The reality of author George Orwell’s “1984” hit me one night when I coughed while sleeping.

A voice from my smartphone, which was on a nearby table, replied to the sound I had just made saying it was sorry, but it did not understand what I had just said.

The phone had been listening to me just like the telescreens of Orwell’s dystopian novel.

Egads! I wonder if I ever talked in my sleep.

Well aware smartphones, telephones and other electronic devices can be and are “monitored,” i.e., the National Security Administration’s collecting of mega-data in its all-encompassing battle against terrorism, the smartphone had always been kept in a distant room of my house.

That was until the time an ear-piercing alarm sounded in the middle of the night from the smartphone warning me of an approaching tornado.

Since then, government eavesdropping or not, the nosy but necessary phone is kept close by.

Unfortunately, with advances in technology often comes abuse by those in power.

Newspapers across this country recently celebrated National Sunshine Week, which highlights the importance of open government and warns the public about the secrecy, which many from local boards to those on the highest levels arguably tend to favor.

Bradford Simpson, president of the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association in Harrisburg, noted in his Guest View, published by the Lehigh Valley Press weekly papers, “Freedom of the press should never be taken for granted.”

Just ask former Fox News reporter James Rosen about his experiences with government surveillance.

Rosen’s personal email and telephones were monitored by the U.S. Department of Justice under former President Barack Obama’s administration because of his reporting on U.S. intelligence regarding North Korea.

Rosen was accused of being a possible criminal “co-conspirator” with Stephen Jin-Woo Kim.

The Washington Post broke the story in May 2013.

Leslie Stahl, a CBS television news reporter for “60 minutes,” recently interviewed Shalev Hulio, one of the founders of NSO Group Technologies, a cyber security firm out of Israel.

The company developed Pegasus, spyware that can be installed on devices using certain versions of Apple programs.

Pegasus can read texts, track phone calls, identify passwords and trace the location of the smartphone user.

The spyware was discovered in 2016 following a failed attempt to install it on a smartphone belonging to a human rights activist.

Hulio told Stahl that Pegasus is sold “to prevent crime and terror ... bad guys doing bad things to kill innocent people.”

Mexico spent $20 million for the software in 2012. Panama also purchased Pegasus, as did Saudi Arabia, which reportedly paid $55 million.

Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group, and Citizen Lab, a human rights group, along with Lookout Security, showed Pegasus was used against human rights activists and journalists in several countries.

Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, an outspoken critic of the Saudi government, was assassinated Oct. 2, 2018, while visiting the Saudi consulate in Turkey.

Before his death, Khashoggi joined efforts with Omar Abdelaziz, another critic of the Saudi regime.

Citizen Lab discovered Abdelaziz’s cellphone was successfully infected by Pegasus.

Toward the end of his Guest View, Simpson wrote, “Sunshine Week really should be sunshine year because journalists work tirelessly all year to exercise the laws that guarantee freedom of information, the backbone of our democracy.”

I can only add that some journalists give up their personal privacy, and even their lives, to guarantee freedom of the press and to expose corruption at the highest levels.

Deb Palmieri

editor

Parkland Press

Northwestern Press