Martin Firrell (@MartinFirrell) is a campaigner and cultural activist. In the age of Wikileaks and mass NSA and GCHQ surveillence, his famous quote is of massive contemporary relevance. Though he isn't the only one to be concerned. The maximalist civil libertarian Glenn Greenwald is leading a front against the overbearing US security and surveillance state. He and a team of civil liberties activist have launched a news site The Intercept (@the_intercept). Christopher Hitchens also fought back against the tentacles of the state and said in the August 2003 issue of Reason.
"The trade-off between freedom and security, so often proposed so seductively, very often leads to the loss of both."Gore Vidal said in 199 during during an address, ‘Writer’s Perspective: Smithsonian Institute’:
"I don’t know where the Internet is going to go but I do know that the government is going to try and take it over. You can count on that."Elsewhere Gore Vidal said on the internet freedoms and government surveillance:
"In the next few years, the empire is going to strike back at the Internet in the interest of protecting our children from porn, drugs and terrorism - all of which the U.S. government will claim is being peddled by the Internet. There is not a trick they won’t pull to get control. After all, what better way to control everyone’s mind, or at least the input of information?"With great irony Conor Friedersdorf said in the Atlantic Magazine here:
"Had colonial governors had access to five years of [NSA-style] communications metadata and “two-hop” network analysis, it is highly likely that they would’ve arrested the Founding Fathers, tried them for treason, and sentenced them to death for their crimes."
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