The Thought Police are among us, and Stephen Harper is leading their charge

Our weekend news feeds were supposed to be distracted by other things: how to find love on Valentine's Day; how people in Eastern North America were supposed to find their neighbours buried under two meters of snow; how to spend quality time with family on the long weekend, with our February snow melting all around us.

Instead, we were instructed to watch what we say in front of the television.

Who, in their right minds, would buy a TV set that can listen in to your private conversations, and have them transcribed by software owned by an unknown third party?

Canadians, apparently.

So-called 'smart televisions' have a microphone either built into the screen itself, or onto the remote control, theoretically so that couch-potato owners would not even need to exercise their thumbs to raise the volume, change the channel, or find another reality show on cable. Just continue reclining and say: “More Honey Boo Boo!” What could be more convenient?

But it's still early years for voice-recognition technology, so researchers need to listen in on what people actually say, so the algorithms can learn to deduce what you mean. Maybe you thought you said “Duck Dynasty” but what came out was “Overthrow the government!”

That, we are told, is why groups like Nuance Communications Inc. needs to hear what Canadians say when the wrong team scores a goal in a hockey game. Hint: if you wouldn't say it in front of your mother, why say it in front of a digital eavesdropper?

The TV people say they just want to serve us better. They will not be coaxed or coerced by any government's secret police into passing these conversations along to their transcribers, to be filtered through their algorithms.

Nor can these devices be hacked. Please, don't worry your little head about that. Couldn't happen. The technology may be in its infant days, but it's rock solid, foolproof. 

Just the same, best never to say your credit card number out loud.

Samsung is one manufacturer of such technology, LG is another. Both companies were put on the media defensive over the weekend when people realized the Orwellian potential of such a device.

Myself, I wonder if Prime Minister Stephen Harper has. Giving CSIS access to remote-control of the microphone switch in such a TV would be right up the dark alley his Bill C-51 would create.

That was another thing we weren't supposed to be concerned about over the weekend.

According to the news coverage, Bill C-51 effectively frees CSIS, the subterranean arm of the RCMP, from official government oversight.

They will be allowed to arrest you and hold you without having to charge you with anything. They will be able to secretly monitor not only your crazy blog, but lthey can isten in on your phone calls and read your e-mails.

In other words, Bill C-51 will create Canada's version of the KGB.

That's all to protect us, says Harper. If not communists, there are ISIS extremists hiding under our beds, and our national security agency needs the tools to find them.

The trouble, of course, is that these very tools undermine the same freedoms the terrorists would destroy in all the places they control (not that any of the countries ISIS wants to overthrow are all that free right now). But a few nut-case attacks here and there in truly free countries like ours can create conditions where people will give up their freedoms willingly.

Seems to already have happened.

With Bill C-51, we will have two enemies, not one. And both want the power to control what we think and what we say.

I neither tweet nor facebook. A while back, I joined LinkedIn in order to contact someone to arrange an interview, and now I can't get out of it. People keep endorsing me, and I don't know for what.

My aversion to social media really hurts my blog status, but there you are. If you can't even get your family to follow you online, what's the use? I'm grateful if anyone pays attention to my screed, but maybe if the federal Tories and the RCMP signed up as followers, I could get some serious stats.

But I will throw my television onto the city's electronic waste pile before I allow it to monitor my basement rants. And I will put an election sign on my yard (if my wife agrees) for any candidate in the next election who promises to undo the effects of Bill C-51.

ISIS wants to control what you are allowed to say, and even your very thoughts. Apparently, so does Stephen Harper.

The Thought Police are here, and until they arrest me, I won't even know if they're listening. And while CSIS is (or isn't) listening, I'm sure the prime minister isn't, either.