digital dollar. All currency will be directly controlled and issued by the government to consumers. This is not cryptocurrency like bitcoin. It is not based in blockchain technology. The dollar will generate electronically and distribute like physical dollars but all electronically. The government will than have the capability to monitor how much we make and where we spend our money. They will tax every dollar made. They could limit, suspend or freeze your money if the Thought Police dislike a certain speech or activity. Once our government gets a taste of the power of censorship and thought control, it will grow into a Chinese state. Each political party will be consumed by this power. In the real world, dictators seek power, possessions and privilege. Those in power will always rule the proletariat. We should fear Big brother.
Measures need to be put in place by Congress to force these companies to reveal their data collection methods and install security measures for safety from attack. Congress then needs to limit the amount of data that they can collect and then limit the unrestrained dissemination of this information. Will inquires and regulations by Congress ever happen? Probably not. Every stinking politician receives huge amounts of campaign dollars from these companies to stay in office and the politicians refuse to make the necessary investigations and throttle back these intrusions. Why is Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Facebook afraid to testify before Congress? Because they know regulation is inevitable and they are only prolonging the process. They will avoid regulation at all costs. We can take small steps to protect ourselves. Turn off unused Apps. Always turn your computer and cell phone to airplane mode when not on the internet. Use search engines that do not track your data such as Duck Duck Go. Call your congressman or congresswoman for change or contact Winston Smith for a revolution.