1984

In the 1970s, 1984 seemed a better bet, that is a greater fear, than Brave New World. In the heady 1990s, perhaps Brave New World had the odds. In the 00s, 10s and 20s, is 1984 ahead again?

1932: Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World was published. Set in England 632 AF (After Ford, i.e., 2540), the highly engineered society is controlled by chemical modification of embryos, hypnopaedic conditioning, group rituals, and the freely available hallucinogen, soma.

 

1949: Fitzroy Maclean's Eastern Approaches was published. Maclean joined the British Foreign Office and soon after applied to move to the embassy in Moscow. While there he attended the 1938 show trial, the Trial of the 21; his book includes a long description of the trial in all its absurdity. (The book also covers Maclean's adventures travelling in the Soviet Union and central Asia, while often being tailed, and his time in the British army during WWII.)

 

1949, June 8:

1984

George Orwell's (Eric Blair's) novel Nineteen Eighty Four was published. Oceania's Airstrip One (Britain) is grimly and mercilessly controlled by the Party and its leader, Big Brother. This is made possible by indoctrination, the rewriting of history, the modification of language (Newspeak), and near complete surveillance by always-on, two-way telescreens.

 

1950±: Anti-communist investigations ("McCarthyism") in the USA led to thousands of people being blacklisted and thrown out of work because they were, or had been, or were suspected of having been, communists. (Arthur Miller's play, The Crucible (1953), used the subject of the 17C Salem witch trials to skewer McCarthyism.)

 

1958: Aldous Huxley's essay Brave New World Revisited reviewed the predictions made in Brave New World and in Nineteen Eighty Four.

 

1960s, 1970s: "Australia's internal spy agency ASIO vetted potential communist sympathisers at the ABC and even tapped journalists' phones during the 1960s and 70s, newly declassified files reveal. ..." -- [5]. Others were also targetted -- [9].

 

1971, June: The New York Times published extracts from the so called Pentagon Papers, a secret Pentagon study of US involvement in Vietnam since the 1940s, leaked by Daniel Ellsberg. They revealed increased bombing of Cambodia and Laos and other attacks that had been kept secret.

 

1972, November: Richard Nixon was relected as US president. However, a burglary at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate complex on 17 June 1972 was eventually traced back to reveal a series of illegal activities by Nixon's aides. Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward at the Washington Post, with the help of the informant "Deep Throat" (Mark Fells), broke the story in a series of articles [1]. In 1973 it came out that conversations in the Oval Office had been secretely taped (on Nixon's instructions), and these tapes proved Nixon's own guilt beyond doubt. Nixon announced his resignation on 8 August 1974 rather than be impeached. Bernstein and Woodward wrote All the President's Men (1974) about the affair.

 

1976: Chairman Mao Zedong of China died, after presiding over the Cultural Revolution (1966 on) and much else. (It was widely reported in 2013 that China was to end its "'re-education through labour' programme" [8].)

 

1984-1985: The UK coal miners' strike saw Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Government break the power of the National Union of Miners (NUM). It was reported at the time that recently developed camera and computer technology to recognise car number plates was used to help track miners' cars. MI5 carried out counter-subversion operations including tapping the phones of union leaders [2].

 

1989, April - June: Students led pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, Beijing. Troops stormed the square on 4 June 1989; it is believed that thousands of activists were killed.

 

1990, October: East (GDR) and West Germany reunified. The borders opened and the Berlin wall "fell" in 1989 with GDR citizens being allowed to visit the west from 9 Nov.. In January 1990, the offices of the GDR's Stasi (State Security) were stormed and the enormous extent of its (paper) files on its citizens, and others, became clear.

 

199x to 200x, and on: As the internet penetrated into China (PRC), the Golden Shield Project^* was developed to monitor and censor it. The net had delivered the technology to implement Nineteen Eighty Four. While western writers complained about the likes of .cn state hacking of US computer systems and the ^*Great Firewall of China, it was supposed that the west would never do anything like that.

