Theme Of Surveillance In George Orwell's Novel, Big Brother

ns of Surveillance

Today’s government is more power than many people may think. With surveillance cameras being constantly cities, markets, and even houses, privacy is threatened to the point of mere extinction. Every corner that is turned we realize that our life is documented on film. Throughout George Orwell’s novel, 1984, Big Brother and his government have ultimate power over their citizens due to their invasive monitoring systems that are compared today to real world surveillance systems.

In a government that becomes far too powerful, privacy is sacrificed to ensure order within the city. Within the city of Oceania, citizens bear witness to an instrument called the telescreen that “could be dimmed, but there is no way of shutting it off completely” (Orwell 6). Those who live in the city are continuously supervised in terms of what they say or what they do. While watched, people can sometimes worry about their actions, assuming that what might come out of their mouth is illegal or punishable. The cameras in the United States are said to be used only for the

Due to the increase in GPS technology and applications, “these devices are also taking note of what we buy, where and when we buy it, how much money we have in the bank” (Maass 1) and so forth. This shows that the government can solitarily access private information on the general public, which blatantly compromises the right to privacy. In order for the country we live in to become that of Oceania’s, the power we acquire must be fully abused. The multi-million dollar industries spend mass amounts of currency, “developing new services that track, store and share the words, movements and even thoughts of their customers” (Maass 2). Their customers are typically unaware of the predicament they are in: the instance that their entire way of life can be assessed at any given