My name is Jeremy and I am an Orthodox priest in the Eastern Orthodox Church. I have started this website to have a place for my musings on life and technology. My theological musings can be found on OrthodoxRoad.com
As governments become increasingly totalitarian, I think it’s important that we Christians find ways to minimize the collection of our personal data. If we use the internet, go in public, pay with something other than cash, or drive a car, we can never be completely anonymous. But we can at least reduce the data that’s available in the dragnet of data collection that US and foreign intelligence agencies are legally and illegally collecting (not to mention hackers, scammers, etc.).
I didn’t use to worry about this dragnet approach of data collection because I felt everything about me would be lost in an overwhelming sea of information. But with the rapid developments in AI, huge swaths of data can now be analyzed quickly. There’s no more hiding in the digital crowd.
I’m not an expert in the privacy world, and I’ll often refer my readers to those who are. I also realize that if outright persecution of Christians ever begins here in America, digital privacy practices won’t help to keep me out of prison or from being executed. Being willing to give up my life so that I can inherit eternal life is part of the cost of following Christ.
But the form of governmental abuses we’ve seen lately have been more of a “soft” totalitarianism in which our freedoms are slowly eroded. We may never face the persecution that happened under the Roman Empire or the Soviets. Yet it could be every bit as difficult and diabolical. For example, as world governments transition to digital currency, we could be forced to build “social credit” or have our bank accounts frozen if we don’t comply. That’s the situation in China now.
Either way, passively offering the Big Tech companies (who are in bed with the US Intelligence Agencies) every piece of information about our personal lives can’t be helpful to us in the near or distant future. At the very least, we should want to keep that information from being sold to data brokers and advertisers.
More than anything, US Intelligence Agencies are a theoretical threat but not a current one. What’s worse is the data leaks and breaches that happen frequently. What you think is safe and secure in your email, photos, and cloud accounts could be on the dark web tomorrow. Large corporations and Big Tech companies are constantly getting hacked. Data is then dumped on the dark web where hackers, scammers, and foreign governments collect whatever they can find and use it in creative ways against you if possible. That’s why end-to-end encryption is so important.
The less tech companies have on us, the safer we are. Fortunately, there are easy steps we can take to lock down our data more tightly. Exploring those options will be one of the main purposes of this website.
Image from wallpapercave.com