Surveillance In The Truman Show

The Patriot Act, an act passed by Congress in 2001 that addressed the topic of privacy in terrorist or radical situations, is controversial in today's society. Although it helps with protection against terroristic events, The Patriot Act is not fair, nor is it constitutional, because it allows the government to intrude on citizens' privacy, it gives governmental individuals too much power, and because the act is invasive to the 4th amendment right. To further describe key points in the act, it states that it allows investigators to use the tools that were already available to investigate organized crime and drug trafficking, and it allows law enforcement officials to obtain a search warrant anywhere a terrorist-related activity occurred.

A common lie that plagues society is that the government is monitoring its people to protect them. This is a blatant lie only used to provide citizens with a false sense of security. The Foreign Intelligence Act, better known as the ‘FISA’ Act was passed through legislation simply to be utilized as another active device to gain intelligence on those who are supposed to be free. Due to a new spur of terrorism in the world the United States believed there were changes to be made. The FISA Act was later ratified to include the Patriot Act which is a direct threat to the nation’s freedom if used for anything other than its intended purpose.

Technology has become very effective for a thriving generation, but it also possesses a handful of flaws that counter the benefits. Technologies help people post and deliver a message in a matter of seconds in order to get a message spread quickly. It also gives individuals the power to be the person they want to be by only showing one side of themselves. But sometimes information that had intentions of remaining protected gets out. That information is now open for all human eyes to see. This information, quite frankly, becomes everybody’s information and can be bought and sold without the individual being aware of it at all. However, this is no accident. Americans in the post 9/11 era have grown accustomed to being monitored. Government entities such as the NSA and laws such as the Patriot Act have received power to do so in order to protect security of Americans. However, the founding fathers wrote the fourth amendment to protect against violations of individual’s privacy without reason. In a rapidly growing technological world, civil liberties are increasingly being violated by privacy wiretapping from government entities such as the NSA, Patriot Act and the reduction of the Fourth Amendment.

Congress ushered in the Patriot Act by arming law enforcement with new tools to detect and prevent terrorism by expanding federal officials’ powers to keep tabs on our personal information, from credit card use to cell phone calls to car travel. It allows investigators to use the tools that were

In the past no government had the power to keep its citizens under constant surveillance. The invention of technology, however, made it easier to manipulate public opinion, and the film and the radio carried the process further. With the development of television, and the technical advance which made it possible to receive and transmit simultaneously on the same instrument, private life came to an end. (Orwell 205)

In the year of 2017, it is hard to find any person whose life does not revolve around their electronic devices. The Internet has changed the way people function, and become a crucial resource in schools, workplaces, and homes all over the world. There are people who feel they could not survive a day without it, and, of course, there are people who are wary of its dangers. Children are taught from a young age to tread carefully when using the Internet, and teenagers can recite lectures they have received from their parents time and time again: “Don’t talk to strangers,” “Be careful what you download,” and most importantly, “Never share your personal information online.” What most of these parents do not know, however, is that you do not have to share your personal information for it to be collected. Not only is your information collected without your consent—it can legally be used against you. Many statutes involving Internet surveillance were rudimentary and non-invasive at their creation, but on October 26th, 2001, everything changed. The Patriot Act was signed into law, just forty-five days after the horrifying terrorist attack on the Twin Towers. The USA PATRIOT Act, more commonly known as the Patriot Act, was not a single piece of legislature, but a package of amendments to preexisting laws. The most notable changes in the Patriot Act are the amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA), the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1968 (ECPA),

The Truman Show is a non-stop, 24 hour live broadcast of a man named Truman Burbank. Truman has no idea that his life is fake, full of actors, and that there are over 5,000 hidden cameras that document his entire life, although his life and emotions are still genuine. The show is watched by Truman fans all over the world that are addicted and can’t get enough of it. These fans want to know his every move. The creator of the show was a man named Cristof who claims that he knows everything about Truman because he has had him trapped in a fake city called Seahaven in a giant television studio in a super dome his whole life and watches his every move. Everything seems to change when Truman begins to notice strange things happening around him. For example, while on his daily routines to work he sees a hobo who looks exactly like his

The Patriot Act was signed into law on October 26, 2001 by President George W. Bush. The act expanded the surveillance capability of both domestic law enforcement and international intelligence agencies. When this law was passed it was under the assumption “to deter and punish terrorist acts in the United States and around the world, to enhance law enforcement investigatory tools, and for other purposes” (The USA Patriot). The Patriot Act has given the government the power to spy on the average American through monitoring phone records and calls, gaining banking and credit information, and even track a person’s internet activity. This is an unbelievable amount of power intelligence agencies wield all under the umbrella of national security. This power has gone too far, is unjustified, unconstitutional, and infringes on the privacy of the

Ever since the American public was made aware of the United States government’s surveillance policies, it has been a hotly debated issue across the nation. In 2013, it was revealed that the NSA had, for some time, been collecting data on American citizens, in terms of everything from their Internet history to their phone records. When the story broke, it was a huge talking point, not only across the country, but also throughout the world. The man who introduced Americans to this idea was Edward Snowden.

Government surveillance in the past was not a big threat due to the limitations on technology; however, in the current day, it has become an immense power for the government. Taylor, author of a book on Electronic Surveillance supports, "A generation ago, when records were tucked away on paper in manila folders, there was some assurance that such information wouldn 't be spread everywhere. Now, however, our life stories are available at the push of a button" (Taylor 111). With more and more Americans logging into social media cites and using text-messaging devices, the more providers of metadata the government has. In her journal “The Virtuous Spy: Privacy as an Ethical Limit”, Anita L. Allen, an expert on privacy law, writes, “Contemporary technologies of data collection make secret, privacy invading surveillance easy and nearly irresistible. For every technology of confidential personal communication…there are one or more counter-technologies of eavesdropping” (Allen 1). Being in the middle of the Digital Age, we have to be much more careful of the kinds of information we put in our digital devices.

Which everyone can relate from their youth or wishing their society was that social norm even if those times have changed and evolved into what we have today. While these values and ideology are scripted and staged around Truman to him it’s his norm as strange as some of the choreographing may be. However the viewers of the show while may not be able to relate to his norm they do idolize Truman; wishing they could be part of his norm in which Truman has been socialized too. Truman is shows how even once injected with paranoia how we as a society have to discover the truth at any cost. Even how the product placement was injected into the Truman’s life as corny as it was; it was a necessary evil for the show to produce capital allowing for the show to

The Truman Show delusion is a psychosis that is easier to understand when one views it as a cultural manifestation, across countries, and over time, of delusional disorders. In order to cope with increased levels of stress, just as an 'overly sensitive system' may resort to clinically recognized delusions such as grandiosity (imagining themselves to be someone strong and invulnerable) it is equally probable, given the increasing popularity of reality TV shows, that the delusion involves becoming a 'famous version of oneself'. The form-the delusional disorder- is the same, only the content has changed. This is further supported by current trends where social media dominates our lives, where one leads a constantly

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.

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.

Peter Weir as the director of Truman Shows reveals that with power and knowledge, the film depicts a casual acceptance of “reality”. For example, in the event that a personality is made by the media then as it is progress, the reality perspective is constrained to the world perspective of those confined where wealthy people is made to think that people, as well, is ought to have a same materialistic mind-set (in this way making those in control more wealthier). The observation is a direct force of power by the television show creators over Truman which is the only inmate in correlation to the experiment of the Panoptic machine which is a type of prison building designed by Jeremy Bentham in 1787 as stated by Storey (2016, 132). It is a similar act of practice to serve as an act of power