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.
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
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.
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.
What are your thoughts?
