In the Dystopia, Turn to the Other Listener

For your Saturday-afternoon unsettling reading, turn to the thoughts of Instapundit reader, security expert Eric Cowperthwaite, regarding the WikiLeaks release of CIA files:

The CIA has built a capability to hack pretty much anything, anywhere. It turns out that they, potentially, have more ability to intrude into servers, computers, smartphones and electronic communications than even the NSA. This capability is now in the hands of people other than the CIA. All the things you’ve read, that seem like science fiction movie plots, are really true. Other people can listen to you via your smart TV, can read your email, turn on the webcam on your laptop, without you ever knowing.

On the same topic, Roger Simon of PJMedia takes up some of the media and political ramifications.  This paragraph in particularly caught my eye:

Whatever the case, we all have to do some serious thinking — way beyond the general superficiality and contrived drama of congressional hearings or indeed the quick in-and-out of an op-ed.  What is being revealed here is a sea change in the human condition that is almost evolutionary in its implications. What are our lives like without the presumption of privacy?  What kind of creatures will we become in this brave new world that appears already to have arrived?   It’s not fun to contemplate. Even the medieval peasantry had moments of escape from their feudal lords.

Rather than “evolutionary,” I think I’d go straight to “existential.”  As a Christian, the notion of never being entirely alone is not exactly a new one (and not inherently a frightening one).  The key question becomes who is listening and why.

There is nothing an omnipotent God needs to sneak from us and no worldly advantage for Him to gain by knowing our secrets.  Whatever you’ve thought or done, worse has been thought and done by millions of others.  That is not true when the listeners are other people, with their own schemes and selfish interests.

Whatever new technological twists we put on the old plot, the central struggle remains the same for the individual: It’s them versus Him.

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