Who Is George Orwell's Novel 1984 And Why Is It Important To The Government?

While fourth amendment has traditionally protected us from unreasonable searches and seizures by our government, this protection has not extended in totality to electronics, although many Americans use items such as their phones and computers to hold their most sensitive data. In George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984”, he predicts with almost uncanny accuracy the importance of electronic devices in our lives and the ability to which the government will use them to spy on populations. While the population is considerably more apathetic and powerless to stop this in his novel than one would assume the American population is today, without taking the proper precautions with their devices and online activity, nearly all personal information, from

In the 2013 the Report and Recommendations of The President’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies found that the metadata collected by the NSA “was not essential to preventing attacks” (106). The report further went on to state that of the cases reviewed, many involved evidences gathered with traditional surveillance warrants and that more than half were “initiated as a result of traditional investigative tools. The most common was a community or family tip to the authorities” (106).

All of this is done under the guise of the War on Terror and national security, to keep our nation and its citizens safe. While it may be argued that these programs only need to be successful once to have been invaluable, “1984” shows just what a dangerous slope it can be to become complicit in handing over liberties for safety of perceived threats. While the surveillance in “1984” is much more intrusive and abrasive than the comparatively subtle surveillance of the NSA, the citizens described in Orwell’s novel are more than willing to hand their liberties over, with the narrator stating that "the consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival” (192). Unfortunately, like the citizens in Orwell’s novel, it appears the consensus of the people of the United States is one of indifference, with many claiming that without anything to hide, there is nothing to fear. While this may be the case when worrying strictly about prosecution, the issue here is about more than just prosecution due to unjustly gathered evidence, far more concerning is the constant revocations of constitutional rights in the name of national security and where this behavior may