Spyware Is Good

“The invasion of privacy — of others’ privacy but also our own, as we turn our lenses on ourselves in the quest for attention by any means — has been democratized.” (Walter Kirn). Kirn points out that a citizen can serve as a ‘little brother’ who watches or shares the private moments of another. Citizens not only fear the powerful government, but also their neighbors, siblings, classmates, etc. “With those children, he thought, that wretched woman must lead a life of terror. Another year, two years, and they would be watching her night and day for symptoms of unorthodoxy.” (Orwell, 24). The citizen's neighbors, coworkers, spouse, and children are all potential spies, and surveillance is

According to “A Surveillance Society” By William E. Thompson there are camera everywhere, watching everything you do at all times. Cameras are found everywhere and are used by everyone, including the governments of the world who use it the most to track its citizens and potential threats to the safety of their nation. People are more willing to be watched in order to feel safer everywhere they go such as the supermarket to your own workplace. Governments can now look into your email, travel records, credit history and your personal life without your knowledge of them ever doing so, even your neighbors can now easily buy tools to spy on others or to protect themselves from danger; Things such as security cameras

Every since 9/11, the surveillance in the United States has become stricter and of more importance. The security is more top-notch than it has ever been because of the fear a future terrorist attack striking once again. The United States government is doing this for safety issues and the protection of Americans, but many are against the whole idea of having the government spy on you and others actually agree with it.

Although the NSA does not monitor everyone all the time, there is a good chance that almost everyone who has some piece of technology has unknowingly been surveilled at one time. Government monitoring of everyone is unconstitutional in regards to the 4th amendment, as it violates a persons right “... to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,” (US Const. amend.

Originally, these devices were solely used for contacting family and friends or even business, but now they have turned into something much bigger. In the article “That’s No Phone. That’s My Tracker.”, Maass and Rajagopalan explain that our cell phones can track everything from what we buy to where we are at all times. Just like in 1984, we the government has complete knowledge of where we are and what we are doing because of the increasing use of technology in our society.

Is Our Technology Taking Us Close to the World of Big Brother? “Big Brother is watching you” (1984, Orwell). This line has a lot of meaning to it, especially in our current era now. This quote comes from the book “1984.”

Hi Vatche, Personally, I think our country is too paranoid. The news, and the internet have a way with words and images that make the citizens believe that everything is a threat. Sure, I am not happy that someone out there is collecting personal information about me—they are probably reading this right now. But regardless what we do, the NSA will continue to find a way and justify their actions—to record and collect our private conversations and internet searches.

In George Orwell’s novel “1984” he discusses how the government keeps their citizens under surveillance to assure they are controlled and so they do not rebel or disrespect their form of government. Their surveillance consists of helicopters scouting around the buildings, looking into people’s homes and the telescreens that watch over people as they live their lives. Some people may argue that we are under the same type of government. We do not have helicopters looking into our house or telescreens that monitor us, However we do have GPS in our phones that monitor our location at any given time, which is like a more efficient way than using helicopters. We have cameras all around the country that monitor our every movement which is a more advanced version of the telescreen. As time passes, we see technology advanced enough to observe our daily lives at any given time, do you think we are under the control of big brother?

The main version of this surveillance is through the telescreen that is stationed in every room constantly watching the people. There is always propaganda across the screen supporting Big Brother and the endeavors of Ingsoc. The telescreen combined with the thought police is the ultimate tool for destroying individual thought, "The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself-anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide" (Orwell). This non-stop flow of information stimulates everyone to join in with the demands of Big Brother even when they do not want to. Even the telescreens and Thought Police are not enough because the people are faced with the omnipresent signs reading "BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU," that are constantly scrutinizing them.

Government surveillance is beneficial in moderation, but can quite easily become excessive. A well-known example of this is the controversy regarding the NSA monitoring U.S. citizens discreetly on American soil. This unwarranted watch crosses the fine line between monitoring criminal suspects for security, and blatant overreach of authority in spying common citizens. The personal infringement of information has been commonly associated with the NSA’s PRISM, but their MUSCULAR program is much more disconcerting. According to Harry Bruinius in “Why Tech Giants Are Now Uniting Against U.S. 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.

We are all still being watched. Privacy is just a theory. Big Brother: who is big brother? Big brother in 1984 “is the head of the totalitarian regime. Everyone in this society is under surveillance by the authorities, which reminds people of an endless catchphrase “Big Brother is watching You,” showing a dictator’s mindset of a Big Brother.

Yes we are being watched in everything that we do but there are so many people in the world to just watch. We live like this for safety purposes. Say we get a bomb threat and all we know is that he has a smartphone. From his phone they can detect where this person is what he does, where he lives, and so on. So the bomb threat would not be around for so long out to the world.

The lighthearted phrase, “Big brother is watching” from 1984, is well known amongst most culturally educated adults and teens, but as I’ve become more aware of the joke, more and more people treat the phrase as less of a joke and more of a common unspoken rule. The NSA was discovered in 2013 to be tapping into private phone calls and emails from citizens. Social media sites update their privacy policies regularly, granting themselves more and more rights to the information I presume to be be personal or obsolete to the website. With every camera lens being a direct eye to the government, a window for an unwanted old flame to peer through, and an aperture that could somehow get the image back to one of my teachers or coaches, it’s hard to make the song ‘Watching Me’ by Rockwell (released in 1984, a year when everyone thought the world was literally shrinking in size and the government’s field of vision magnifying) feel as fun and lighthearted as I know it should be. I know at any point someone could record or take a picture of me, a standard my grandmother balks at. She never allows someone to take her picture unless they’re a professional; on websites like Facebook she has the privacy settings turned up so high sometimes I struggle to find her status updates. Her concern for the security of her birthday or pictures of her grandson are extremely guarded in comparison to my own. Comparing myself to my grandmother, I wonder and worry if my own privacy is depleting before my

Everyone who has read the novel 1984 by George Orwell knows the type of government there was in the book. The government would watch each citizen’s every single move and nobody had any privacy what so ever. No one would want to live in a society like this one but our country is not far from it. Every day different companies come up with different ways to take away a little bit of our privacy. If it’s not “surveillance” cameras, which appear to be everywhere a person goes, it’s our phones and other electronic devices.