George Orwell’s 1984 was published in 1949 as pure fiction. It depicted an Orwellian society marked by constant surveillance, censorship, authoritarianism and invasion of privacy.
More than seventy years later, this once called “pure fiction” is becoming an unsettling reality. The digital age today is increasingly becoming an Orwellian dystopia.
The contemporary world mirrors the setting in Orwell’s novel. Civil liberties have been curtailed; privacy, once held in high regard, is on the verge of being invaded. Western governments, champions of civil liberties, are stripping people of their basic rights to privacy and freedom of expression.
In the US, critics and digital rights experts argue that the Trump administration has deployed advanced technologies based on AI and machine learning to create a digital police state. These technologies allegedly come from companies like Babel Street and Palantir.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) blogpost argued that these technologies could be misused against citizens. For instance, Palantir’s ICE app, ELITE, populates a map with potential deportation targets, brings up a dossier on each person, and provides a ‘confidence score’ on the person’s current address.
In the UK, YouTube warned creators about potential changes as the government is set to take control of the platform. The move aims to promote TV broadcasters over social media platforms like TikTok and YouTube. Independent creators fear this will damage content discoverability and stifle their voices.
The UK government also plans to impose strict rules to block VPNs in a bid to enforce an under-16s social media ban. Reports suggest the country may be forced to ban, monitor or require mandatory digital ID checks for every single VPN user.
In Europe, the European Parliament is set to extend the controversial Chat Control legislation through urgent procedure. Under this extension, tech companies would be allowed to read all messages and online communications of all users for child sexual abuse material.
These developments have sparked a fresh debate on privacy. Users are worried, as well as the political community, which fears measures that restrict liberties. Some call it a “death of democracy,” while others fear they are “sleepwalking into a dystopian future.”