Edward Snowden made claims about the state of privacy in the United States today and it was a very important interview at the start of COVID after lockdowns were in place. One of the claims that he made was that emergency powers are born out of crisis but have a perfect history of abuse. During the beginning of the pandemic people didn’t know what was true or false because the news would report about science when everything was fresh and new. However, we didn’t know how many people were infected. Just that the hospitals were full, and no one had enough money to live without assistance. Businesses were taking out loans left and right, so it raises the question how is the US one of the richest countries in the world, but people can’t live without assistance?
By now everyone knows that we are being tracked through our cell phones and most people have them. Snowden makes the claim that anonymity can’t happen in a thoughtful way. I agree because to weed out what’s being looked for, everyone needs to be looked at first. People were not even supposed to be under surveillance this long, it was a response to 9/11. And the surveillance authorities were supposed to be repealed around 2006, but they didn’t expire until very recently. Invading people’s privacy is becoming very normalized because right now we are grateful for it. We are grateful that our phone can tell us if someone that has COVID is near, but if we are only grateful then it will be a permanent addition to our everyday lives. It will start to effect other aspects of our lives like where we live and work, this might sound extreme, but this is the bases of a dystopia. Snowden touched on this as being the architecture of oppression, we are seeing it being built right in front of our eyes. Rights are being trampled over a lot more these days.
