Maybe I have been listening to too much Immortal Technique, but is it me, or are we getting closer towards realizing an Orwellian future?

“The adjective Orwellian describes the situation, idea, or societal condition that George Orwell identified as being destructive to the welfare of a free-society. It connotes an attitude and a policy of control by propaganda, misinformation, denial of truth, and manipulation of the past … practised by modern repressive governments.”

I haven’t been watching the news lately, but I came across this article which talks about the UK government plans to use a cinema-style ratings system for websites and also start a bigger data retention scheme called the Interception Modernisation Programme to create one central database, gathering details on every text sent, e-mail sent, phone call made and website visited. Consultation on the plans is due to begin later this year.

From March 15th, a European Commission directive will come into effect whereby information about emails will be stored by ISPs. The information in question is from the email headers (who sent it, where it is from and when the email was sent). All this effort to try and and find out information about terrorist activity. REALLY? Do you think terrorists are really going to be using hotmail or yahoo email addresses for all their needs? All they have to do is use other forms of communication (VOIP like skype or other messaging services that use servers outside of the UK). How long is it before the government feels the need to monitor all our internet activity to “find terrorists”?

As for the cinema-style ratings idea I would love to see a government body try and rate every single website in the world. The official Google blog states that they have indexed over 1 TRILLION unique URLs, so you are looking at a momentous task… Maybe we have a fix for all the unemployment we are seeing?

I am not a terrorism-sympathiser. I want the government to do everything it can to stop terrorism and crime, but how many liberties must be taken? How much privacy can we give up? How many freedoms must be sacrificed?

The new season of 24 just started, and in this newest season, a fierce debate is sparked; Is torture acceptable? I think we can expect a unanimous NO. In the case of 24, the poster question was essentially “Do the ends justify the means?” For Jack Bauer, the ends seemed to always justify the means (well almost always) since he was always able to use torture to get 100% accurate information. Jack Bauer was always able to save the day, and the people he tortured were always the bad guys. However that doesn’t apply to real life. The fact is, innocent people may be tortured in the process, or the victims would lie.

The debate about whether the ends justify the means is always an ugly one, and I won’t go through that here, but if we are to assume that the ends of the government’s plan to monitor their people is to protect them, then surely that is the most important thing? We all must be protected from harm? At whatever cost?

Hmmmm. Similarly to how torture can hurt innocent people, so can Orwellian-style monitoring. Recently we have seen the internet transformed into an open, social environment where information, photos, videos, opinions and facts can be shared freely and openly. There are industries and businesses built upon this, there are people and organisations dependant on it. Legislation like this would undo everything the Internet stands for.