Free speech is at an all-time high in the sense that you can call the president an a-hole and not worry about going to jail. It's not the curb on this kind of s

Free speech is at an all-time high in the sense that you can call the president an a-hole and not worry about going to jail. It's not the curb on this kind of speech that will make it 1000x worse than Orwell. Technology allows surreptitious monitoring and undetectable influence on your actions. Imagine if you had secret and unfettered access to your friends' email, texts, and phone calls. Further imagine that you can spoof sending emails and texts. You see that Alice is interested in Joe and you don't want them to get together. Don't you think you could sabotage this from ever happening without either of them knowing? I do. The government (or corporation) could effectively hellban you. They could drive you around by remote control and you wouldn't even know it. Surveillance is Orwellian. Secret surveillance is 10x Orwellian. Stealth surveillance plus subtle control is game over.