Indifference to phone hacking and the surveillance society

The Guardian and the Independent have been doing their best to get people stirred up but public indifference to the News of the World phone tapping scandal is a stark indicator of the degree to which we have become complicit in facilitating the evolution of a surveillance society. The post-war illegal wiretapping of a phone conversation between a UK barrister Patrick Marrinan and his client, a known and self confessed criminal, Billy Hill, by contrast drew widespread condemnation when it became public knowledge in 1957.

Ironically, Hill had suffered no criminal justice consequences as a result of the revelations from the phone tapping but Marrinan got disbarred, as it reportedly emerged that he had "obstructed justice in a trial of two of Hill’s gangland associates."

It seems that Huxley and Orwell may not just be the bookends of our future but the boundaries.