One of the hits of the 2011 TV season in the US was "Person of Interest". It's a thriller serial that starts from the paranoid premise that after 9/11, the US government ordered the development of a system, known in the show as "The Machine", to record all e-mail messages, CCTV camera footage and such in the hope of identifying potential terrorist threats and nipping them in the bud.
Turns out that art was imitating life there, because we now know that after 9/11, the Bush administration did indeed set up the basics of such a system, at least the e-mail part. The Machine, formally known as PRISM, has only expanded in the intervening years, under Presidents Bush and Obama alike.
The existence of PRISM has now become known to the general public, thanks to the journalistic efforts of the Washington Post and The Guardian (of London). Civil rights and privacy activists are getting themselves into a fine old lather about it, but I have to admit I find it difficult to take the righteous anger too seriously. We live in an age where a large proportion of the population seems obsessed with chronicling its every waking moment and plastering everything, no matter how mundane, all over the social media. If the citizenry doesn't seem to care about privacy and propriety any more, why should the government think any differently?
I mean, if you take to walking around the streets in the nude, you can't really take offence if people try to sneak a peek at your belongings.
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