On the whole, human beings want to be good — but not too good, and not quite all the time.

George Orwell

War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.
George Orwell

Washington is reeling after a court order was uncovered last night showing Verizon has secretly been handing over reams of customer phone records to the National Security Agency on a daily basis. The records don’t contain the content of phone calls—so, just to be clear, this isn’t wiretapping—but they do contain information such as phone numbers, the location and duration of calls, and subscriber and handset ID numbers, all of which fall under the category of “telephony metadata.”

Calibrating the appropriate level of outrage will probably occupy us for most of the day. But far from a frivolous exercise, it’s an important process, because it involves the weighing of factors that might or might not matter to you depending on how serious (or potentially expansive) you think this violation of user privacy really is.

The court order alone probably doesn’t merit the ACLU’s charge that it was “beyond Orwellian”—though it’s no small irony that “1984” was published 64 years ago today.

National Journal

In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
George Orwell

Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
George Orwell