By Charles Hugh Smith
OfTwoMinds.com
July 31, 2026
The government gets the privately collected data and in return dismantles or disables the guardrails that once protected the public from state and private-sector encroachments on privacy.
One of the core traits of a 1984-type totalitarian dystopia is 24/7 surveillance of every prisoner, oops, I mean citizen. Surveillance collects the data that leverages the tools of control: without surveillance, the structures of control do not have the data needed to monitor, track and control the populace in a profitably fine-grained manner.