2015+: President Xi Jinping continued to tighten the screws on internet access in China [22].

 

2001, September 11 ("9/11"): Four airliners were hijacked by al-Qaeda terrorists. Two were crashed into the World Trade Towers, and one into the Pentagon. The fourth crashed after passengers tried to overpower the hijackers. Amongst other consequences, greatly increased anti-terrorism powers were subsequently given to security forces in the West.

 

2004: The USA began using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) [3], also known as drones, to fire missiles at suspected al Qaeda and Taliban members, particularly in Pakistan. The number of drone strikes greatly increased during Barack Obama's Presidency (2009 on).

 

2008 June 12: David Davis MP, former shadow home secretary, resigned to force a byelection on the issue of the erosion of civil liberties in the UK. His speech mentioned "A CCTV camera for every 14 citizens." a figure taken from [4]. Davis won the byelection.

 

2010 April: Wikileaks, the whistle blower web site, released the "collateral murder" video taken by a US helicopter over Baghdad in 2007 as it shot and killed a group of people who turned out to be journalists and civilians [6]. Hundreds of thousands of US diplomatic messages were also leaked.

2012 June: Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, fearing extradition from Sweden to the USA, sought asylum in the London Embassy of Ecuador, rather than be extradited to Sweden (on another matter). 11 April 2019: After seven years, Ecuador withdrew asylum and Assange was arrested and found guilty of breaching bail. Also see [26]. 4 Jan. 2021: A UK judge ruled that while the USA had met the tests for Mr Assange to be extradited this should be prevented on mental health grounds – a decision that pleased no one.

2013, August: Private Bradley Manning (later Chelsea Manning), the US Army whistleblower was sentenced to 35 years in prison under the 1917 Espionage Act. (Manning was charged with, but found not guilty of, 'aiding the enemy' which potentially carried the death penalty. Also see Jan. 2017)

 

2013, June 7: The Guardian newspaper reported that "The [USA] National Security Agency [NSA] has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants."

On the 10th, "Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former CIA employee, outed himself as the Guardian's source." Snowden requested asylum in Ecuador, but could only reach Russia while remaining out of the USA's reach.

2014, January 17: President Barack Obama ordered some limits on the use of bulk data collected by US intelligence agencies [10].

2014, March: Appearing by telepresence robot, Edward Snowden [spoke] at TED2014 about Surveillance and Internet freedom..." [11].

2020, September 3: The surveillance program exposed by Snowden was ruled to be illegal by a US court [30].

 

2013, October 29: Tesco's 450 UK petrol stations will use "Amscreen's audience measurement technology, OptimEyes; a system which is able to determine basic demographics such as gender, age, date, time and volume[!]" [7] to target ads at customers.

 

2014 June: Rogler Creemers posted a translation [21] of "Planning Outline for the Construction of a Social Credit System (2014-2020)" (China).

 

2014, July 31: John Brennan, the Central Intelligence Agency's director, apologised to leaders of the US Senate intelligence committee, admitting that the agency spied on committee staff [14].

 

2015, June 2: "The US Senate on Tuesday passed a bill to end the bulk collection of millions of Americans' phone records ... A federal appeals court ruled the program illegal last month, all but ensuring its days were numbered." [15]. But the debate continues. Also see [16].

 

2015, October 6: The European Court of Justice ruled [17] that the 'Safe Harbour' convention did not necessarily allow Facebook and the like to transfer personnal data from Europe to the USA. The case was brought following concerns about, for example, surveillance by the USA.

 

2016: Snowden, the movie (dir. Oliver Stone).

 

2016, November, .uk: The Investigatory Powers Bill (the Snoopers law) requires "communication providers [to] keep a log of their customers' net browsing behaviour for a year" [18].

 

2017, January: Barack Obama, the outgoing US president, commuted the sentence of Chelsea Manning who was originally sentenced to 35 years (see Aug. 2013).

