Persuasive Essay On 1984 By George Orwell

Throughout many years in the United States, there has been controversy over whether or not government surveillance and other technology is a violation of human rights. Ever since the publication of George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, there has been an increase in debates on the subject. The novel itself exemplifies what a surveillance-based society is like, providing the reader with a point of view of what could happen to their own society. Discussion over the usage of information that the government has gathered has become one of the foremost topics being analyzed to this day. The information that is being viewed by surveillance would otherwise be private, or information that people would not want to be leaked out. Therefore, surveillance executed by the government and companies has become an infringement to the right of privacy, and United States citizens should take actions upon it before the world reflects the Orwellian vision of the future.

First,

companies are invading their user’s privacy in order to search for information that will benefit themselves. Companies such as Google and Facebook are both big websites that admit to using filters in order to personalize a customer’s experience by looking through their private information and past activities while on the site. With the user’s personal account, companies are able to take private information and use it as a tool to make their website more appealing to users. The authors of The Art of Social Media state that “Facebook uses indicators such as the number of comments, and the kind of story to decide which followers can see which posts” (Kawasaki, 139). The fact that Facebook is making changes to what the users can see, is already an obvious red flag. Users should be able to control what they want on their feed, or at least be aware of the changes. This restricts the users and gives them no power over their account. Since private information is used to create more interest in the site, many people are having their privacy invaded as companies try to get into their head to make something they will like.
Next, Google is using their user’s location to give out information that is more relevant to the user. If users from different places over the country, were to search up the same topic, they would get different results. This puts a limit on what information an individual can find, which is not part of the plan the creators of Google initially had in mind. In one of the TED Talks videos, a speaker named Eli Pariser states how “Google access 57 different signals from the user to give out search results” (What Google and Facebook are Hiding- TED). Although Google is a company that is founded on the idea of spreading knowledge across the world, there are now limits, such as where a user lives, that restrict what they will learn. This is unjust for all kinds of people who want to gain new information, because it would be harder for them to find any given information they have not seen or may need. As a result, Google using signals from the user is proven to be a violation of privacy, and is unnecessary.
Those who oppose the argument that surveillance is a threat to human rights, are likely to point out that the use of surveillance is to protect citizens, and “catch red light runners, speeders, and fugitives” (Volokh).

However, evidence from previous events prove that the government is still incapable of preventing such incidents from happening. Concerning the Boston Marathon Bombing, the Washington Post asserts that there was “much technological overreach, yet counterterrorism officials still couldn’t do basic police work and catch the Boston bombers” (Dowd). Not only does this disprove the opposition’s claim, it also strengthens the fact that surveillance is not beneficial for the United States. While others may believe that government surveillance helps society in becoming a safer place, the Boston Marathon Bombing shows that surveillance has proven itself to have no critical use in matters of the country’s

security.
The government’s surveillance both greatly disturbs our privacy, and is not useful in relation to the expectations it is based on.
Most importantly, government surveillance has been shown to be such a great challenge to privacy because of its direct conflict with the rights that were originally stated in the Fourth Amendment. Individuals who work in the United States government swear to protect all of these rights, but it has recently been discovered that the National Security Agency is violating these rights in many ways, which is exactly against what the founding fathers would have wanted. In the article, “Editorial:All this snooping is legal, and that’s the problem”, “there have been separate revelations that the National Security Agency is collecting customer records..accessing customer emails, web searches, photographs and documents ...and monitoring credit card transactions” (Orange County Register). These processes are a clear violation to the rights of privacy that citizens believe to have been secured by the government. Although the rights in the Fourth Amendment are meant to defend privacy, it is being obliterated by the NSA’s collection of records, private emails, documents, and transactions, showing how the government itself can cause loss of privacy to its citizens.
Government surveillance should be prohibited, as it is causing more problems than it is benefiting the citizens. Not only is surveillance known for being a violation to the rights of people, but it is considered to be unnecessary and should have not been there in the first place. According to a security expert, he states “we can no longer trust them to be ethical Internet stewards. This is not the Internet the world needs, or the Internet its creators envisioned. We need to take it back” (Gallington). The fact that a security expert like himself believe that surveillance is not right,