Ghosn showed it is still possible to beat the system.

Whistleblower Edward Snowden tweeted an excerpt from an article in the New York Times which showed how "every step we take all day, every day, is being tracked by multiple organizations". Every smartphone "connects to nearby cellular towers and WiFi, which have a fixed position on the map. This, in turn, can be use to determine the location of the phone itself." Internet companies, such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft, kept creating "products that empowered customers and the government cheered them on", wrote Roger McNamee. However, after 9/11 attacks, "The US intelligence community collaborated with leading digital platforms, starting with Google, to gather massive stores of personal data". "The tech industry's cozy relationship with President Barack Obama's administration protected it from scrutiny while it perfected what Shoshana Zuboff of Harvard Business School calls 'surveillance capitalism'." Amazon "has offered facial-recognition products to law-enforcement agencies" and is using "its Ring line of smart doorbells to broker cooperation with local police departments". However, even as we move towards the total surveillance world of George Orwell's 1984, in a thrilling example of human ingenuity, three days back, former Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn escaped from Japan, where he was held on allegations of corruption, to Lebanon, where he is a hero. "I am now in Lebanon and will no longer be held hostage by a rigged Japanese hostage system where guilt is presumed, discrimination is rampant, and basic human rights are denied, in flagrant disregard of Japan's legal obligation under international and treaties it is bound to uphold," Ghosn said in a statement. He is right. Japanese prosecutors kept discovering evidence of financial misconduct in little instalments with, what seemed to be, a most dishonorable and deceitful intention of keeping him in prison where he was interrogated everyday without the presence of an attorney, was not allowed to speak to his wife and was not allowed bail. His inhumane treatment "sparked international criticism of Japan's 'hostage justice' system, which permits prosecutors to re-arrest suspects over separate allegations and keep them in detention for long periods with the aim of extracting a confession". "More than 99% of criminal cases in Japan end in a conviction, with most secured through a confession." He was smuggled out in a case for a musical instrument, planned and executed by a security firm from Lebanon. Whether he is guilty as charged or is a victim of a conspiracy, Ghosn has given us hope that it may still be possible to defeat the surveillance system that threatens our liberty and has given a bloody nose to the barbaric legal system in Japan. He is indeed a hero.