Orwell’s 1984 and Technologically Speaking Is It Really Me?

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I am very blue indeed. I bounce along on a spring and my brain sits on the top of my head suggesting that I may have had a full lobotomy. That last bit about my brain may well lead some of you to respond ‘Ah! That’s why he is so loopy! He’s had a full lobotomy’ – HA bloody har! What I have just described is what I believe is called my ’emoticon’? Anyway, it’s the little picture on my articles. I used to have one with lots of legs and I’d grown quite attached to it. Now it’s a round blue blob on a spring and an outside brain. Is someone trying to tell me something?

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There is an increasingly serious side though to this internet identification business. In many ways none of you know that it is, in actual fact, me writing this. It could be a Martian or even a hedgehog with literary pretensions for all you know.

Well, all right. Martian’s and hedgehogs aside, you do not actually know me or if it is indeed me writing this.

Britain’s security services want to have more and more access to our computers. The civil liberties brigade are up in arms about it and, truth to tell, ordinary people are a little alarmed at the prospect.

You see we do understand that keeping us safe from terrorists and children safe from paedophiles and elderly people safe from being ripped off financially – and not necessarily elderly people come to think of it – is hugely important and anything that makes it a safer world is surely a good thing but many of us have read Orwell’s 1984.

Orwell certainly got it wrong but the fear is that he only got the date wrong.

As long as those who govern us are at least reasonably all right then all well and good but you only have to look at various regimes around the planet – North Korea, Zimbabwe, China, Saudi Arabia and so forth – to realise that invading our privacy in the name of freedom and democracy can be absolutely disastrous to our freedom and democracy if we ever have the misfortune to elect a person or political party that decides it’s better for us if they govern for ever.

Increasingly in Britain our politics are becoming more polarised. The Conservatives, in government to even their surprise, are seemingly becoming increasingly arrogant as their main opposition, Labour, flounder about with a leader clearly not up to the job. I do not say that lightly and, whilst I consider Jeremy Corbyn an idiot, I genuinely wish he wasn’t.

You see, initially laughing at Labour’s demise is now resulting in a very genuine concern.

A democracy – even if it is a two party democracy which Britain generally has been – needs an effective opposition. Without an effective opposition we become a one party state which is, of course, moving towards a dictatorship.

The dictatorship, via laws brought in to protect us, continues to have access to our internet usage. The laws were brought in to protect us as they could catch a terrorist using the internet to plan an atrocity or paedophiles using the internet to ensnare children. We had allowed these laws to be passed and poo-pooed the civil liberties brigade because we were frightened of terrorists and wanted paedophiles captured before they could harm children.

We never stopped to think about a dictatorship because this is Britain and it couldn’t happen here.

Well, it hasn’t happened here but our government are feeling unassailable at the moment. How large a step is it from a democratically elected unassailable government to a one party state to a dictatorship? I’ve no idea. I have a feeling not as large a step as we may think.

Still, perhaps I am worrying unduly. Perhaps I am over sensitive and becoming paranoid. Perhaps it’s the Budweiser.

Perhaps I will never receive a dreaded knock on my front door for saying ‘the British Prime Minister should be removed!’ – not that I am saying that, but if I ever did.

I wonder whether your internet usage is being monitored? Is mine? Do they know that I’ve downloaded things for free that I really should have paid for? Will ‘they’ one day catch up with me when they no longer have any ‘serious’ criminals to worry about on the internet as criminals and terrorists no longer use it as it isn’t safe for them any more?

Is it really me writing this or am I all ready locked away in a padded cell with a stick between my teeth but ‘they’ don’t want you to know so ‘they’ keep writing articles so you will never know?

How do we really know that Mike isn’t really a CIA operative and they are watching us?

Let’s play safe shall we?

I love The European Union! I love the British government (which ever one it is), I agree with everything that the authorities say because they are always right! I will never criticize anything that our western governments do ever ever ever!

See? It really is me writing this.

Probably.

Cue Twilight Zone music.

So, what is the solution? We want to be protected and we accept that the more information that our security services can obtain then all the better they are to protect us, but – there is always a ‘but’ and, indeed, there should always be a ‘but’.

How can we, the people, have safeguards built into any new laws enabling security services to access our internet usage in the name of protecting us that ensure that said security services cannot, at some indeterminate future time, use such legal access to prevent us from being critical of our governments or, if you do that sort of thing, accessing porn sites.

Personally, of course, I never do – ahem.

It’s a difficult one isn’t it? We want to be protected from the bad people in the world but we want our privacy.

I have a feeling we can’t have it both ways (as the choir boy said to the priest) – oh-oh. I could be in trouble now 😉

About Post Author

Neil Bamforth

I am English first, British second and never ever European. I have supported Oldham Athletic FC for 50 years which has made me immune from depression. My taste buds have died due to too many red hot curries so I drink Kronenburg beer and milk - sometimes in the same glass. I have a wife, daughter, 9 cats and I like toast.
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Bill Formby
8 years ago

I am as afraid of the far right in this country as I am the radical Muslims. What good is living in a free country if it is no longer free. I would just as soon actually know who my enemies are so I can fight them than have them passing laws to control me based on their religious beliefs.

Admin
8 years ago

As far as I’m concerned the more laws the better governing privacy, but NOT at the risk of losing our security. I don’t care what the government knows about me, as long as they keep me and mine safe.

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