The Circle: The Scariest Part Isn't Big Tech. It's Us.

When The Circle hit theaters in 2017, many people saw it as another tech thriller. Today, it feels less like science fiction and more like tomorrow's news feed.

The movie is based on Dave Eggers' bestselling novel, often called the 1984 of the digital age. Ironically, the film improves on the book in one important way. Instead of explaining every idea through endless dialogue, it lets us see them. The result is faster, smoother and much easier to watch. But it still feels more like an essay than a real story.

Mae Holland lands her dream job at The Circle, a giant tech company that looks like a mix of Google, Apple, Meta and TikTok. The campus is bright, colorful and full of smiling people. Everyone talks about changing the world. That is the first warning sign.

Modern tech companies rarely say they just want to build products or make money. They promise to make humanity better. The Circle sells exactly that dream. Soon Mae believes privacy is outdated. If you have nothing to hide, why keep secrets? She starts wearing a tiny camera that livestreams her entire life. Every second. Every conversation. Every emotion. Imagine if your entire life became one endless Twitch stream.

This world feels like a strange combination of George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Control no longer comes through fear alone. It comes through convenience, entertainment and the promise of a better future. Looking at today's AI boom, smart homes and endless social media feeds, the movie suddenly feels much less fictional than it did a few years ago.

One scene stands out. The Circle suggests that voting should happen through its own platform. If everyone already has an account, why not connect democracy directly to the app? It sounds efficient. Maybe even practical. The movie briefly asks whether democracy itself could become a product owned by a private company. That is one of its most interesting ideas.

Sadly, it never explores that question.

Instead, the ending takes the easy Hollywood route. Rather than challenging the system, it blames a few powerful executives. Once their private emails are exposed, the audience is expected to believe justice has been served. As if replacing a CEO could solve everything.

But that misses the real problem.

Systems survive because people are replaceable. Remove one tech billionaire and another one will take the job. The real issue is a business model built on collecting more data, measuring human behavior and turning attention into profit. It doesn't matter whether the CEO is friendly or arrogant. If the machine stays the same, the result stays the same.

That idea feels even more relevant today. We often argue about individual tech leaders. But should we? The real question is why any company should have that much power in the first place. Whether it is Meta, Google, Apple or the next AI giant, the structure remains the same.

The movie also lets us off the hook too easily. It is comforting to blame powerful corporations. Harder to admit that we help build this world ourselves. We accept the cookies. We install the apps. We trade privacy for convenience. We buy smart speakers, connect everything to the cloud and tell ourselves it is worth it because life becomes easier.

That may be The Circle's biggest weakness. It criticizes Silicon Valley's worldview but forgets to criticize ours. Most people are not driven by ideology. They simply choose what is new, useful and comfortable. That is how surveillance becomes normal—not because anyone forces us, but because we quietly invite it into our homes.

The movie offers only one alternative: rejecting technology completely and escaping into nature. But that feels just as unrealistic as total digital transparency. It presents two extremes while ignoring everything in between.

Despite its flaws, The Circle remains a fascinating warning. Not because it predicts the future perfectly, but because so much of its future has already become our present.

Why am I writing about such an old movie? Shouldn't we have much smarter, deeper movies about AI, surveillance and Big Tech by now? Or have we simply become so used to these technologies that we no longer notice what is happening? Has Silicon Valley slowly won us over with its own propaganda? If you know any newer movies or series that tackle these questions in a more thoughtful way, let me know in the comments. I'm always looking for the next great warning before it becomes reality.

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movie poster from the circle with the face of Emma Watson

Flock cameras track more than your license plate, and they're spreading fast

https://www.engadget.com/2203000/flock-cameras-recording-license-plate/

#HackerNews #FlockCameras #LicensePlate #Privacy #Surveillance #Technology

The acronym GAFAM specifically refers to the following five major American technology companies:

Google (Alphabet)
Apple
Facebook (Meta)
Amazon
Microsoft

Ask yourself:
Do you live outside their control? Probably not.

#gafam #google #apple #facebook #amazon #microsoft #technology #company #american #privacy #bigdata #surveillance

🚨 The EU's #ChatControl proposal is back.

This isn't just another privacy debate.

The proposal could affect:
🔹 End-to-end encryption
🔹 Private messaging
🔹 Client-side scanning
🔹 Age verification
🔹 Digital privacy across Europe

Supporters say it's about protecting children from CSAM. Critics argue it could create a precedent for scanning everyone's private communications before they're encrypted.

I spent hours researching the legislation, the timeline, the technical implications, and what actually happens next.

📖 Read the complete guide here:
👉 https://thecybersecguru.com/news/eu-chat-control-2026-guide/

If you care about:
#Privacy #CyberSecurity #Encryption #EU #DigitalRights #InfoSec #Signal #WhatsApp #Technology #GDPR #InfosecCommunity #NetSec #CyberNews #OnlinePrivacy #E2EE

Please share. The more people understand the proposal, the better informed the public discussion will be.

#Military secrets are fiercely guarded for obvious reasons. But also obviously in a #war your enemy gets a lot of exposure to the operating parameters, capabilities, and weaknesses of your #technology. And gets plenty of physical samples

So #Ukraine just open sourced all of #Russia's military secrets 😆

Well not strictly, it's only for allies

And a knock-on effect is it devalues Russian arms sales because potential buyers know it's all exposed

It's called #TrophyLab

#UkraineWar

Tech writer @brianmerchant is starting a podcast! Here's a link to the first episode of Blood In the Machine: The Show, in which he interviews @molly0xfff about AI and crypto money in politics, and her new project, Tech Influence Watch.

https://flip.it/7Ssk.6

#Technology #Podcast #BloodInTheMachine

License Plate Cameras Are Tracking Your Life Without a Warrant

Automatic license plate readers sold by surveillance companies are now using a technology called SignalTrace that uses sensors in the ALPRs to scrape electronic hardware codes from your smart devices. Worse, it’s being made available and marketed to law enforcement agencies including police, border security and other government agencies

#alpr #flocksafety #signalrace #surveillance #privacy #technology #tech

https://www.thedrive.com/podcast/license-plate-cameras-are-tracking-your-life-without-a-warrant

RIP Om Malik. The famed tech investor and founder of Gigaom, has died at 59.

@IncMagazine reports: "After starting his career in journalism, the tech insider built his own media company before pivoting to venture capital."

Registration may be required: https://flip.it/fvSO5-

#OmMalik #Tech #Technology

As so often what once happened in a Philip K Dick book (in this case Minority Report) has now come to pass... here are Liberty's investigative journalist team on the worrying & expanding experience of predictive policing, and how it produces a large number of false positives when trying to predict criminality.

Once that has been compounded through police prejudice & bad culture, this looks not just unwelcome but positively dangerous!

#police #politics #AI #technology

https://www.wired.com/story/british-police-built-a-sprawling-crime-prediction-machine-some-results-couldnt-be-trusted/

Salaries may be stagnant in this economy, but prices aren’t. Apple is raising the prices on its Mac and iPad lineups. Last week, CEO Tim Cook told The Wall Street Journal that price hikes were unavoidable due to more expensive memory and storage components. So how much will a MacBook Pro cost? Will iPhones cost more? Read more from @Techcrunch:

https://flip.it/Yh.kyJ

#Tech #Apple #Technology

Meta gave 6 executives options worth up to $921M each, then cut 8,000 jobs after a record $56.3B quarter

https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/meta-gave-6-executives-options-worth-up-to-921m-each-then-cut-8000-jobs-after-a-record-563b-quarter-162000923.html

#Meta #technology #socialmedia