Open War: Liberty vs Oppression and the Battle for the Internet

The internet destroys privacy. That is its nature. It's an absolute game-changer for our civilisation. Ever since its popularisation two decades ago, it's been relentlessly opposed by the shadowy overlords who farm our labour and claim to rule over us; they've demonised it as the hiding place of terrorists, child abusers, drug-dealers and money launderers, and done everything they can to put in place systems to prevent the free flow of information - the lifeblood of the internet. The big ideological battleground of the 21st century has not been between Right and Left, but between freedom and control - democracy and authoritarianism - liberty and increasing oppression by our own governments.

 It's ironic that this week, when the world has seen the biggest act of censorship in recent years, as the UK government stands to fall as a result of a scandal which is being rigorously suppressed and kept from all mainstream media outlets, that same media choose to speak out about something many of us have known or suspected for years - that our own governments are routinely spying on us in intrusive and illegal ways far in excess of anything the Soviets, Nazis, or East German stasi could ever have hoped to achieve. While harping on about how dangerous the world has become now that the people in the Third World we keep bombing have brought the fight to us - a fight that we are causing - our governments have been systematically stripping our civil rights and civil liberties, hard-won over decades of struggle by our fore-fathers and -mothers, wrenched from the hands of just those control freak overlords who now wish to put them back in place.

 This is the first time we have clear, unequivocal proof of our governments' agendas, and it's all over the front pages. Our media outlets are starting to react against the creeping fascism in our societies. It's still not too late. We can reverse this. The internet is the biggest chance for our nascent global society to evolve into an open and accountable one that we've ever had. Our governments want to turn that tool for liberty and enlightenment into a tool for endless Orwellian oppression.

 We must not let them. We have only ourselves to blame if they do.