Literally everyone is at it. Any government with the means to collect data on its citizens is already doing so and, perhaps, it was stupid of us to assume otherwise! We have sleep walked into an Orwellian state and the general public don't really seem to care all that much. After all, if you aren't doing anything wrong then I guess you don't have to worry, right? Wrong. Privacy has an innate value regardless of your intentions or actions. I don't want someone sifting through my emails, not because I have divulged within my plans to blow up parliament, but because they are my personal emails. I refute the argument that the government has the right to all my private data in the name of terror. That isn't what this is about. How big a threat are terrorists, really? You have more chance of dying in a plane crash than being involved in an act of terror. I'm not saying we shouldn't be vigilant, of course we should go after these guys and hold them accountable for their awful actions.
At what cost, though? Slowly our freedoms are diminishing, bit by bit, usually in the name of terrorism or protecting children. No one really bats an eye lid because the steps are incremental. Where does this lead us? At which point does the government stop enforcing new laws that affect our privacy and freedom?
Would you trade total lack of privacy, to the point where only your thoughts are truly private, in exchange for total safety from criminals? I know I wouldn't. The sad thing is we are basically already there. We now know that governments have approached all major software companies requesting they put back doors into their systems allowing for easy access. Even the creator of Linux, an operating system regarded to be the very essence of freedom, recently disclosed that he was approached by the US government to compromise the system.
This isn't some dystopian novel, this is actually happening right now. Freedom and privacy as our great grand parents would have known it is all but gone. If you want to go back to a simpler time you pretty much have to abandon technology and go and live in the woods. It's not too late to change things, remember this is a democracy. If enough people make enough noise about issues like this the government have to take notice. If they don't then we are in for a revolution.
You might at this point be thinking I am some kind of lunatic conspiracy theorist, I am not. Too many people regard the law as gospel, and think of the government almost as a deity. The government is here to serve us, not the other way round. Just because a law exists certainly does not make it right. Wake up. Demand change now or it is our children who will have to deal with the consequences.
