When Edward
Snowden blew his whistle on the secret big data surveillance system of the US
government, called PRISM,
I could hear only a murmur of outrage from humanity.
While some knew that the government eavesdrops on our
conversations and technology was available to enable this, people in general
had no clue about it—the way the vastness of the operation has been unearthed.
Snowden’s revelation—proof of the US
government’s secret plan—should have come as a big shock. It was like finding
out that your privacy had been bombed out by a drone and you didn’t know about
it.
“I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and
say is recorded,” Snowden said in an interview. “That is not something I am
willing to support or live under.”
There should have been a tsunami of revolt after the Snowden
interview. Instead, all we got were some heroic applauds for Snowden, usual condemnation
from the US
government and the justifications for the programme by the secret service, and the
rest was soon forgotten.
Did you see any action after this?
You know what? Snowden knows that people would be callous,
that they will not do anything. He said: “The great fear that I have regarding
the outcome for America
of these disclosures is that nothing will change. [People] won’t be willing to
take the risks necessary to stand up and fight to change things… And in the
months ahead, the years ahead, it’s only going to get worse.”
While Snowden went missing from his hotel in Hong
Kong , you moved on with your daily life. You always do.
But, hey, here, take a pause with me. Stop playing that
video game for a minute. And consider this.
History will remember this Snowden moment as the day when human
privacy died. And if you have not spoken out, your silence will be construed as
your acquiescence. You will have to answer to the questions of your children
and grandchildren. Why did you not stop it when we were being enslaved?
But do you even care?
Most people are past caring about anything that does not
directly affect their well-being—and I applaud the system that they have
silently enabled to turn them into this state of emasculation.
Like they stopped caring for what has remained a sham of a
concept like democracy. Your government will do what it wants to do. What you
think your government should be doing is immaterial.
Like democracy, a lofty concept like privacy has no place in
the new world order that you live in. Your addiction to the cyber space has
vacuumed out your privacy—it gives you the carbonated sugary drink that you
love and crave for but what it does is makes you sick over time. And weakens
your will to fight the system.
If you don’t believe in human privacy, you don’t believe in
human dignity. And a life without dignity is anything but human. If you don’t
get this, go look at yourself in the mirror.
“I don’t want to live in a world where there’s no privacy,
and therefore no room for intellectual exploration and creativity,” Snowden
said in an interview.
In the end, it is all about making choices.
Snowden made a choice and he does not regret it. He has had “a
very comfortable life” that included a salary of roughly $200,000, a girlfriend
with whom he shared a home in Hawaii ,
a stable career, and a family he loves, he told The
Guardian. “I’m willing to sacrifice all of that because I can’t in good
conscience allow the US
government to destroy privacy, Internet freedom and basic liberties for people
around the world with this massive surveillance machine they’re secretly
building.”
What are the choices that you are going to make? Think about
it. Some have already started a campaign. The Mozilla
Foundation, the Electronic Freedom Foundation, Reddit, and a host of other
organisations are supporting a petition, Stop Watching Us. If you can’t do
something on your own, at least join the good side of the battle. Don’t look
for a leader. Get started now. Remember what Snowden
has said? “I had been looking for leaders, but I realised that leadership
is about being the first to act.”
