Welcome to 1984

     1984 is creeping into our lives, and I don't mean the 80s are coming back, and I'm not talking about the make-up, the hair style or the clothes. I'm talking about the George Orwell book, 1984, that depicts a future where "Big Brother" is always watching and privacy is a thing of the past.
     When 1984 came and went the nation breathed a sigh of relief, this predicted Orwellian future never came and our live could continue, free and protected. Unfortunately danger is still alive today. SOPA and PIPA may not have gotten through legislation but the danger isn't past. Now running it's way through legislation is the Cyber Intelligence and Sharing Protection Act (CISPA).
     For those who missed SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (the Protect IP Act), these acts never passed but they didn't die either. These acts were intended to protect copyrights but the bills were so vaguely written that their effectiveness in regards to their intent was pretty dubious. Under SOPA and PIPA websites like Wikipedia, Facebook and Google would be responsible for the content posted by their millions of users and if any of these websites had content violating copyright law they could be shut down. Of course expecting sites that get millions of hits a second to monitor ever post and every last bit of content the minute it pops up is crazy.
     Now it's CISPA's turn in legislation. CISPA basically hits the final nail in the coffin for the right to privacy. Under CISPA the government would not need a warrant/subpoena to access private information. This means the government would have the right to read emails, track search records, and basically bypass any privacy settings if you could even be remotely suspected of anything "suspicious". In the case of SOPA and PIPA companies like Google and Facebook were against the bill, however, under this bill these companies get full protection while disclosing personal information.
     We already have anti-terrorism precautions. Everything changed after 9/11. The Patriot Act and National Security Letters give the government power to request companies like Google, Facebook, ect. turn over your personal information while prohibiting these third party companies from informing you that your information has been distributed. In cases of personal information being distributed citizens can appeal the action, however, if you aren't told you're being monitored or having you information distributed how can you do much about it? If you wanted to keep to the theme of Orwell's book, 1984 you could sum this up with "Big Brother is watching."
     Of course we may not have TV screens that can see ever inch of our house or hear every word we speak but what we say and do on the internet, regardless of privacy settings, isn't so private these days it seems. Orwell's 1984 is a perfect distopia. Citizens live in fear and can vanish in the middle of the night never to be seen again, as if they never existed. We haven't sunk so far as to fear deviating from our daily routines and fearing every consequences of every utterance but are we still have reason enough to worry about what we say and do on the internet. Today you don't have to be formally charged with anything for there to be trouble in this post 9/11 era.

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely"
~John Dalberg-Acton

Sources/Additional info:
SOPA/PIPA
SOPA/PIPA
CISPA
CISPA - Democracy Now