What does the scanner see?
It's been more than a decade since the Snowden leaks about the extensive global mass surveillance spearheaded by the USA's National Security Agency (NSA) and its allies all across the world and we haven't heard anything new. The leaks back then revealed that almost all the traffic on the internet is monitored by agencies across the world and passed on to the NSA and one can only wonder the extent to which it has ballooned to now.
Back then the internet was still a nascent utility for most part across the world and now it has become ubiquitous, with a generation raised on the internet from Day 1 of their lives. Future activists, politicians, spies, military recruits, journalists and business people will all have substantial digital footprints which live-feeds directly to the NSA servers, giving granular access to the private behaviors of decision makers across political spectrum to the USA and its allies.
Given the power of this data it wouldn't be unreasonable to think that the powers wouldn't use it for their advantage for anyone toeing over the line, opening a range of possibilities from from blackmail to behavioral manipulation in order to maintain the current status-quo. What freedoms are we internet users forfeiting in exchange for using the shiny storefronts on the internet that demand evermore invasive data collection? Utilities like Whatsapp and Google that are almost impossible to live without themselves give a wealth of knowledge about our behaviors that the AI/ML trained models can easily crack. What's the state of the global surveillance apparatus now considering the leap in computing and ever scary policing methods that've become commonplace.
One thing's for sure, the promises of the early internet of boundless freedom and space for anarchy have devolved into a nightmarish Big Brotheresque scenario and we don't yet know how these powers will be used against us.