The rise of the internet broke down borders and connected people. And that’s a good thing. Businesses came about and started to make money from this new technology. With every evolution in the technology, more and more businesses came about.

Who would have thought that the App store would be the first place we go to get something?

And who would have thought that the App store would support a dictatorship and censor applications because the Chinese government run newspaper slammed the company for keeping certain apps on its store. I guess having factories in China and the profits/kickbacks that come with that are more important than free speech and people’s right to demonstrate.

There will always be governments who will suppress and restrict what people see. The Russian’s are doing it, the Chinese are doing it, the North Koreans are doing it, hell, Turkey even found a backdoor and switched it off during an uprising a few years ago.

In democratic countries, governments introduce legislation to control the internet and all the technology which comes with it at the behest of the companies who pay them the most and in the name of national security.

And freedom is over simplified. In the past, torture and public hangings would be used as a way to control people through fear. But as society got more civilised and advanced, our minds became the focus.

Suddenly, surveillance and discipline is used to produce obedient citizens. When the mind believes that it is being watched, it acts properly. And over the last 30 years, surveillance cameras have become a part of life. They are everywhere and democracy has entered the surveillance society. The same society from Eastern Europe, which the fall of the Berlin Wall was meant to eradicate.

As Geoff Tate wrote in “Speak”, the system we learn says we’re equal under law, but the streets are reality, the weak and poor will fall or in “Revolution Calling”, Tate tells how he used to trust the media to tell him the truth, but now that he is older and wiser, he has seen the payoffs and he’s not sure who he can trust when everyone is a crook.

Corruption is real and somehow it finds other corrupted individuals to collude with and suppress/censor freedom. I guess the halls of justice are painted green and money is talking.