Privacy?

“Every step you take, every move you make, I’ll be watching you.” Perhaps Sting, who was singing those lyrics while still with The Police, should license his song to our government’s National Security Agency, which we now know has been snooping illegally on the lives of private citizens. Worried Americans have been bombarding the NSA with an increase of 888% of “open-records” requests to find out what the NSA knows that it shouldn’t.  In case you aren’t aware, the people you pay to protect you have been snooping without consent into your emails, phone records, and whatever they could get their hands on in the name of “national security” to supposedly fight terrorism.  But the erosion of privacy goes further than that. Police are starting to wear video cameras on their uniforms. Drones are taking photographs overhead of whatever they want to, so be careful sun-bathing in your back yard. Wearable cameras are being embedded in clothes for surreptitious surveillance. The new Google Glass will allow anyone walking down the street to gaze on you and, by voice command without your knowing it, instantly identify you by accessing algorithms in a universal data base.  We are nearing a world where your every movement could be tracked all the time.

Even the most casual of Bible readers knows that the reign of the Anti-Christ will be achieved by intrusive surveillance of humanity. His control over the population will meticulously monitor the movements of every citizen. How else could he determine who has the right to engage in commerce of any kind (Revelation 13:17)? We are now told that these advances in snooping technology will make the world safer, help catch criminals, assist with Amber Alerts, and aid with medical science. Sure, there are benefits any time privacy is surrendered, but the help that these tactics provide also takes away our liberties. We all need to speak up before the concept of “personal space” is a thing of the past. From a biblical standpoint we can’t permanently stop the march toward Armageddon, but we can slow it. We are to “occupy” until the Lord comes (Luke 19:13). I believe that means fighting every unreasonable erosion of our privacy.