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Like it’s 1984

“Our Unification of Thoughts is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth!” screeches a televised politician to a captive assembly of zombies.

“We are one people, with one will, one resolve, one cause!”

Then an athletic babe in a tank top rushes in and throws a sledgehammer through the screen, smashing the dystopian nightmare to pieces.

This is not Public Safety Minister Vic Toews trying to convince Parliament to pass his now infamous online surveillance bill, but the famous Apple commercial of 1984.

The TV spot presents a frustrating parallel to what’s going on today – only the babe with the sledgehammer has yet to appear to smash Big Brother.

Apple’s metaphor is that technology – specifically Apple products, but whatever – will free us from conformity. Through technology, we’re able to express ourselves without Big Brother looking on.

But almost 30 years later, the threat of government surveillance still looms (despite the dominance of Apple computers!).

The aforementioned Toews is trying to push Bill C-30 through Parliament. The bill is tantamount to mass surveillance, granting the government all sorts of tools to monitor our online behaviour without cause.

But as in Apple’s 1984 metaphor, technology is again our saviour from this dystopian vision.

As Toews will learn – if he hasn’t already, since he’s already backtracking – there is no bill or bylaw that can tame technology. If activists in China can broadcast outside of the suffocating hand of the Communists, Canadians can do the same, with or without C-30.

Contrary to popular sentiment, Toews is not the modern-day Big Brother.

The government, C-30 and all, is not Big Brother either. That notion is outdated. Governments are too big, slow, inefficient, clumsy, confused and low-tech to keep up with us.

The role of Big Brother now, ironically, would go to a private company like Apple.

The iPhone maker has more surveillance set up to monitor the Canadian population than the government ever could. This is also true for Google, Facebook and any company that collects and caches its users’ information.

The truth is, the Canadian government has been a much better guard of our personal information than any of the above companies. Yet we inherently distrust it while blindly allowing companies from California open access to our private lives.

And at our most hypocritical, we go to these social networks to protest against online surveillance.

So what’s the issue in Bill C-30 when we’re already being watched? Or, the better question, what’s with the uproar at Toews and not at all the others lurking at us online?

At least with social networks, you can choose your Big Brother, I guess.

joshuae@nowtoronto.com | twitter.com/joshuaerrett

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