This article was written by Peter McKnight and can be read here.

A true surveillance society can now be achieved, anywhere in the modern industrial world, if that is what the population or leadership wants.

That sounds like something George Orwell might have said in one of his more paranoid moments. But I’m afraid those words come from someone who’s a lot closer to us, both in space and time.

Indeed, the words aren’t from Nineteen Eighty-Four, but from 1999, and the writer wasn’t George Orwell, but David Flaherty, the former B.C. information and privacy commissioner. Mr. Flaherty’s words accurately captured the state of information technology in 1999; four years later, the threat of a surveillance society is greater than ever.