 

2017, January 20: Donald Trump was sworn in as president of the US.
Doublespeak was soon in use in the White House: 'In his first briefing as White House press secretary, Sean Spicer cited figures about attendance that were quickly denounced in many US news outlets as "falsehoods" and even "lies". Top Trump aide Kellyanne Conway later said Mr Spicer had been presenting "alternative facts".' [19]

 

2017, March: Wikileaks published thousands of secret CIA documents apparently detailing how the CIA hacked iPhones, Android phones, Microsoft Windows, Samsung smart TVs, and other software and devices to spy on their users. It was reported that Wikileaks would give technology firms details of the CIA malware [20].

 

2018 March: Limits on the term of the Chinese President were removed. This was seen as expanding the power of President Xi Jinping. President and Vice President had been limited to two consecutive terms.

 

2018, December 6: The 'Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Bill 2018' r6195, act no: 148, 2018, passed both Houses of the Australian Parliament [23]. Australian IT experts and companies fear that (i) this will lead to "back-doors" around secure data transmission which criminals will inevitably exploit, and (ii) the Australian IT industry will be hurt internationally as a result.

2019, April: Wikipedia acknowledged that all language versions of its site were being blocked in China [25].

2019, April 11: UK police were invited into the Ecuadorian embassy and arrested Julian Assange (of wikileaks) who had been resident there under political asylum since 2012. The US government soon sought to extradite him from the UK on charges of "conspiracy to commit computer intrusion" (relating to Chelsea Manning) and, later, espionage [26].

2019, October 21: The Australian press covered front pages with complaints against government restrictions on freedom of information and police raids on journalists [27].

2019, December 1: China required face scans when registering a new mobile phone [28].

2019, December: It was reported that Russia had tested its ability to "unplug" itself from the global internet [29]. Whatever this entailed, it is not aimed at giving more freedom to Russian citizens.

2020: An outbreak of a novel coronavirus, SARS-Cov-2, starting in Wuhan, China in December 2019, or earlier, became a global pandemic (covid-19).

2020, July: Perhaps fearing its citizens and seeking distractions, China had been ramping up tension in the South China Sea, and on the Indian border. In July the CCP effectively ended the independence of the Hong Kong legal system and quickly began arresting protesters. The new laws allow for life imprisonment of anyone deemed to have "endangered national security" or to have "provoked hatred" of authorities in China or in Hong Kong, wherever this is deemed to have occurred. Also see [31,32,36,37].
2020 December 31: There had been over 82 million cases of covid-19 and 1.8 million deaths worldwide.

2020 December 17: There were reports [33] of "Uighur alarm" facial recognition software available on 'Megvii' and 'Huawei' systems in China.

2021: Concerns were raised about China's 'BGI Group' collecting genetic data from millions of women around the world [34] through a popular prenatal genetic test, "NIFTY".
Authorities in Hong Kong continued jailing pro-democracy advocates and closing down independent newspapers.
It was reported that the CCP had severely limited online tutoring services, restricted LGBTQI material on social media, likened video games to drugs for the young and (8/2021) limited children's gaming to one hour per day on Fridays & weekends, blocked online "celebrity culture" while introducing the thoughts of President Xi into the school curriculum.

2022 February 24: Russia invaded Ukraine. The Kremlin's ministry of truth made independent Russian journalism about the war impossible and manipulated social media lest Russians learn the truth.

2022, June: "... A Moscow Court fined the Wikimedia Foundation 5 million roubles (au$126,000) for refusing to remove what it termed disinformation from Russian-language Wikipedia articles on the war including 'The Russian Invasion of Ukraine', 'War Crimes during the Russian Invasion of Ukraine' and 'Massacre in Bucha'." [35]

2023 July 4: Hong Kong authorities, i.e., the CCP, issued arrest warrants (and large rewards) against democracy activists in Australia and other countries under .cn "national security laws" [36,37].