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Little Brother by Cory Doctorow Essay

Decent Essays

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.

The government has control over people in the form of surveillance which then exploits their privacy. The gait recognition system from the novel capture the privacy of individual on a visual level. This system recognizes your walking stance and corresponds your stance to one on the database. When running from the vampire games Masha said “put these pebbles in your shoes before you put …show more content…

In conclusion the DHS uses interrogation as a method of surveillance to verify and correct their information. The DHS knew that Marcus was on the BART at odd times so they began to question him using this form of surveillance. Using surveillance of people can exploit the privacy and the effect from that is fear.

In the aftermath of surveillance the lack of privacy created by constant surveillance leads to fear of the government. Marcus is one of those people who are in constant fear of the DHS. When Masha informs him that he must run away to Los Angeles because the DHS is using Xnet to track the leaders, Marcus "leapt off the bed and paced back and forth. My heart thudded and my blood sang in a cruel parody... [T]his wasn’t sexual excitement, it was raw terror…‘so they're coming after you using Xnet'"(275). This confirms that Marcus is scared of getting caught through the surveillance of Xnet by the government. Furthermore, Marcus's dad is also scared of the surveillance by the government through frustration. As the dad come home from work he was "so angry I thought he was going to pop...'that's not all,' he said, and drew in a breath that let me know he was really steamed. 'They had information about where I’d been, places that didn’t have a toll plaza. They'd been polling my pass just on the street, at random. And it was wrong…I mean, they're spying on us all and they're not even competent'"(133). His anger slowly becomes fear as he says "'god,

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