n March 7, the transparency/disclosure activists at Wikileaks began releasing a series of documents titled "Vault 7." According to the New York Times, Vault 7 consists of "thousands of pages describing sophisticated software tools and techniques used by the [US Central Intelligence Agency] to break into smartphones, computers and even Internet-connected televisions."

Stranger Than Fiction

If the documents are authentic — and WikiLeaks has a sterling reputation when it comes to document authenticity — every paranoid thriller you've ever watched or read was too timid in describing a hypothetical Surveillance State. Even the telescreens and random audio bugs of George Orwell's 1984 don't come close to the reality of the CIA's surveillance operations.