Fear is inevitably tied to the common saying “I am watching you”. When one’s actions are constantly monitored and privacy being relentlessly invaded, the individual soon will possess a sort of fear. In the novel Little Brother by Cory Doctorow, the government uses surveillance as a tool for exploiting the privacy of the people which then engages their fear.
When humanity fears surveillance, people become afraid to speak their minds and hearts freely to their government or to anyone else. The film Minority Report by Steven Spielberg (2002), novella Minority Report by Phillip. K. Dick (1956), and book 1984 by George Orwell all depict that future surveillance is nothing short of overbearing in an unquestionably totalitarian society. Spielberg, Dick and Orwell envisage surveillance in the dystopian future as overbearing, invasive and slightly petrifying, and provide a clear caution about the overuse of surveillance in the modern world.
The general public gives an problem with the government surveillance as a media for invading others privacy. With the government monitoring, collecting, and retaining people's personal data, one side would claim that it is an infringement of their freedom to the rights to privacy. While the National security associations justifies the reason for monitoring would be to maintain order. Their ways to maintain order would be to monitor criminal and terrorist activity and to detect incoming threats, terrorists, or problems that would harm their country. This issue shows that freedom cannot exist without order. Although the general public wants their freedom of their privacy, they can not achieve their most of their desires because it puts their lives at risk without protection. Order is necessary in order to have freedom. It is impossible to attain entire freedom for a cause, however, it is possible to attain freedom to a certain
George Orwell’s novel 1984 reflects on the society of dystopian city Airstrip 1 where main character Winston Smith lives. Along with the many other citizens, Winston is controlled by the Inner Party by constantly being monitored via telescreens that keep sight of everybody and their actions. Besides using telescreens the government also easily arrests people in any case of “thoughtcrime” which consists of any thoughts that regard disobedience towards the government. Thoughtcrime and telescreens are two of the several factors that reflect the extreme surveillance in 1984. Orwell uses surveillance as the central theme of the novel to spread his idea that the usage of more extreme surveillance could eventually lead to a totalitarian society. On a less extreme scale, today’s society also has a significant amount of surveillance but many question whether or not more surveillance is necessary. With the many current text sources, it is certain that we need less surveillance in order to keep a stable society that does not take away the individualism of people.
Surveillance is not a new thing. In fact, espionage, tracking, and sleuthing were part of society ever since 5000 B.C. But in the rise of the modern era, the idea of surveillance in the public eye serves as a controversial topic of discussion. People everywhere complain about the existence of security cameras, government tracking, and the right to privacy. Such problems, however, are not due to the sudden discovery of surveillance, but the modern abuse of it. Seeing the disastrous effects of over surveillance from George Orwell’s 1984, the public rightfully fears societal deterioration through modern surveillance abuse portrayed in Matthew Hutson’s “Even Bugs Will Be Bugged” and the effects of such in Jennifer Golbeck’s “All Eyes On You”. The abuse of surveillance induces the fear of discovery through the invasion of privacy, and ensures the omnipresence of one’s past that haunt future endeavors, to ultimately obstruct human development and the progress of society overall.
This Journal make us think about how the CIA and FBI are profiling people and that it needs to change. The claims fulfill the article's purpose because they talk about different events that shows why this needs to change. However the amount of evidence is very scarce .Nevertheless , it doesn't take away from the audience's captivity due to the fact it talks about event that everyone could relate to.
With today’s technological surveillance capabilities, our actions are observable, recordable and traceable. Surveillance is more intrusive than it has been in the past. For numerous years countries such as the United State and the United Kingdom have been actively monitoring their citizens through the use of surveillance technology. This state surveillance has been increasing with each passing year, consequently invading the citizen’s fundamental constitutional right to privacy,. This has lead to the ethical issues from the use or misuse of technology, one such ethical issue is should a government have the right to use technology to monitor its citizens without their knowledge or approval? For this reason this paper will
I will then analyze the 3rd recommendation of the paper “Liberty and Security”, which demands that “surveillance must not be directed at illicit or illegitimate ends, such as the theft of trade secrets or obtaining commercial gain for domestic industries,” and argue that even if this motive may not be the main reason why foreign surveillance is conducted, it can be an unintended but useful – or rather unfair – consequence of easy collection of foreign intelligence, especially when considering the difference in technological capabilities between countries in the world. Finally, I am going to argue that, for the socio-economic benefit of globalization and international trade, it should be made equally harder for US intelligence agencies to collect information on non-US persons as it is to collect US-persons’ private information. Otherwise, this double standard can have – or maybe already has – negative consequences on trust between nations.
