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OPINION

China And Friends Are Watching You

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.

This ain’t George Orwell fiction. It’s real life, baby. You’re being watched and your identity is in peril. Beware of Chinese spies.

When my grandmother was 29 years old, an author named George Orwell published the Hunger Games of 1949. In his dystopian novel titled 1984 Orwell imagines a futuristic society ruled by a dictatorship. In order to maintain a tight grip on power, the ruling elites engage in total surveillance of the citizenry. The mantra repeated throughout the novel is: “Big Brother is Watching You.”

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Our own prying politicians in Washington, D.C. are surprisingly no longer the biggest brother on the block. Even the U.S. president—long considered the most powerful world leader—is being watched by Big Brother China.

As we embark on a new year, I want to empower you to make every effort to safeguard your identity from spies within the Chinese government—before our own government follows suit.

Hillary Applauds Chinese Spy Tactics

On December 27, 2015 Reuters reported chilling news out of Beijing. The Chinese government will be forcing technology companies to “hand over sensitive information such as encryption keys to the government” as part of a “controversial new anti-terrorism law.”

Alarmingly, though not surprisingly, Hillary Clinton also came out last month in support of doing the exact same thing in the United States should she become president. “You are going to hear all the familiar complaints: ‘Freedom of speech,’” she quipped, insisting there was no other way to fight terrorism than to force companies like Apple and Google to hand over encrypted data to the government upon request—and to block the websites of suspected terror groups.

First of all, terrorists love attention and they love to fight. Deleting a terrorist’s Twitter account, for example, routinely spurs them to create a new one. Hillary’s strategy is endless, fruitless and will surely backfire.

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Furthermore, law-abiding citizens like you and me need free speech in order to defend and maintain our freedom. We certainly cannot trust a politician like Hillary—who broke federal law by using a private server and private email account as Secretary of State—with the keys to all of our electronic communication.

Minneapolis information technology security risk manager Greg Kline wrote in the Star Tribune on December 8, 2015 that smartphones and tablets “have become intimate extensions of our lives. I propose that the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination be extended to cover these devices…”

IRS Girl Gone Wild Lois Lerner exploited the Fifth Amendment to duck out of all criminal charges—whereas everyday Americans like you and me could be thrown into prison if Hillary has her way. Balderdash.

Theoretically, Hillary’s administration could call any citizen journalist a “threat to national security,” and block their Facebook or Twitter account after obtaining their private emails, texts or Snaps and twisting their content to seem malicious.

“Every cyberterrorist, hacker and hostile foreign government will immediately set to work to identify and exploit that back door. And they will succeed,” attorney Joe Sanow also warned in the Star Tribune in December. Said differently, forcing tech giants like Google and Apple to give the federal government a “back door” into their encrypted data is futile. Terrorists will simply readjust their target as citizens like you lose freedom and privacy.

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It should make you uneasy to know that Clinton embraces the same anti-terrorism “strategy” as China. You know, the country that maliciously hacked and obtained the personal data of 21.5 million Americans—including members of the U.S. military and executive branch.

China succeeded in this highly sophisticated attack—that went unnoticed for over a year by the Obama administration—for one simple reason. Our government failed to take the most simple and basic step necessary to protect the data of our military and executive personnel: encryption.

Because our government failed at National Security 101, China now has a dream database with which to watch you and your U.S. leaders.

See everything. Hear everything. Say something.

The Underwear Bomber easily slipped past the TSA and was stopped by a private citizen on the plane. The TSA has a 96% fail rate at catching weapons and explosives according to a recent Department of Homeland Security investigation. In 2015, an American serviceman and his two friends were on vacation in Europe. They stopped a would-be terrorist on a Paris-bound train by pouncing on him—and incurring knife wounds in the process.

Time after time, citizen watchdogs succeed at keeping us safe while government systems fatten those in the upper echelons of power (the TSA has a $2 billion budget). TIME Magazine reported last month that the TSA has given restricted airport access to at least 73 TSA employees who were on a terrorist watch list!

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Don’t fall for the claim—whether it’s made by a Republican or a Democrat—that the federal government needs access to your encrypted messages in order to keep you safe. Politicians love power, and absolute power corrupts. Share this message with those you love. Because watchful citizens are the key to preserving freedom at a time when China and Friends are watching.

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