1984 is nowThe war on terror has eroded (to some degree necessarily) some of the barriers against invasion of privacy in the Western democracies. The big question is, will a prolonged struggle enshrine these losses forever and increase them;
Consider these phenomena: Personal habits are routinely tracked — eating, shopping, dating and recreating — through credit cards and supermarket cards. Also: Surveillance is ubiquitous, with video and Web cameras, Lo-jack for humans, and wireless photo phones. We remain, for the most part, oblivious.
In 1984, individuals are observed daily by a two-way telescreen on a wall in their homes. Now, with video phones and GPS devices, it's possible to check up on someone anywhere at any time. Furthermore, there is a host of highly advanced "watching" devices that now exists, including "biometric" technologies designed to pick an individual out of a crowd based on lightning analysis of facial structure. Thumb-print reading devices are here to stay.Strikingly, 20 years after 1984, the perfection of integrated micro- and nano-circuitry is such that much of the hardware for mass oppression described in 1984 can be realized. Simply feed an incredibly fast server with the information from a chip that is implanted in a fold of skin — or embedded in millions of smart cards. With a properly sophisticated database and retrieval system, replete with bottomless data storage and data mining, you've got the makings of a feast over which Big Brother would drool.
In a time of crisis, the temptation is great to treat all citizens as suspects. But George Orwell was right: A society where half of the citizenry spies on the other half is a dead end.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/editorial/outlook/2585463
More info at www.cybertime.net/~ajgood/chipindex.html