Has Orwell's '1984' Come 22 Years Later?

gabec asks: "This weekend my mother bought a grille lighter, something like this butane lighter. The self-scanner at Kroger's locked itself up and paged a clerk, who had to enter our drivers license numbers into her kiosk before we could continue. Last week my girlfriend bought four peaches. An alert came up stating that peaches were a restricted item and she had to identify herself before being able to purchase such a decidedly high quantity of the dangerous fruit. My video games spy on me, reporting the applications I run, the websites I visit, the accounts of the people I IM. My ISP is being strong-armed into a two-year archive of each action I take online under the guise of catching pedophiles, the companies I trust to free information are my enemies, the people looking out for me are being watched. As if that weren't enough, my own computer spies on me daily, my bank has been compromised, my phone is tapped--has been for years--and my phone company is A-OK with it. What's a guy that doesn't even consider himself paranoid to think of the current state of affairs?" The sad state of affairs is that Big Brother probably became a quiet part of our lives a lot earlier. The big question now is: how much worse can it get?

Am I just accustomed to old ways? Does the new generation, born with these restrictions, feel the weight of these bonds and recoil from my fears as paranoia? What can I, a person with no political interests--a person that would really rather think that the people in office are there because they're looking out for us, our rights, and our freedoms and not because their short-sightedness is creating a police state--do to stem the tide?"

Hmm... lets see

[tubapro12]

I hate big brother... computer crashes, reboots, finishes writing this ... I love big brother.

Nope, nothing suspicious

[Hydryad]

Big brother is your friend, by the way chocolate rations are cut in half as of today.

Bring out the tin foil hats...

[Mikachu]

IT'S GO TIME BABY!

Re:Peaches?

[filtur]

I don't think you can claim that the store told you that four peaches was a "restricted item" without at least explaining the situation a little bit further.

Maybe they were underage? :)

Re:The only time I was flagged at "self-checkout".

[Renraku]

The cash went into a scanner which picked up your fingerprints too. It now has a picture of you, your voice, and your fingerprints.

"OH Brother" ...

[jabberwock]

It's really nothing to worry about until you wake up in a bathtub full of ice, missing a kidney.

SORRY, YOU ARE NOT CLEARED FOR THAT

[StefanJ]

Please strip to your underwear and sit with your hands folded behind your head in preparation for a courtesy visit from your friends and fellow Class 1 citizens from Homeland Security's Produce Control Division.

And stop thinking about goats when you play with yourself.

Your Attention

[amrust]

Your attention, please! A newsflash has this moment arrived from the WalMart front. In honor of the massive overfulfillment of the ninth three-year plan... it's been announced that the NASCAR T-Shirt ration is to be increased to 3 per month!

DoublePlusYeeHaw!

Re:Something wrong with $5.15 an hour?

[megaditto]

I've got a better solution, which will also address the outsourcing issue: how about we raise the minimum wage in all countries outside America to $10,000,000,000/hour.

And if they refuse to comply, we nuke them!

There, solved it for you.

Re:Peaches?

[binarybum]

after oranges, peaches are known to be the second most popular weapons in Drive-by Fruitings [urbandictionary.com].

Re:We're at 1983

[MMaestro]

Right now, the powers that be are dogs chasing cars, but they are close to figuing out what they'll do when they catch one.

They'll sniff around it, bark at it pointlessly and then pee on the tires before losing interest and walking off?

Re:Durrrrrr

[Anonymous Coward]

...42

I've got it!

[JimXugle]

With the peaches and a standard household gene splicing kit, one could turn the peach DNA into marijuana DNA, there by selling drugs and funding terrorism, child porn, world hunger, and opression in the non-free world.

Re:Peaches?

[bckrispi]

But what if he has a point-ed stick??

Re:Something wrong with $5.15 an hour?

[soft_guy]

Yeah, but then all our CEO jobs will just go overseas.

Re:Big "OH Brother"

[livefrog]

My refrigerator ratted on me: I bought too many peaches -- (the pits have poison in them) My car told Homeland Security That I drove through all those decivilianized zones My credit card was found to have Exposed itself to unauthorized stores My cellphone text messaged blasphemies to the Pope My computer -- well, my computer I thought it was my friend But its firewall let the CIA, the NSA, the RIAA It let anyone with consecutive letters Ransack my random memories My cat, even my cat turned out To have implanted chips Can I turn to My germanium geraniums?

Re:Just walk away

[Dachannien]

and wanted to buy an AA battery for my alarm clock. I was out in the suburbs and the only shop I could find selling batteries was an electronics shop specialising in larger items, like stereos et al. So to buy my AA battery I had to fill in two forms, give address and phone number, etc etc...

Let me guess: the small, poor country you were in was the United States, and the store you went to was the local Radio Shack.

Re:It may be too late...

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

To take it to extreme, in a 'free market' there is nothing to stop some asshole buying a nuclear weapon, then collecting 'protection' money from you and me.

Asshole with nuke (actually lots of nukes) CHECK!
Collecting "protection money" from you and me CHECK!

That sounds suspicously like the US government to me.

Re:Peaches?

[TheDarkener]

FTFA: cyanide is found in a number of foods and plants. In certain plant foods, including almonds, millet sprouts, lima beans, soy, spinach, bamboo shoots, and cassava roots (which are a major source of food in tropical countries), cyanides occur naturally as part of sugars or other naturally-occurring compounds.
 
C'mon. I'd like to see you take all of this stuff up to the self-checkout and get a deep rooted anal search for it.

What a day to shop.

Re:Peaches?

[nocomment]

A pointed stick, and when someone comes at you with oh oh oh getting all high and mighty eh? Well let me tell you something, when some great homicidal maniac comes at you tonight with a bunch of loganberries, don't come crying to me!!!

Re:Peaches?

[theonetruekeebler]

Maybe they were underage? :)

That's cherries.

Re:Peaches?

[2Y9D57]

Peach seeds: ~40 ppm cyanide. Apricot seeds: ~500 ppm. Lucky you didn't buy apricots, or you'd be in Guantanamo by now.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Something wrong with $5.15 an hour?

[E++99]

Why should extremely gifted or the extremely lucky be the only ones to partake of what life has to offer? It's a sad commentary on the history of human civilization that after 5,000 years we still haven't evolved beyond exploiting one another.

Don't lose hope. There are wonderful meccas of freedom emerging. There's Cuba, there's the Soviet U... oh that one didn't work out so well... there's North Korea. China sold out, to the point that now even their own gvt-run newspaper complains about the disparity between rich and poor. But we have Cuba and N Korea. Let's build a raft and make a break for it. No one will think we're insane.

Re:Just walk away

[jdbartlett]

"Give me nitrous or weed any day..."

Your IP address has been noted. Your ISP will be contacted. Your credit card number will be acquired. Next time you go to buy peaches; bam! Cavity search!