Freedom Where Did You Go?

Guest Post by Paul Craig Roberts

My Generation is the last one to have known privacy and to have lived out most of our lives in freedom.

I remember when driving licenses did not have photos and most certainly not fingerprints. A driving license was issued on proof of birth date alone.

Prior to the appearance of automobiles IDs did not exist in democratic nations. You were who you said you were.

The intrusive questions that accost us every day, even when doing something simple as reporting a telephone or Internet connection being out or inquiring about a credit card charge, were impermissible. I remember when you could telephone a utility company, for example, have the telephone answered no later than the third ring with a real person on the line who could clear up the problem in a few minutes without having to know your Social Security number and your mother’s maiden name. Today, after half an hour with robot voices asking intrusive questions you might finally get a real person somewhere in Asia who is controlled by such a tight system of rules that the person is, in effect, a robot. The person is not permitted to use any judgment or discretion and you listen to advertisements for another half hour while you wait for a supervisor who promises to have the matter looked into.

The minute you go online, you are subject to collection of information about yourself. You don’t even know it is being collected.

According to reports, soon our stoves, refrigerators, and microwave ovens will be reporting on us. The new cars already do.

When privacy disappears, there are no private persons. So what do people become? They become Big Brother’s subjects.

We are at that point now.

This interview witth Julian Assange is worth the 53 minutes: https://www.rt.com/news/438968-assange-last-interview-blackout/

Think about Assange for a minute. He has done nothing wrong. There are no charges against him. All charges have been dismissed. But he cannot walk out of the Ecuadoran Embassy in London without being seized by the British police and handed over to Washington whose prosecutorial apparatus intends to prosecute Assange for treason although he is not a US citizen but an Australian and Ecuadoran citizen.

What did Assange do? Nothing but practice journalism. His problem, his only problem, is that his journalism embarrassed Washington, and Washington intends revenge.

Law is nowhere in the picture. The UK is breaking all known laws including its own by the forced detention of Assange in the Ecuadoran Embassy.

The US in its determination to get Assange has no law whatsoever on which to stand. It only has raw unbridled power that can operate without law.

In other words, the Anglo-American world is totally lawless. Yet the Russian government holds firmly to its delusion that the US and Britain are countries with which agreementts can be made.

The digital world makes Big Brother’s Memory Hole possible. No need to burn books. Just push a button and information disappears.

As I write Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Apple, and so forth are all making non-approved information disappear.

In a digital world, not only can our identities be stolen—indeed, it can be stolen multiple times so that there are many of you at the same time—but we can also be erased. Poof—push a button and there you go. This makes murder easy. You never existed.

As I said before and will say again, the digital world and artificial intelligence are a far worse disaster for mankind than ever was the Black Plague. All the smart people busy at work creating the new world are destroying the human race.

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Fleabaggs
Fleabaggs

Funny you should mention it. I just came from wallyverse. I had to have the lady in charge of self checkout verify that I was 16 in order to buy a 2.00 sharpening stone.

Chubby Bubbles
Chubby Bubbles

Whut? What state are you in (don’t say comatose)? What’s the legal deal there?

Fleabaggs
Fleabaggs

Bubbles..
Mt. If you can believe it. It might just be Wally world policy. They went PC a while back.

e.d. ott
e.d. ott

There’s a chain drugstore across the street from my Dad’s house in HoosierLand.
I went across the street to buy some antihistamine decongestant for a sinus cold and was asked to show photo ID.
It isn’t PC, it’s Big Brother vs meth heads and the normies lose.

Anonymous
Anonymous

My husband bought lacquer thinner and had to prove he was over 18.

Lacquer thinner.

unit472
unit472

Just wait till our credit scores morph into a Chinese style ‘social credit’ score and your entire life is regulated accordingly.

I have to laugh at dindus ridiculous use of street names as a way to hide their identity from the authorities. As law enforcement goes high tech and surveillance become more pervasive it is going to be very difficult not to lock up an increasing proportion of the black male population. Thus the recent Democrat effort to de-criminalize many offenses as they understand their largest voting block is inherently a criminal population.

Chubby Bubbles
Chubby Bubbles

“it is going to be very difficult not to lock up an increasing proportion of the black male population.”

