Essay on George Orwell’s 1984 and the National Security Agency (NSA)

Technology is apart of mostly everyone’s life and daily schedule, but often people fail to realize the fact that the government has the ability to monitor everything someone does through these devices. In George Orwell’s novel, 1984, a futuristic government spies on their citizens through technology found all throughout their homes. The government used secret microphones, telescreens, and the thought police, a group in charge of finding rebels against the party, in order to monitor what people say and think. There are many examples of this in today’s society: Amazon’s Alexa, Samsung Smart televisions, and social media apps. Amazon’s Alexa and Samsung Smart Televisions are voice recognition systems

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.

The use of surveillance is becoming increasingly evident around the world. Surveillance is carried out in many different forms from simple methods such as video surveillance to more complex methods such as call and browser monitoring. Although it might seem that surveillance is undeniably convenient when pursuing a criminal or preventing a terrorist attack, it is often misused and many are beginning to question why there

The NSA has been proven to be spying on United States citizens without proof of those citizens being labeled as a threat to the United States or anyone. Just like in the book 1984 by George Orwell, the government was spying on their citizens for no reason. There are many similarities between the book 1984 and the NSA. Many individuals either succeeded or tried to show the terrible things that their government was doing. The NSA has been known in the past to protect the United States but since Edward Snowden exposed the NSA the United States citizens put less trust in their government in fear their rights will be taken away.

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.

“1984” by George Orwell is a utopian and dystopian novel, this novel is enticing and while very gloomy proves to be an extraordinary book with an old futuristic feel to it. In the very beginning of the novel, we are introduced to a character named Winston, who has a very strong opinion against the Party and he immediately has thoughts and actions going against the organization which controls the world that he lives in. He first keeps a record of his thoughts in a diary and then joining what he thought was the “Brotherhood” which tries to sabotage the Party with the hope of making it fail, falls in love with a girl named Julia and strives to live a life that is not controlled by the Party. Major events of this story were that Winston wrote

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.

1984 is a fictional novel written by one George Orwell. According to BBC history, “Orwell was born Eric Arthur Blair on 25 June 1903 in eastern India, the son of a British colonial civil servant. He was educated in England and, after he left Eton, joined the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, then a British colony. He resigned in 1927 and decided to become a writer.” Nineteen eighty-four centers around a man named Winston Smith, a Party member, who works for the government erasing and rewriting history. The government (the Party) is focused around the character of ‘Big Brother’ the overseer. It has just about total control over its people, using telescreens to watch their every move and to spit pro-government propaganda at them twenty-four seven. Along with the telescreens, people called the thought police can also report people for not following the rules or committing a thought crime. The language is also modified, getting smaller every year so there are fewer and fewer ways to criticize the government and share information. Winston starts as a bit of a rebel and slowly ups the ante by having original thoughts, having sex, being in love, and meeting with the (perceived) rebel leader. His whole world crumbles when he gets caught with his lover and broken by the government. By the end of the book, he is a brainwashed member of society again. People speculate that Orwell wrote this as a warning, to make sure that people know that this could happen in lieu of Soviet Russia and

What would the world be like if the book 1984 came to life? What if I told you that some aspects of the novel 1984 are slowly becoming true. This is never more evident than when NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden was exiled from the United States for telling the truth about what the NSA really does to keep us safe. But are we really safe? What is the cost of keeping us safe? I believe that warrantless wiretapping and surveillance of the American people and the world even to prevent criminal activity is wrong because even a person thinks they didn't do something wrong , the concept of right and wrong can change in an instant. It is also wrong because this changes the future of our internet and Net Neutrality. Some people may say that spying by the NSA is necessary for the well-being of the American government but they are wrong because there are other things we could be spending our money on and there is no evidence that the NSA can ever prevent a terror attack on us or one of our allies.

The leaking of documents by Edward Snowden beginning in June 2013 that revealed the surveillance operations of the National Security Agency, or NSA, drew international attention to the question of what governments can do in the name of protection and what crosses the line into unauthorized spying on citizens. It also drew many comparisons to George Orwell’s dystopian classic Nineteen Eighty-Four. After careful analysis of the novel it becomes clear that the NSA’s actions bear some similarity to the Big Brother of Nineteen Eighty-Four, but there are some crucial differences that prevent the United States from becoming the totalitarian society that Orwell warned against. Even though the mass surveillance that the NSA performs is more encompassing than what the Party was capable of,

Specific Purpose: My purpose of this presentation is to inform listeners about the dangers of government surveillance and why it should be stopped.

A world beyond what George Orwell could imagine has been created in modern society through the use of not only government surveillance, but also corporate and consumer spying where users are often unaware of spying.. 1984 is set in a neo-communist society where the government controls production of goods and spies on its citizens in order to maintain power. In the modern era, surveillance takes a different form. Often the methods for spying on citizens in the US do not involve a direct line from the NSA to the citizen’s home, it usually takes a detour through a commercial setting. By partnering with major companies such as Facebook, Google, and Amazon, government surveillance programs are able to collect far more information than could be gained by simply tapping telephone lines. This is more disturbing since many companies including Verizon, AT&T, Apple, and Amazon do not require a warrant to supply information to investigators, and do not notify users of data requests.

Originally published in 1949, Nineteen-Eighty Four was a story about a futuristic world. Now that 1984 has passed, we now realize how unrealistic the novel really is. Even with the advancement of technology, the world today is quite different from the one portrayed in nineteen eighty-four. Big Brother has control on almost everything and is constantly watching everybody’s actions. With thought police everywhere, people have to worry about what they think. This is something that doesn’t happen today. When Winston falls in love with a rebellious Julia they have to sneak around trying to hide from Big Brother. Not only is this extremely difficult with all the telesmreens everywhere, but also very risking. If they are caught they know they would

Winston 's current situation working there is the major factor which lets him realize how Big brothers hold back the peoples opportunity to freedom. However, Winston keeps his thoughts and hate about Big Brother and the party for his own secret in his diary because the party will not allow anyone keeping a rebellious idea. After a while Big Brother realizes Winston’s suspicious behavior and has an individual named O’Brien sent to watch over Winston. O’Brien is a very smart man from the Ministry of truth, who is a member of the 'inner party '(the higher class). Winston comes to trust him and shares his inner secrets and ideas about the rebellion against Big Brother. O 'Brien tells Winston about a man named Emmanuel Goldstein whom claims to know the leader of the rebels against Big Brother. This also promises Winston to get a copy of the book he Longley desires. Suddenly O’Brien goes against Winston as Big Brother had already planned. Showing major secretive external conflict.

O’Brien and others throughout the book talk of the brotherhood who is rebellious against the party and led by a man of the name Emmanuel Goldstein. Goldstein is claimed to be the most dangerous man alive. However, I do not think the brotherhood even really exists. Perhaps it did at one point in time, but now serves as a method to entrap the population who would dare to rebel. O’Brien is the character in the story who is a member of the Inner Party and who initially leads Winston to exploring rebellion. O’Brien even gives Winston a copy of one of Emmanuel Goldstein’s books that explains why the world is the way they are. This book would be something that would get someone killed in the society of 1984. For someone like O’Brien to actually have that book and be willing to reveal himself is suspicious on its own. In the end, O’Brien was not a member of the Rebellion, but instead a member of the Thought Police that tortured Winston. Perhaps the entire brotherhood is just supposed to make people think a rebellion is taking place. Once those people who would rebel against the government step forward to help, it is really easy for Big Brother to step up and stomp out any and all flames of