O.B.I.T

I just finished watching a fascinating episode from the Outer Limits, entitled "O.B.I.T." In many ways, it is a precursor to The Prisoner. The episode portrays aliens, with the unwitting cooperation of the U.S. government, installing monitoring computers around the country, preying on everyone's secret thoughts and exposing them to government censorship. Powerfully, one military leader admits that O.B.I.T. monitoring is like an "addiction", a "drug", that is self-feeding and self-renewing. In many ways, O.B.I.T. serves as a cautionary tale of the dangers of government computer surveillance technology. This was a persistent problem in the sixties, with the government using the most advanced surveillance technologies of the time to get rid of white socialist and black power groups, such as the Weather Underground and the Black Panthers. The episode also serves as a warning on the dangers of Mcarthyism, still a sensitive issue in early sixties America.