Nope. They’ve already told you how they are going to avoid locking up an increasing proportion of the black male population: by ignoring “low-level” crime like shoplifting, vandalism, check-kiting, etc. Next will be ignoring burglaries, drug-dealing (they already do that to an extent).

Rape in the EU seems to get you a couple years, effectively, murder ten or fifteen. They cannot afford a prison expenditure commensurate with the number and type of crimes committed. At some point, the US will not be able to afford it either.

Rightly or wrongly, in the future there will not be (energetically-speaking) the capacity to enforce laws or impose punishments no matter what the political regime. Swifter, if less-complete, justice will become more attractive a solution.

Chubby Bubbles
Chubby Bubbles

Whew! An entire article without a single use of “insouciant”!!

PCR, go guy… you can do it!

When the occasion occurs to get anxious about this stuff, I calm myself by considering it’ll be short-lived. I don’t see a long future for the electrical grid, so almost all of the emphasis on digital controls is going to be misplaced.

Then there’s the garbage-in/garbage-out aspect, along with the fact that many outright cretins are ‘tasked’ with handling this data on a day-to-day basis.

Finally, there’s the fact that—despite tougher and more-intrusive standards for DLs and passports and SS registrations—tens of millions seem to be able to function either without them or with fraudulent versions here in the US, and probably in Europe, too. Diminishing returns on these Control investments.

SNOWMan
SNOWMan

Chubby, it seems the next generation are insouciant in regards to their privacy. Their insouciant attitude regarding the world knowing everything about them all the time is not concerning to them. I often wonder will they remain insouciant as they age or will this attitude change with age? They may become the opposite as they watch their own children develop insouciant attitudes regarding privacy. When there is only digital currency and social scores, will they be so insouciant about their privacy then? Only time will tell. Until then I will remain insouciant to their own insouciant attitudes regarding their privacy.

Just couldnt resist…….now, i wonder how many people will now google the meaning of …….insouciant

RT Rider
RT Rider

At one time we branded cattle, and still do in some places, but now they’re mostly tagged. When you’re someone’s property, the owner needs to prove and identify you as such. Numbered and tracked is all part of being a serf of the modern state. We, and our labor, are owned by it. Don’t pay your danegeld and see what happens.

Anonymous
Anonymous

Everyone has a “line in the sand” that they tell themselves, if crossed, they will rise up and punish the tyrants. And I believe many or most really would.

What people fail to realize, is that TPTB are aware of that. So they invest vast resources in moving the Overton Windows at such a pace that most people will be dead by the time their lines are crossed, but the younger people will have their lines drawn far enough away that they too will be dead by the time they are crossed, until eventually there are no humans left. Only cattle and sheep.

Luminae
Luminae

…and sheepdogs…..and their masters.

Free Speech Message Board

What’s wrong with freedom?

Nazis scream that burning the flag must be illegal, but Libertarians ask why can’t free speech be legal.

Nazis say there must be trade wars and tariffs, but Libertarians ask why not just rid of regulations, work harder, and lower prices so that the US can compete on the world market.

Nazis and Commies scream that only the government can tell you the truth, but Libertarians ask why not use the free market to boycott media companies that you distrust.

Nazis and Commies scream that you must go to government schools, but Libertarians ask why can’t you go to a private school.

Nazis scream that Americans must be forced to go church and Commies scream that churches must be closed, but Libertarians ask why can’t you do what you want.

Luminae
Luminae

Nothing’s wrong with freedom, people just stopped using good fences and good fences make good neighbors unless your fence is not good enough so your neighbors start peering in and Mrs. Busybody who is a Nobody sees something she doesn’t like and starts acting like a Somebody and then starts telling Everybody what she saw you doing in the privacy of your own backyard and nobody asks Mrs. Busybody why she was looking in your backyard in the first place when it is none of her business what you are doing in your backyard anyway because they would really like to know what you are doing in there too which is why the constitution tells everyone else (the government) what is and isn’t their business yet people give up their privacy and then do the crybabywhine about how they’re losing their freedoms when it all comes down to privacy which is why you don’t use facebook or google or alexa (I mean really now, you want Dr. Evil inside your walls dumdumdumdumdum) and have a really good fence around your backyard period .

Vixen Vic
Vixen Vic

I think that’s the longest sentence I’ve ever read. Only one period at the end. I like what you said, though.

overthecliff
overthecliff

Law is the substitute for righteousness for those who have the power to enforce it.

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