The DeanBeat: Orwell is keeping an eye on us

It was so much easier to dismiss the paranoid fantasy of George Orwell, the author of 1984,  many years ago when I first read his novel about a totalitarian state and its “Big Brother” that was always watching your every move.

But you only have to read the headlines of this week — that Wikileaks obtained a secret trove of tools that the CIA used to circumvent the security of smartphones, communications apps, and other devices — to see that Orwell is only becoming more relevant with time. The disclosures reinforced the evidence that Edward Snowden revealed in 2013 that showed the government routinely spied on everyone. Snowden tweeted this week, “Critical to investigate if, and for how long, CIA permitted the most popular U.S. smartphones to remain vulnerable after learning of breach.”