Nov 3, 2013

Snowden's disclosures have created a lot of references to art, in particular to George Orwell and his novel 1984. Even if you have listened to the first interview of Snowden, do it again. He talks a lot about relations that we usually ignore - and therefore usually support - by ignorance.

Edward Snowden, Wikipedia
The NSA files, The Guardian
National Security Agency (NSA), Wikipedia
10 Sci-Fi Stories That Predicted the Surveillance StateDJ Pangburn, Motherboard, July 17, 2013


"… if you realize that ... it's gonna get worse with the next generation and the next generation who extend the capabilities of this sort of architecture of oppression, you realize that you might be willing to accept any risk and it doesn't matter what the outcome is so long as the public gets to make their own decisions …"

The interview in text


ORWELL


Edward Snowden: public indifference is the real enemy in the NSA affair
"Most people don't seem to worry that government agencies are collecting their personal data. Is it ignorance or apathy? ... And yet the discovery that in less than three decades our societies have achieved Orwellian levels of surveillance provokes, at most, a wry smile or a resigned shrug. And it is this level of passive acceptance that I find really scary. ..." John Naughton, The Guardian/The Observer, Oct 20, 2013

NSA surveillance goes beyond Orwell's imagination – Alan Rusbridger
"Guardian editor says depth of NSA surveillance programs greatly exceed anything the 1984 author could have imagined", The Guardian, Sep 23, 2013

If Big Brother came back, he'd be a public-private partnership
"GCHQ and NSA mine data collected by private companies such as Google and Facebook. They have a duty of openness too", Timothy Garton Ash, The Guardian, June 27, 2013

How can we invest our trust in a government that spies on us?
"We should not fear some Orwellian future state where we're subjected to total electronic scrutiny – it's our present reality", George Monbiot, The Guardian, June 24, 2013

America the Brave New World: The United States Is Realizing the Dystopian Nightmares of Our Best Science Fiction
"As in Huxley, Philip Dick, and "The Matrix," we chose the simulacrum of democracy and “freedom” instead of the real things", Andrew O'Hehir / Salon, June 16, 2013

George Orwell back in fashion as Prism stokes paranoia about Big Brother
"Nineteen Eighty-Four depicts a society in which liberty was impossible – so how should we respond to this new threat?" Stephen Moss, The Guardian, June 11, 2013

An article in Swedish: Prism, Orwell och dubbeltänket
"De senaste årens digitala utveckling och dess inflytande på samhället har gjort varenda referens till ”1984” utsliten. Men frågan är om något passat så väl i George Orwells klassiska framtidsdystopi som ... att amerikansk underrättelsetjänst har full insyn i servrarna hos nio av världens största internetaktörer."
Axel Björklund, Dagens Nyheter, June 7, 2013

George Orwell: A Life in Pictures, BBC docudrama (2003) telling the life story of the author.

Stop Taking Orwell's Name in Vain
"The author loathed cliches and conveniently murky political buzzwords—like "Orwellian." "
Jason Slotkin, The Atlantic, Jun 19, 2013

George Orwell (1903–1950), Wikipedia
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), Wikipedia
Big Brother (Nineteen Eighty-Four), Wikipedia
George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Gutenberg of Australia
George Orwell, Wikiquote


LE CARRÉ


Even Le Carré's latest fiction can't do justice to Snowden
"Whistleblower and writer both finger the enemy as their own side. But the full horror of truth always outdoes the imagination", Simon Jenkins, The Guardian, July 9, 2013

John le Carré, Wikipedia

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