India, Nov. 12 -- We left our anonymity behind in the 20th century. The 21st century has become the Century of Surveillance and 20 years into it, governments have picked up all the tools of the trade to spy on their citizens effectively. They are joined by big corporations, Big Tech in particular, along with various spying agencies, hackers and other bad state actors.

At the turn of the century, when it came to technology, the whole world was consumed with the Y2K crisis or the Millennium Bug. Y2K stands for Year 2000 and it was felt that since computers only used the last two digits for the year, they wouldn't be able to distinguish between 2000 and 1900, which would lead to grave errors. There could be pandemonium at the turn of the ce...