The American War on Terror normalized pervasive state surveillance well beyond Orwell’s imaginings

Evidence

The War on Terror, about sixteen months into its existence, had swiftly remade the structures of American government, unleashing strident legislation that enabled almost unchecked surveillance of Muslim citizens and residents on the home front and beyond. As Henry A. Giroux reaffirmed in a chilling article on the modern state of surveillance mainstreamed by the American War on Terror, state “surveillance is not simply pervasive, it has become normalized. [George] Orwell could not have imagined … the intrusive capabilities of the new high-powered digital technologies of surveillance” that surround us, and define our modern existence. — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 261

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s own deep inquiry into surveillance and silence — Giroux’s claim that surveillance is normalized dovetails with their notes on pervasive informational chatter as hostile noise. — connects to: Surveillance capitalism’s power is actually the opposite of Orwell’s Big Brother — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1176; Terrorism becomes the pretext for demanding automated certainty machines — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1228; Incremental normalization erodes perception of surveillance’s expanding scope — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1568 (+1 more)