Lack Of Privacy In George Orwell's 1984

At its date of publication in 1949 George Orwell’s 1984 served as a warning of a bleak future. However, due to recent government actions both domestically and abroad the novel is no longer a warning of a possible future, but rather one that has already begun.
The defining characteristic of 1984’s dystopian is the complete and utter lack of privacy, one of the most notable examples of this would be telescreens that pick up “any sound that Winston made, above the sound of a very low whisper” (Orwell 3). In China privacy is already scarce and the Communist Party of China is beginning to eliminate the concept of it entirely, it has begun to put a national database in place that contains lots of information on citizens including things as personal

as “whether females have been instructed to take birth control” (Hatton). This loss of privacy although disgusting, is not shocking, what is shocking is that citizen’s will receive a social credit score in regards to how good of a citizen the respective person is. For example, if a person posts things that the government would prefer them not to post about such as the Tiananmen Square massacre or the Shanghai stock market collapse their score will be lowered (Hatton).

Rather than changing history like in Oceania, the Chinese have decided to get people to avoid it entirely. It is important to note that the social credit score is not just some arbitrary number, citizens with higher scores will be able to take low rate loans and be able to go on vacations at lower than normal prices (Hua). Essentially the Government is bribing people so that they will be obedient, putting them in an easier position to threaten citizens later, much like the thought police in 1984. In the novel a key part of the elimination of privacy is the destruction of the family. Husbands and wives are not people who love each other but rather those whom the party decided were a good fit to raise children. Often these children would report a parent as a “thought-criminal” and then be praise as a “child hero” (Orwell 23-24). The party didn’t have to watch over everyone because they had “comrades” do it for them by constantly checking on one another for irregularities, especially children; one example is the arrest of Mr. Parsons who was caught yelling “Down with Big Brother” in his sleep by his seven-year old daughter who then reported it to the thought police (Orwell 233). The social credit score will not only be hurt by

the individual’s actions, but also by the friends of that individual, just like in 1984 this will push citizens to check on their friends to make sure that the friends are acting in the Government’s best interests, or even worse cut them off entirely (Stanley). As shocking as the Government’s actions may be in China what is even worse is the citizen’s lack of it, just like in 1984 there is no resistance to any of the violations of privacy, in fact many of the citizens have shared their social credit scored more than is necessary in order to brag about it and compete for the highest one among their friends (Hatton). Overall the authoritarian party in China is awfully similar to the party in Oceania.
An American citizen may not be worried because they live in a democracy under the Constitution and so they think that they must be safe, however this is an awfully foolish assumption to make due to the fact that rights are often infringed on during wartime. An obvious example of this is Japanese internment during World War II which “ordered 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry into prison camps” without just cause (“Wartime and Bill of Rights”). This idea is found in Goldstein’s Manifesto when he states that “the consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival” (Orwell 192). The fear of the public is able to be used against the public and allow a government to overlook the public’s rights in order to protect them. A less obvious, yet more recent and applicable application of this is the Patriot Act which was “hastily passed 45 days after 9/11 in the name of national security” (“Surveillance under Patriot Act”). Under the Patriot Act FBI agents may issue National Security Letters without a judge’s approval in order to gain access to a person’s personal information such as phone records and computer records (“Surveillance under Patriot Act”). Between 2003 and 2006 over 192,000 NSLs were issued, one of them led to a terror-related conviction (“Surveillance under Patriot Act”). Clearly the act is a violation of privacy and is in no way helping to protect national security, just as in 1984 the threat of danger is being used as an excuse to abridge rights to privacy.
Due to the rise of modern electronics such as smartphones and computers, the ability to take away privacy and the ease of doing so have been greatly increased. George Orwell was well ahead of his time and had a foresight into the future when he wrote 1984, that future is now upon many people regardless of what type of government they live under. It is crucial the such people recognize the violations of rights and fight them instead of sitting around and accepting them in order for “national security”.