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Comment by JumpJumpJump | Hacker News Reader

In '1984' every room of every house and apartment was monitored, if this is currently not the case in the UK, the quote is hyperbole.

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Orwell was right about many things, perhaps not the letter of tech details. Some are far worse.

He was right about the military industrial complex, about being at constant war with somebody for a manufactured purpose, about shifting alliances and villainization of the new enemies. He was especially right about a government using ubiquitous information about its populace to control it, and the crime of speaking out against the government.

And you are wrong about the every room thing: it's not just TV's in every room but everywhere.Your cellphone follows you along with its mic, gps, camera, wifi, BT, NFC, UTDOA, GPS, and CGI. If you leave that behind, then face trackers, license plate readers, UAVs, RFID tags, ezpass, TPMs, etc etc follow you everywhere you go.

He especially did not see the compute power of correlating thousands of inputs on each individual.

It'd be shorter to just point that he was right about everything he saw the soviets doing at the time, and could not foresee what the future would bring in surveillance technology.

When making assumptions about people and basing your comment on those assumptions from my experience you're mostly wrong.

1. I have no cellphone. 2. I have no "face trackers, license plate readers" in my rooms.

1 + 2 "And you are wrong about the every room thing" no I'm not.

> He was especially right about ...the crime of speaking out against the government.

You lost me here. In 1984, the populace was afraid to speak out against the government, even in private to close acquaintances. I don't believe this is the case at all in our society -- both individuals and the media seem very willing and able to criticize the government freely.

Instead of thanking whistleblowers for their bug reports and fixing the problem, the current administration is pursuing them with every means at their disposal.

Edit - things are not looking great for journalists either.

Whistleblowing, like all things must be done in a correct and legal way. Randomly spreading FUD because some large institution functions in ways you don't fully understand is not going to help as much as it will force them to spend money on damage control because you caused them damage. It's a vicious cycle and neither affected party is good when both are doing unlwaful things.

Most of mainstream media is willing to criticize the government as long as it is about anything but privacy violations. Only a handful of sites (The Guardian, The Intercept, Ars Technica, HN) have consistently reported on it.

It may not be just cowardice. The scary part is that the public-at-large just does not care.

For now, you're right, but there are consequences for criticizing the government, if you remember Valerie Plame. Additionally, speaking out against the government now tags your dossier with "critical of government policy x" which forwards you to more careful monitoring. For now this is only a chilling effect, but eventually they'll target these people more. Just wait, they can't have a power and not abuse it.

Using your speech is also verboten if you have insider information that you think the public needs to know, as we see from Drake, Binney, Snowden, Manning, and others.

Weak criticism from outsiders is allowed; substantial criticism from people who know what they are talking about isn't given airtime or is criminalized even if they get popular traction. Here, it's more that speaking out doesn't accomplish anything for most people anything rather than speaking out being forbidden.

That's because the person who wrote 1984 did not foresee a little snitch in every pocket.

A little snitch that people pay for the privilege of carrying around!

That's the real thing Orwell missed -- not that surveillance would increase, but that the surveilled would so enthusiastically cooperate in their own surveillance.

This is where 1984 and Brave New World diverge. In 1984 people obeyed because they were afraid. In Brave New World, which is closer to reality, people fell into the arms of the big stage. They wanted it.

That is why Brave New World is far more chilling.

Another good read on the same subject: This Perfect Day by Ira Levin.

Thanks. Allow me to return the favour:

www.amazon.com/We-Yevgeny-Zamyatin/dp/0140185852

Thank you!

Oh no, people are wanting and getting things you don't approve of. How terrible.

Um, no, people aren't paying to be surveilled. They're paying to have an internet-enabled entertainment and information device in their pocket. Any surveillance is a side-effect, and one I think most people would not agree to if it doesn't provide any benefit to themselves.

The whole reason companies as big as Facebook and Google can exist is because this surveillance provides huge benefits.

In theory they could charge money for their services instead and not capitalize on user data. I would pay them for this if I was given the option and already do so where possible, but it would seem that I am by no means representative.

You could not pay them enough for that. The mere presence of a pay to opt out feature devalues all the other data they collect on people who don't pay.

It's the number one law of inescapable advertising. The more people are willing to pay to avoid advertisement, the more lucrative advertising to them is.

Well people payed for their telescreens, rigth? I remember the lower class didn't have them, possibly because they couldn't afford them.

Still had the cameras though.

You do have a gps enabled tracking device with two cameras and a microphone in your pocket though.

Purchased by myself with permissions to use those features toggled on/off for various apps. In the book, you didn't have a choice. And if I tell the government to go fuck off, I'm not going to have my door busted in and be taken off to some prison.

Not to mention that the phones aren't always listening, always recording, and always reporting my location any way. I they were, my battery would last 3 hours tops.

Your phone is always reporting its position. Someone, somewhere has the capability to type your cell phone number or IMEI in to a console and find out what tower you're currently connected to. Furthermore it only takes 3 towers to trilaterate your location, and someone, somewhere has telemetry from all the towers in your neighbourhood at their fingertips.

Hell, failing that, it's been demonstrated publicly that anybody can simply purchase access to SS7 and query this sort of information to locate you, in real time, from the other side of the globe, without your knowledge. If you post your cell phone number online, many people can find you right now.

As for it not always recording, true, but you have no idea when and if it is enabled. The SIM and baseband processor are black boxes capable of running unfettered by iOS and Android. Your app preferences are simply irrelevant, and you cannot easily see or inspect the traffic going over the cellular network.

Oh, and you likely can't remove your battery.

Cell phones are an Orwellian wet dream. If you're ever doing anything you never want anyone to ever know about, whether it's illegal or just deeply private, do not take your cell phone with you.

... and make sure there are no other cellphones in the vicinity

>phones aren't always listening, always recording, and always reporting my location

But sometimes they are![0]

[0] http://www.cnet.com/news/fbi-taps-cell-phone-mic-as-eavesdro...

> Purchased by myself with permissions to use those features toggled on/off for various apps.

You have to love the beauty of such a scheme.

And you believe it when it says its not sending data to Google / Apple / MS?

And what of those around you?

Every PC, cellphone, console, smart TV, and soon every appliance and lightbulb will be under surveillance (everything that connects to them is captured by the spy agencies, encrypted or not). Close enough, I would say.

However we have a microphone and a camera on each of us.

If you have your phone in your pocket, at the very least your location is probably being tracked in every single room of your house, and there's a fair chance that they can dial up audio of whatever room you happen to be in.

I don't think we're quite so far from Nineteen Eighty-Four as you think.

From three years ago using wifi as a radar source to view people inside buildings, maybe it's "unofficially" in use you know experimenting, for science.

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-08/06/wifi-radar

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