YOUR EVERY MOVE IS BEING WATCHED! 📷 🔦
1984 by George Orwell
I believe that I had mentioned George Orwell's 1984 on my blog before. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it; it's a great read. I would like to point out the similarities and differences on state surveillance between this book and today's view on surveillance and spying.
Winston Smith is a low-ranking member of the ruling Party in London, in the nation of Oceania. Everywhere Winston goes, even his own home, the Party watches him through telescreens; everywhere he looks he sees the face of the Party’s seemingly omniscient leader, a figure known only as Big Brother. The Party controls everything in Oceania, even the people’s history and language. Currently, the Party is forcing the implementation of an invented language called Newspeak, which attempts to prevent political rebellion by eliminating all words related to it. Even thinking rebellious thoughts is illegal. Such thoughtcrime is, in fact, the worst of all crimes.
Comparing State Surveillance of the Past to the Present
Surveillance, as we know it today, is much different to the surveillance present in George Orwell's book, 1984. In my opinion, the contrast between the surveillance in the book and today's surveillance is not the massive technological advances that we have seen in recent years. Regardless of the better technology that we have, the same techniques are seen being using in the book and today.
The most oppressive regimes have never needed or utilised high tech devices. They utilised the best piece of tech known to humanity, a human being. They made people spy on others. This sent a sense of fear through everybody; people felt scared in disclosing confidential information to others in fear of being betrayed. This was especially feared amid war in WW2; you never knew if who you were talking to were a spy, someone who would snake you to the authorities or a loyal friend. Winston Smith had a telescreen watching him at all times, but his greatest fear was telling an untrustworthy individual secret information
An Invasion of Privacy
Having an extreme, omniscient government watching me makes me very anxious. The greatest danger to democracy is the elected government itself. If nothing can stop these governments, we aren't living in a democracy anymore; we are living in a borderline dictatorship. Surely, the American NSA and the British GCHQ should be held accountable for exploiting our privacy without our knowledge.
I figure advancing technology isn't the greatest danger in the exploitation of surveillance. The greatest threat to our privacy is our greatest protector. However, I suppose technology is the best way of undetected surveillance. It could be much more efficient to use some sort of AI or machine learning software to reprimand certain types of content, but some would also see this as an invasion of privacy.
Sweden's "Unsettling, Unethical, Unacceptable, and Illegal" Behaviour
I was researching the topic of state surveillance, and I came across this story. I do not know how true it is so if anybody could give me some kind of validation, that would be appreciated.
Surveillance in Sweden seems to have overemphasised. Apparently, every police precinct in Sweden has its own intelligence unit on everybody's phone records, whereabouts, etcetera. It also started a controversy in 2013 where it was revealed that the police in Malmo kept children of people of Romani descent on its unofficial list of conceivable suspects and individuals important to the Swedish police. On this list, it was uncovered to contain the names of youngsters as young as two which is profoundly upsetting. The affected individuals including Romani minors were compensated, and a couple of commanders resigned, yet the unofficial records remain, and nobody was ever considered responsible for this repression.
These distressing stories are what make people want change in our government and how it is functioning.
Hey @arckrai. I was invited to be a judge for the new Whaleshares Curation Team tonight. I have selected your post to be presented in a live curation discussion on Monday 27th November. Your post will be awarded with a 25 Whaleshares vote on the night. I do hope you can come along and spectate. The event will be held in The Curation Lounge on the Whaleshares server. Hope to see you there!
Here's an announcement post for the event.
It's crazy how I didn't realise this occurred.
I've been so busy that I didn't realise how well this post did!
Thank you so much @kotturinn for selecting my post. I'm sorry I wasn't able to tune in but hopefully, I will next time.
Keep up the good work and helping reigniting the spark some of us content creators need! :)
ever since the internet came about , oh well a little time after it, I felt strong about giving my personal data away... at the beginning I thought "ok, there maybe some value coming from this..", wrong! all they did was taking your privacy away in return of nothing, oh no I forgot...
Welcome to our "site"!
this Orwellian line that invites you to be robbed practically used by all sites even here except that you are free to chose between disclosing your personal data or not
I personally got used not to
nice post!! :)
Interesting but a bit of paranoia. Paranoia is mental illness, so be full of care, not about excessive surveillance but take care of your mental health. Life is so diverse, and beyond the Milky Way there is an infinite universe full of possibilities. In that sense all surveillance attempts is a failure in itself, for the free, the deathless, the unbound reality of enlighten awareness.
Unfortunately, it is not paranoia. But it's not necessarily the government and its surveillance that is the biggest threat to privacy. Corporate interests collect, aggregate and sell your private information all the time. They know a lot more about you than the IRS or NSA. They are being run by a generation of intellectuals who have little love for freedom and privacy. They were indoctrinated in universities and taught that "wrongthink" is heresy and deserving of punishment. It will not be long before these apparatchiks will be be misusing social media information for political ends.
I value my privacy. We have too much smart technology today that intrudes on our personal privacy and space. That is why I don't own anything smart. Not even a smart phone!
........and people voluntarily carry smart phones around with them -because they are so.......smart?
Extra surveillance is so expensive compared the the brain dead zombies (who think they are smart carrying a smart phone)....who will go out and PAY FOR IT THEMSELVES, their own personalized tracking device....
The lack of up votes I recieve on this comment, will show precisely what I mean...lol
(it's never a nice feeling, having your own stupidity, and home truths, pointed out to you. Well, it is nice for the secure people...)
baaaaaaaa
It is most upsetting to live the way we do today, too many of us perhaps.
Loss of moral compass where people fell they have the right to delve into your privacy wherever you go @arckrai
the 'internet of things" is already beyond Orwell out there but very few seem to care... I have several excellent blogs about it
even smart meters, tvs and fridges spy on households, smart this and that, we already live in a cybernic-prison
Where there is internet, there is no privacy.
A human right,maybe it is. However, we give up that right every time we use our phones, we go online, we have a camera. IT maybe our right, but too often we give it up for daily luxuries. Great share, hope to see more!