Dangers Of Surveillance

Privacy and safety of citizens is common in today's society, as well as the government looking over their shoulder at all times. As an example, George Orwell wrote a book called, "1984" which in it gave an outlook of society being taken over by a party. Government surveillance is different from protecting and bringing safety to the citizens, it violates their freedom, privacy, and human rights.

1984, a novel by George Orwell, represents a dystopian society in which the people of Oceania are surveilled by the government almost all the time and have no freedoms. Today, citizens of the United States and other countries are watched in a similar way. Though different technological and personal ways of keeping watch on society than 1984, today’s government is also able to monitor most aspects of the people’s life. 1984 might be a dystopian society, but today’s condition seems to be moving towards that controlling state, where the citizens are surveilled by the government at all times.

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.

The chronic surveillance of the population is supposed to be for our own safety, to watch out for terrorists who might want to cause us harm. However, people are losing their freedoms. Corporations play too big a part in governments. Wikilinks should not

Surveillance and the right to privacy have far reaching consequences and implications. In fact, both involve even more topics such as encryption, hacking, and leaks of sensitive information. Sure it is easy to conclude from the sources included in this piece that surveillance does diminish personal privacy to a certain extent, but it’s better to deduce that more people should understand and be aware of how serious of an issue this really is. There are people who seek to promote and diminish surveillance and consumer’s control of their own information and that contributes to the complexity of this growing problem. The research done so far only touches the surface of why it is important for people to learn about protecting themselves from unwanted spying, yet it still needs to expand into explaining more in depth the goals of the government agencies that encourage surveillance programs. As of now, after reviewing all these sources, I think it is important to stress that this issue is not simple. Moreover, is it worth it for an individual to sacrifice personal liberties such as privacy for "safety" through increased surveillance? Consumer privacy should not be sacrificed to ensure public safety since this would undermine the personal liberties of millions of

Are the controversies true? Am I always being watched? These questions are typical questions that most Americans might be asking themselves for the past few years. For years, the American eye has been opened to everyday threats of being watched, monitored and spied on by the government. For some, this may not have come off as shocking as it may have had to other, but the problem is still there and problem is still there. The problem Americans face is the problem of being under constant surveillance by our “trusted” leaders. In America, government surveillance needs to be reduced.

In Brian Trent’s article, Technology and Tomorrow: A Challenge to Liberty, Trent describes how electronic surveillance has increased and how it will continue to spread amongst people. In Craig Silverman’s article, Smile, Big Brother’s watching, Silverman explains that the amount of time and surveillance that corporations conduct over employees is increasing, but having some negative effects. Both of these articles explain how electronic surveillance will increase so much, that almost everyone will be able to be seen when not in the open [monitored]. In this essay I’ll be going more in depth to describe both articles and I’ll explain whether I agree with their arguments and why.

Unless someone is wanted by the police, everyone tends to live their lives in peace and normalcy. The average person wakes up, takes a shower, eats breakfast, and then prepare themselves for the daily activities that await them. The last thing to cross someone’s mind is whether anyone is watching their every move or not. However, should we not be worried about how easy it is for the government to gain access into the private lives of every citizen? Is it not scary how every move is recorded and carefully watched for suspicious activity? In George Orwell’s 1984, he suggests that each and every day the government is taking more extreme measures to get an insight into the lives of anyone and everyone.

Today’s invasion of privacy from American citizens could be considered Orwellian. “Orwellian… might refer to a totalitarian government, a government that tries to control all the actions and beliefs of its citizens. It might refer to the use of surveillance technology, such as hidden cameras and microphones, as part of that effort to control” (Edlund, 2016, p. 53). Another reason why citizens should be worried is that there are new technologies advancing each day. Every day a better technological device is invented and it only gets better, advancing ti’s way up to the top.

Orwell's eerie foresight only continues when Winston notices a Police Patrol helicopter darting from window to window, looking into people's windows. This type of surveillance in clearly illegal today, and would be noticed immediately, but in the last 50 years, satellites and unmanned drone aircraft have taken over the fictional role of the Police Patrols. Public satellites that are 10 to 15 years old currently can produce digital images with 1-meter resolution. Military satellites can supposedly produce images with 10-centimeter resolution, meaning that `Big Brother' could theoretically follow you from your house to your work to a restaurant and home again without you even knowing you were being watched. This type of surveillance is most likely being used mostly overseas, and not on Americans, but its mere existence should be a clear signal to us that our age has not avoided the surveillance pitfalls of 1984.

Although modern societies such as the United States today do not surveil its citizen to this extent, Orwell accurately described the role and importance of surveillance in today’s society. Orwell’s ominous warnings about government round-the-clock surveillance were not far

The novel 1984 by George Orwell is considered to be a timeless political and cultural satire. It expresses many different opinions and observations about the evolution of government power, and how much it has the potential to control people. Many people argue that the predictions made by Orwell are becoming a reality in today’s society. These arguments force all of us to ask ourselves an important question. Is the society we observe in 1984 a mirror image of our society today?

The issue between government surveillance and individual rights has been around for a while now. Government surveillance is a topic that makes most people feel uncomfortable because the idea of having someone seeing your every move is disturbing. All though many say that it is for our own safety it still has several negative outcomes. For example, our personal privacy would be completely lost, the purchasing of programs and software to see everything would be expensive, and people would not feel safe due to the fact that they would not know who exactly is seeing their personal information and what they could do with it.

One might say that Orwell’s warnings are not valid in societies today but Orwell's warnings about surveillance are certainly valid in today's societies and communities especially with new laws that have been set, the habit to accommodate and settle that humans struggle with, and with the astonishing advances in technology towards surveillance, these are some of the reasons that still make Orwell’s warnings towards surveillance valid in today's world.

Individuals claim that the states throughout our country are always being watched by the Government; our every move, our every purchase, and even our every commute to and from work are being monitored. Welsh and Farrington(2004) both agree in explaining that the closed-circuit television(CCTV) is doing the exact same thing. "America is on the verge of becoming a 'surveillance society' (Stanley and Steinhardt, 2003:1)" (Welsh, 2004: 2). George Orwell discusses that “Every single technical device that has been invented, restored, or refurbished in the last ten years is becoming an increasing negative towards individuals freedom of interference”, but Welsh and Farrington seem to disagree. "Fact is, there are no longer any barriers to the Big Brother regime portrayed by George Orwell" (Welsh, 2004:2).