Privacy is like the immune system of freedom. We never truly understand its value until it’s gone, until the consequences of its absence become undeniable. By then, it’s often too late. The damage has metastasized into the very foundations of how we live, think, and relate to one another.

But privacy isn’t usually lost through force. It’s given away, willingly, in exchange for convenience. And that’s what makes the real danger so difficult to see.

The very first thing I remember about computers was how they smelled. Something new, completely alien, but welcoming. Inviting. Like a door I didn’t know existed had just swung open, and whatever was on the other side already knew my name. It was 1990. I walked through. I never came back out.

The room wasn’t much to look at. Cracked concrete walls, paint peeling in sheets, heavy wooden tables that had probably been there since before I was born. My mum worked at the national mining institute, the kind of place that sat at the very heart of what a communist country valued most. Metals. Output. The collective. But sitting on one of those wooden tables, humming quietly to itself, was something that didn’t belong there at all. A PC. The only one I’d ever seen. Possibly the only one anyone in my world had ever seen.