I don't really understand most people these days. In fact, I have felt increasingly isolated from most of my interactions with people I meet, especially online because it feels to me like I am living in a world where all but a handful of people are actually paying attention to what's going on. Whether it's the on-going endless wars that there is seemingly no resistance to, or protest of, or the surveillance state that the world now lives under, or gross economic inequality caused by a fraudulent system of economics that relies upon debasing fiat currency... I bring these subjects up with people and I am met with blank stares. It feels like there is no end in sight because of this. That the world is just going to roll on towards an increasingly totalitarian state of existence. Occasionally some voice will chirp up about these subjects in the mainstream media but it feels like nobody is actually paying attention to what is going on. Worse, sometimes it feels like people do know what's happening but they don't actually care. I suppose it could be that they don't see just how bad things could get... but I don't think that's it.
I've known since 1997-1998 that Governments of the world were engaged in spying on citizen's online and telecommunications in a way that was denied for years. It was the "carnivore" program that was first brought to my attention. (You can see the Wikipedia entry about this). I was connected to people who were involved in IT security from the Bay area for a decade. I hung out with some people who were involved in the EFF - Electronic Frontier Foundation (https://www.eff.org/) and at one point I had contact with cypherpunks and netizens who were trying to establish a Data Haven on Sealand. The week that my contact showed up to explore opening a Co-Lo for that Data Haven, they appeared on the front page of Wired Magazine. Anyways, my contact who was very involved in development of cryptography suggested I research every claim he was making. He also suggested that I make myself scarce in online communications or over the phone until I had a true understanding of the scope of Government surveillance. He realized that he sounded nutty and paranoid so he correctly suggested to me that I should NOT take his word for it... but that I should research the subject for myself. Which I did. He suggested that if I ever planned to do any activism that would actually be effective at changing the world for the better, that I make sure I wasn't aware of just how totalitarian things had already become and were likely to get worse. I admit. I scoffed at what he told me. His final suggestion to me was that I should develop the practice of NEVER under any circumstance say anything online or on the phone that I would not be 100% comfortable with having my entire family know about. Like I said... I did not think that I had anything to hid and thus I had nothing to fear and that his cautions to me were over-the-top.
But the more I researched and dug into this issue, the more I realized that not only was he correct about the level of surveillance and manipulation going on -- but that he had actually understated it. And this was before Sept 11th. After Sept 11th, it became clear that if there was a scale of 1 to 10 involving Government surveillance of citizens -- after that horrific event, under the Patriot Act and other laws passed, the level of surveillance went from about a 3 out of 10 (which was scary enough) to about a 9 out of 10. We now live in a world where the people who have their hands on the levers of power and control want citizens to engage in criminal wrong doing. Why? If somebody has engaged in behavior that is problematic for the State, they can use the surveillance capacity to blackmail such individuals.
Before mass bulk data collection became a practice - this was not the case. But I believe that ever since mass bulk data collection has become a routine part of surveillance - I believe that this is how power is being maintained at the highest levels of Government offices. The dirtier and more disgusting a politician is, the more likely that the Deep State can control them. We are living in a world that even George Orwell could not have conceived of. Not only are all our conversations, chats, emails and texts being sucked up and stored... but even the words you type into a facebook post and then erase, or what you search for on google. The spying capacity of the government is so pernicious that they can even watch to see what you are watching and reading and clicking on whenever you are online. In essence, since the internet in this capacity is just an extension of our consciousness --it's almost as if your thoughts can be "read".
What can be done about this? Well the first thing is to raise awareness. When Snowden revealed the extent of the spying that was routinely occurring I believe that most people in the western world had no real grasp or proper explanation of what it meant that Government agents were engaged in this behavior. They still don't. The way that the media framed the issue was NOT done to educate and inform people. It was done to minimize the impact of what Snowden's work had revealed about what the Government was up to. To this day, I don't think more than a few thousand people "get it" when it comes to the implications of the spying and mass bulk data collection practices combined with spying capabilities. They really do not grasp that absolutely everything they do online is being hoovered up stored and at the ready for the Government to rifle through if they ever decide that you are a problem. An apparatus is being slowly constructed that will serve as a sort of virtual prison... one from which not a single person on earth will be capable of escaping, or opting out of.
In fact, just by clicking a few links on google search returns and daring to question this process and development of a totalitarian surveillance state, you can easily end up being targeted. Already there are killer drones on the other side of the world murdering people without due process or trial for being "enemies" of the United States. Insanely evil people seem to think that developing technology to murder people and to leave that process and decision entirely up to intelligence gathered by AI - is actually some sort of advancement of modern warfare that will serve American interests.
Where is this all going? Is it too late to stop the advance of this process? It may very well be. Asking people to give up their smart phones is seen as a laughable idea. I sometimes wonder just how stupid people actually are when it comes to this. Every time I hear of some evil pedophile being arrested for child porn -- or some politician caught sexting or sending dick pics to a teenager, I have to ask myself... "How did they expect to get away with any of it - with the surveillance state being the way that it is?"
I honestly don't know how far gone the world is at this point, but I note that just a week ago, the US Congress and Senate granted global super surveillance powers to it's agencies. Nothing that Snowden and Wikileaks exposed has been rolled back. I doubt it ever will be rolled back. And it seems like the people who are in charge of this are bound and determined to grant the State more and more power to limit free speech, the free press and freedom of association.
So if you are an activist trying to tackle systemic totalitarian growth - and you are effective in ANY real way at this -- please, for the love of god - be aware of what you are dealing with. I know that I sound as nutty to you as my friend from the Electronic Frontier Foundation sounded to me before I looked into it for myself. I encourage you to take what I say with a grain of salt but I implore you to do the research for yourself and then try to live your life accordingly.