Today as Americans turn-out to vote in both state and federal midterm elections, very few voters are aware that we’re also celebrating the 62nd birthday of the N.S.A. which was founded in 1952, 3 years after George Orwell published 1984.

The N.S.A.’s purview is signal intelligence — they monitor information and data from around the world with an eye toward counterintelligence while also protecting the data and information of the U.S. government from being hacked or gathered in a similar manner — it’s all a bit of the Spy V.S. Spy set-up, but more data versus data, code versus code.

Of course, that’s the definition on paper. In real life the N.S.A. has demonstrated it understanding of its mission to be much more far-reaching than this simple description might seem to imply. Here’s a bit o’ the Wiki…

NSA surveillance has been a matter of political controversy on several occasions, such as its spying on prominent anti-Vietnam war leaders or economic espionage. In 2013, the extent of the NSA’s secret surveillance programs was revealed to the public by Edward Snowden. According to the leaked documents, the NSA intercepts the communications of over a billion people worldwide and tracks the movement of hundreds of millions of people using cellphones. It has also created or maintained security vulnerabilities in most software and encryption, leaving the majority of the Internet susceptible to cyber attacks from the NSA and other parties. Domestically, it contributes to mass surveillance in the United States by collecting and storing all phone records of all American citizens. Internationally, in addition to the various data sharing concerns that persist, research has pointed to the NSA’s ability to surveil the domestic internet traffic of foreign countries through “boomerang routing”.

If you studied up on the gubernatorial candidates running in your state today, well done. If you’ve weighed both sides of a ballot proposal or considered the opinions of a third-party candidate you get a gold star. But, in the end, what difference can any election possibly make in a country whose constitution has had its legs chopped off by influence, wealth and the false omniscience of self reflexive voyeurs who justify their right to look with the same technology that makes it possible — “We look because we can,” they say. And they do.

Look at this…

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In the wake of the NSA/Snowden revelations, and the general sense of paranoia that has taken grip of the news cycle and the internet, a few pundits have assumed the roles of cultural watchdogs, taking the pulse of public taste to measure the effect of the spooky news on the hearts and minds of the people.

A number of journalists and commentators have noted that one possible side-effect of the recently-revealed government snooping on personal communications has been a spike in the sales of the George Orwell classic 1984 on the mega-book-selling-site Amazon.

But how big is the sales spike and how much of it can be attributed to Snowden’s bravery in the face of the NSA’s dubious doings? This article at Slate offers a measured interpretation:

Sales of one particular edition of George Orwell’s dystopian classic are up some 5,000 percent on Amazon.com in the past 24 hours, according to the site’s list of “movers and shakers.” The figure was as high as 7,000 earlier today.

But before you conclude that this sales spike represents some sort of national intellectual awakening, keep in mind that we’re talking percentages here.

Check out the full article at the link above and consider (re)reading the 64-year-old novel to catch up on today’s headlines.

While I’m a big fan of reading and re-reading, I’m offering the following for those of you who’d prefer to watch the movie version that was released in 1984: John Hurt plays Winston Smith – an everyman living in the totalitarian state of Oceana. Working for the Ministry of Truth, Winston literally rewrites history in accordance with the dictates of the Party lead by Big Brother. Winston falls in love with a beautiful revolutionary who offers him a glimpse of true freedom until the Thought Police intervene. 1984 is a spy story and a bitter satire, but it’s also a romance which suggests that the most subversive act of all may be loving another person.

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