Modern Surveillance State Grows Into Dystopian Band-Aid For Much Deeper Wound

We live in an era of technological totalitarianism. Regardless of whether we are criminals, potential threats to others, or just unwitting customers who signed up for something that we do not fully understand, we are monitored by private tech companies, 24/7. George Orwell did not even predict this world in his dystopian classic, 1984.

Over the last three decades, Big Tech giants grew and acquired power at a dizzying pace, and while most of us were too enamored by their sleek products and the ease and comfort they brought to our daily lives — the convenience of Amazon Prime shipping, for example, or the technological marvel of the iPhone — they quietly built layer upon layer of digital surveillance. They harvest our data, then use it to sell products through targeted advertising. App permissions and invisible web trackers are used to build behavioral profiles. It is as if these companies know us better than we know ourselves — and maybe they do.