Government Surveillance In The 21st Century

“Personal privacy is a closely held American value,” Anna Eshoo. Even though this might be considered one of the biggest lies discovered in the 21st century, government surveillance should actually not come to a surprise to anybody. While no one can deny that we live in a real surveillance state today, predictions from novels such as 1984 are far from accurate. A dystopian novel filled with contradictions and an excessive left wing totalitarian government who hears, listens, and controls every aspect of its citizens’ lives is inaccurate to our current era of spying. Due to its dramatic end of the world environment, excessive government control, and inaccurate predictions of spying devices today, the novel 1984 has failed to foresee the modern

world.
Telescreens. A spying device first introduced in the book 1984, it has gone to become an iconic item in the story. “The voice came from an oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror...the telescreen it was called”(Orwell, 2). Not to be confused by the modern day television, the telescreen is not a platform of entertainment to watch your Saturday morning cartoons. Produced and distributed by the government to every home, street, and restaurant, the telescreen was the main spying device in the entire book. Being so, this is one of the main inaccuracies compared to our modern day era. As people go about their day, there are no government distributed spying devices scattered about on every house and corner street watching our every move. This fear of screened spying devices probably developed from the way televisions began to become popular in every home during the 1950’s. At that time, people thought the television would ruin people's mind, but today, it has become an invaluable source of news, and entertainment. George Orwell’s farce predictions on a device that can see and hear all just proves the inaccuracies between our world and the world of 1984.
So Telescreens aren’t the spying devices used to gather billions of data on Americans in this modern surveillance era.

That brings up the question: What does? Well, it is a pretty simple question to answer in this modern era of consumerism.“Nearly 2 thirds of US adults own a smartphone,” reports an article from the Pew Research Center, “up from 35% in 2011.” With the majority of Americans relying on some type of mobile device, it makes sense that the average smartphone is the perfect 2016 spying device. However, it was not until 2013 that Edward Snowden released to the public that the government, more specifically the NSA, does in fact monitor phone records, emails, and other commonly used internet utilities. The NSA also uses other utilities such as the Prism program to get other private information. According to an article published by Vox.com, it says that “the program allows the NSA to get private information such as emails, Facebook messages, and stored documents”(Vox, 1). It seems that the NSA has many tricks up their sleeve to gather information from Americans, however, their way to mine information is completely different from the methods used in 1984. They don’t force Americans to use government issued devices. It is Americans and the people themselves that purchase on their own free will the devices used to spy on them. This is a clear difference from the dystopian environment published on Orwell’s novel. If anything, this makes Huxley’s Brave New World more

accurate than 1984.
Big Brother is Watching You. This eerie and very creepy phrase is the most iconic phrase in the entire novel by George Orwell. More than just words, this phrase shows a lot on Orwell’s critique on communism and the Soviet Union at the time 1984 was written. “The Party seeks power entirely for it’s own sake...The German Nazi’s and The Russian Communists came very close to us.”(Orwell, 263) Orwell believed that under a communist government, the world would fall into a totalitarian world where all the rights of the people were gone. It is in this environment that Orwell argues that massive government surveillance will happen; however, he never imagined the rise of a surveillance state under a democratic “free” government. He never imagined the people themselves would give the government the right to check and monitor the private lives of people, not even under the excuse of government security. This is by far the biggest difference between our world and 1984 because we today are being spied on by a democratic and non-totalitarian run society. This makes the predictions made by 1984 completely irrelevant and false.
Consumerism.

Democracy. Surveillance Era. All these phrases cannot be found together in one sentence on George Orwell’s 1984. Sadly, it is true that under a democratic government, a surveillance state has risen under the false name of security and with the help of a hungry-driven consumerist society. Through the use of phones the government run NSA has access to every part of our lives but it is nothing with the predictions found in the novel by George Orwell. 1984 predicted that citizens of the future would have their rights taken by a totalitarian government and their private lives would be monitored through telescreens. Now we know that was not an overpowering communist government that took all the rights of the people away. It was the people who unknowingly gave their right to privacy to the government. Perhaps now, the people will finish something that the Winston in Orwell’s book never did. Free the people from today’s 2016 surveillance era. After all, the NSA is watching

you.