





Reuters reports that troubled Internet giant Yahoo! "complied with a classified United States Government demand, scanning hundreds of millions of Yahoo Mail accounts at the behest of the National Security Agency or Federal Bureau of Investigation." According to surveillance experts consulted by Reuters, it’s probably "the first case to surface of a US Internet company agreeing to an intelligence agency’s request by searching all arriving messages, as opposed to examining stored messages or scanning a small number of accounts in real time".





Disturbing? Yes. Surprising? No. Nor is it paranoid to assume that other web mail providers have done the same without admitting it (yet).





Any excuse for not knowing that the United States Government spies on Americans all the time, everywhere, for various reasons — and sometimes for no discernible reason at all — disappeared in 2013 when former National Security Agency analyst Edward Snowden revealed the existence of PRISM and other illegal domestic spy operations.





Most of us are easy surveillance targets, even before the State intercepts our e-mail at the provider level. And, as for the people the State takes an individualised interest in? If you’re singled out for special attention, the resources governments have at their disposal to track your every activity are, if finite, nearly inexhaustible as a practical matter:





Ubiquitous public-facing cameras. "Stingray" type fake cell towers. Spyware for hijacking webcams and microphones. There are more ways to keep track of where you are, who you’re with, and what you are doing or saying than you can shake a stick at, unless you want it noted in your permanent record that you shook a stick at 1:40 pm on October 7, 2016.





In George Orwell’s classic 1984, still the classic surveillance State dystopia, the regime placed a "telescreen" on the wall of each residence. How many surveillance instruments are in your home, or on your body, placed there not by the State, but by you yourself? Probably at least one computer and at least one cellphone, each equipped with vulnerable camera and microphone. The cellphone can also be used to track your whereabouts 24/7/365 as long as there’s a battery in it. (I don’t know about you, but my new phone’s battery isn’t removable.)

You’re far easier to spy on than Orwell’s protagonist, Winston Smith, could possibly have imagined.





What to do about it? History doesn’t run backward; the technologies which make us easy to spy on aren’t going to disappear, nor would we want to live without them.





The governments which use those tools against us, on the other hand, aren’t quite so indispensable. Living without them would mean some adjustments, of course, but we’d be better off in the long run. Our rulers’ greatest fear is that we’ll notice — and act on — that fact.















Thomas L Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org).

He lives and works in north central Florida. Send comments to the Observer or follow him on Twitter

@thomaslknapp.

