As technology is advancing every day, specially today, in the age of so-called artificial intelligence, privacy becomes more and more important. Today, everything we do and everywhere we go is recorded somewhere. There’s a track of our daily life somewhere in the hands of someone who is not supposed to know about it.

Sadly, technology is aiding this more and more and governments and powerful organizations depend on it to put control on our actions. Whatever we do, whatever we say, whatever opinion we have, every single detail of our lives are recorded. But happily, we’re not totally powerless.

Our freedom depends on our privacy. Privacy safeguards our fundamental rights. The ability to express our thoughts and feeling is crucial for our freedom. As a Middle Easterner, I get to gain a deeper understanding of this. Middle East is a special place. It’s where tyrannical governments do whatever they can to take away people’s freedoms and the way they do it is by taking away people’s privacy. More and more surveillance everyday and putting every single person under constant watch makes governments powerful enough to take control of what people can and can’t do.

Jamal Khashoggi was brutally murdered in Saudi embassy in Turkey in 2018, simply because his journalism and activism wasn’t in favor of the Saudi government. Saudi isn’t losing anything over this. Nobody actually cares about this anymore. They actually got to host the World Cup in 2034. What it left as a precedent is that now more activist fear for their lives. If the government can assassinate a well-know journalist in its embassy in a foreign country, then they can make you disappear in a blink of an eye.

Privacy makes us bulletproof against these threats. I know it’s hard to disappear from the radar completely but there are steps to make it harder for the Big Brother. By using tools that enhance our privacy rights, we can effectively mitigate their attempts to impose surveillance on us.

I understand that it may be hard at our first steps but it worths the effort. We may not be able to pay cash for everything, or never carry our phones, or never give away any piece of personal information to someone, even if we try, mistakes will happen, but least is we gave it a try.

Ditching Gmail for a more privacy-focused alternatives, using web browsers and browser plugins that are designed to limit the data we share, using privacy-enhanced messengers and more importantly, encrypting whatever data we have is a start.

Doing so is not so hard. There are multiple good sources on the internet, and there are services and sites that guide people to start with taking their privacy more seriously. PrivacyGuides is one source I like.

We’re advancing. Every piece of technology we use today is somehow taking away our privacy and mining our personal information for the benefit of massive corporations and tyrannical spying governments. It’s so easy for them. Every piece of data we give these AI bots today are going to feed this surveillance machine, designed and launched to take away our freedom. There will be a day that none of us can speak freely because none of us will have enough privacy against regimes that rule us. This is of course preventable if we take serious steps towards more privacy.

We all have data we need to protect. It’s not about what kind of watch you wear, or what dog breed you think is the cutest, it’s about building a complete profile of you that will determine if you’re a threat to the ruling power. It’s not about what you post on Twitter today, it’s about what you’re going to shout in a protest against people who oppress you.

Let’s take a step forward and guarantee our freedom, and a safer place for our children.