Totalitarian governments, by their very nature demand control over the people, encompassing all aspects of their lives, and through the use of surveillance, this control is maintained. Through the works of Anthony Burgess in A Clockwork Orange, Tom Rob Smith in Child 44, and George Orwell in 1984, these authors take a closer look into the necessity of surveillance in the survival of any totalitarian government. To begin with, the motivation for using surveillance over the people stems from the concept of power, maintaining the power of the state is the ultimate goal, and as long as the state is maintained, any measure taken is worth it. In addition, through the use of surveillance, governments create an environment where the family unit itself is broken down, and society drifts towards one devoid of trust, encouraging people to turn on one another in the name of the state. Finally, the use of surveillance allows the government to form the next generations, molding their ideal nation, into one where the truth of the government is absolute, and any thought of revolution is crushed. Through the use of surveillance, totalitarian governments create an environment where secrets and privacy no longer exist, and the state is the dominant and absolute power, at the expense of the people
This article argues that surveillance is becoming increasingly normal across the USA and the world and that this is changing our freedom and security. It mentioned that globalization and migration of people from different countries some who threaten our country has made this surveillance more necessary to protect our citizens from theorists acts. The article uses examples of video-surveillance to make this case and to argue for both stronger resistances to calls to make our human rights more flexible in a risky time.
In support of privacy, Daniel J. Solove wrote, Why Privacy Matters Even If You Have ‘Nothing to Hide.’ Solove begins his argument by introducing the nothing-to-hide argument. In general, the argument for surveillance is ‘if you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear:’ hence people’s support for government efforts and regulations to ‘protect’ citizens by decreasing privacy. Those who object this argument target its most extreme cases. For example, if you have nothing to hide, could I take a nude picture of you, own all entitlements to the photo, and share it with anyone? Absolutely not, most would say, but this objection is not exceptionally compelling according to Solove. In order to understand privacy, we must not reduce it to one single definition. Privacy is extremely complex and involves a range of different things that share common characteristics. For instance, one’s privacy can be invaded by the expose of your innermost secrets, but it may also be invaded if a peeping Tom (without the reveal of any secrets) is observing you. Your privacy may also be invaded if the government seeks extensive information about you. All of these examples cause harm related to an invasion of privacy, thus making the definition of privacy not applicable for a “one size fits all” conclusion. The underlying and most significant harm that comes from surveillance is the problem of information processing. Solove uses The Trial example to demonstrate this effect. Here, the
The government gains control by distilling fear in the lives of individuals. This is exhibited when it is mentioned, “Big Brother IS WATCHING YOU” (Orwell). It is made to believe that every private and public place is subject to cameras, which creates the illusion that all of the citizen’s actions are susceptible to tracking devices. The idea of cameras allowing “Big Brother” to watch all the citizens, dissuades them from acting in a specific manner. Despite this being a false, unjustified claim, it proves to be an effective instrument in maintaining order. Correspondingly, in today’s society, individuals are made to believe that every doubtful action one makes online is liable to tracking methods. A new program of the National Security Agency “…allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals…” (Greenwald). The National Security Agency promotes violates the privacy of citizens. Therefore, the novel and today’s society share similarities in regards to the governments controlling demeanour, which conducts fear in those individuals who even dare commit any
In a world about privacy people said the usual phrase “if the government wanting to search my info let them because I don’t got nothing bad to hide,” well that is what author Solove J. Daniel is about to write an article about. “The Nothing-to-Hide Argument” is an epideictic article showing the problems of the phrase by turning it into a pervasive issue about privacy. Not to mention government has seized the opportunity to use the phrase to gain easy access information to the citizens. For example in Britain they have install thousands of cameras and use this phrase, ““If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve have nothing to fear”” (735). Mr. Solove is trying to point out that the phrase has not only minimized privacy issue,
Medine’s piece, Choice Between Security and Liberty a False One, focuses on the delicate balance between privacy and security. The central theme presented is about the methodology of information gathering. First off, Medine explains that a knee jerk reaction to tragic events, such as the attacks in Paris, shouldn’t be the catalyst to end or change existing surveillance programs. Following the Paris attacks, there were appeals requesting that the National Security Agency increase their phone records collection program known as Section 215.
The book centers around the idea that the government surveillance state has gotten so out of hand that it encroaches on every American civil liberties and right to privacy. Greenwald proves his point quite well by using his personal account, classified NSA documents, and a commentary on the political landscape with regards to the U.S. 's view of the surveillance sector. Mr. Greenwald can incorporate the viewpoints of many Americans and foreign countries in a way that only works to support his claim. The book shines a new light into the secret actions of the U.S. government and poses questions of the power of the state versus the rights of the individual.