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Surveillance In 1984 By George Orwell

1006 Words5 Pages

Imagine being in a world where your life is controlled or monitored and privacy becomes a thing of the past. These fears that were once disregarded as impossible are now a reality seeing as government and social media platforms can control and oversee every part of our lives. We see that mass surveillance is the premise of the novella, 1984, by George Orwell of how our lives can be monitored where anything and everything you say can be controlled. While Orwell wrote this Dystopian novella in 1948, most of his ideas are spot-on to what we see in our government today. 1984 portrays a society where the government has total surveillance over citizens using technology like telescreens, microphones, and spies to monitor its citizens. Compare this …show more content…

The surveillance systems being used are Dataminr and Geofeedia, where Dataminr provides alerts and breaking events and Geofeedia uses location based monitoring (Gelardi). These surveillance systems are extremely concerning because this social media monitoring can lead to unconstitutional surveillance that can directly violate the first amendment. Continuing on with the surveillance systems, they aren’t even fully accurate so the reliability of a computer system can be the difference between whether someone gets arrested or not. Chris Gelardi, a publisher for the New York Focus, stated, “ The use of social media monitoring has been criticized by civil liberties advocates, who say it can lead to unconstitutional surveillance and violation of privacy”(Gelardi). The quote is referring to the New York Police Department using the previously mentioned surveillance systems and how this is a direct violation of their protocols. This furthermore shows how the power cannot be in the hands of the platform but in the peoples, if the user revolts together they can make it so the platform cannot take information. Tying this into how the rate of technology and computers have been advancing almost double every …show more content…

This infringement of privacy shows how the government cannot be trusted in power because this sensitive information can be used independent content moderation. If government agencies are in control of these platforms, it can create a butterfly effect causing more political pressure on decisions. John Samples, publisher for Cato Institute, stated, “If the government were to regulate social media content moderation, it would be subject to political pressures and could silence dissenting voices”(Samples). This quote reminded me of the events that happened on January 6th and how former President Donald Trump was in a position of power and used that power to manipulate people into storming the capital. If government officials were able to control social media content, they can control and manipulate people’s minds. Using these different tools the New York State Police can control what they want their citizens to see allowing for different guidelines to be applied in no context. Chris Gelardi, a publisher for the New York Focus, stated, "The report notes that the New York State Police has not disclosed any guidelines or policies regarding its use of social media monitoring tools"(Gelardi). Disclosing the guidelines are a necessity for state officials because for all we know they could

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Today, this control is more subtle and pervasive than in 1984. Methods used to manipulate information flow vary, but the results are often similar: people are kept ignorant and under surveillance.. In 1984, Censorship was essential in China because the citizens only knew one way of living and behaving. In the 21st century, all Swedes have the opportunity to access an endless number of different news reports and share their opinions and experiences with millions of others all over the world. However, the vast majority of young adults only consult their first ten Google search results, and Google as well as the increasingly popular social media sites aim to purely feed their users articles and adverts that concern their previous recreational as well as political interest.

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The U.S. government is invading the privacy of its’ citizens through the use of mobile devices such as phones and laptops. This use of privacy invasion is similar to the technology used in George Orwell’s novel 1984. What makes today relate to 1984 is how the government tracks us through location, voice, and messaging. George Orwell’s 1984 has a totalitarian government that can track its’ citizens through location with the use of telescreens. In the novel, telescreens can track your location in a room through a telescreen, which is demonstrated by Winston´s thought ¨so long as you remained within the field of vision … you could be seen¨ (Orwell, page 3).

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The Abuse of Surveillance; The Obsolescence of Privacy Throughout the duration of 1984, the character Winston endures a journey where he develops contrasting feelings towards the government of INGSOC. Winston spends the majority of the novel pulling away from this society and secretly rebelling. However, the true power of the government is shown when they use their tactics upon Winston and convert his beliefs towards Big Brother. George Orwell develops a world in which the totalitarian government, INGSOC, dominates over a selected group of people called the Outer Party by stripping their privacy away and destroying the idea of individuality by eliminating ones right to identity.

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“Threats to freedom of speech, writing and action, though often trivial in isolation, are cumulative in their effect and, unless checked, lead to a general disrespect for the rights of the citizen (Orwell).” George Orwell was an outspoken American author, whose most famous work, 1984, showed how a world of surveillance was harmful to not only individual citizens but also society as a whole. If the government was to monitor internet content to a deep extent, such as collecting emails/communications, tracking people’s web history, or restricting what we, the citizens of the US, say, we would move one step closer to the world Orwell imagined in 1984. The United States government has no business in monitoring or restricting internet content, except

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Agencies watch the things we post in order to catch criminals and make sure terrorists have little control in convincing. Now this can be a good thing but if the power goes to far it could be a violation of our rights and privacy. Which goes against the constitution. The government should have limits to how much power they have on the internet for the safety and rights of our people. A good thing is to realize what rights we have on the internet and watch what we post.

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