Government Censorship

“BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU” (Orwell 161). This statement by Orwell shows that he wrote 1984 as a warning to today’s future as he feared that mass government surveillance and invasion of the privacy of a citizen would become the norm in the future. People have indicated today that Orwell was right to a certain extent as how governments today lead massive surveillance programs . Others have thought that today’s government invades its citizen’s privacy . Similarly, people have also mention how governments censors what it wants it citizen’s to hear. . George Orwell’s vision of the world’s future as revealed in his novel 1984 is similar in the fields of government surveillance, invasion of personal privacy, and censorship.

In regards

For example, in Part One of 1984, “The messages [Winston] had received referred to articles or news items which for one reason or another it was thought necessary to alter, or, as the official phrase had it, to rectify.” ( Orwell 212). Censorship has been used throughout the novel as a method to keep the people uninformed about the affairs of the government of Oceania. The Ministry of Truth engage in censoring and rewriting the news in order to take away the power of being informed from its citizens. Similarly, the U.S and other countries engage in similar methods of misinformation. According to Sean Fitzpatrick, , “From conflicting Benghazi reports to misleading Trayvon photographs, the media regularly and unabashedly fabricates, falsifies, and manipulates according to the agenda du jour.” . The U.S media shares a strong similarity with the Ministry of Truth as they both engage in rewriting reality to the need of those in power. Likewise, similar actions are occurring in China. According to E.H., author of “They both alter Economist Explains; How Does China Censors The Internet”, “ Google is not blocked entirely; instead, users who search for banned keywords are blocked from Google for 90 seconds …. blog posts and other content pre-emptively to avoid trouble with the authorities”. The Chinese government

According to Part 2 in 1984, “ With the development of television, and the technical advance which made it possible to receive and transmit simultaneously on the same instrument, private life came to an end ” (Orwell 449). In order for the Party to stay in power, it must make sure that anyone that they deemed are worth watching are put under constant surveillance. This is in order to monitor any possible dissident that could be a possible danger to the party and thus eroding any sense of privacy. Similarly, privacy is in danger of being completely erased in today’s government due to its massive surveillance programs. According to Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill, “Unlike the collection of those call records, this surveillance can include the content of communications and not just the metadata.” Privacy in today’s world has become a thing of the past with advancement of surveillance technology similar to those exploited by the Ministry of Love. Likewise, according to Eugene Samuel, “ But critics of the project are calling for it to be scrapped, saying it allows the US government an unprecedented window on every citizen 's life, and risks causing miscarriages of justice.” Although they claim that the intrusive and deteriorating effect is necessary for protecting the state, giving up personal freedoms for a threat whose existence