Surveillance In George Orwell's 1984 And Modern Society

Surveillance has been treated as both an invasion of privacy, as well as a benefit to security. Due to this controversy, George Orwell’s 1984 is used as propaganda for the negative sides of surveillance. The book 1984 displays surveillance through the views of the government and the people, overall forcefully controlling every citizen of the Party. However, in the modern world, surveillance is used for singling out criminals, murderers, and terrorists, as well as finding practical information about businesses and missing individuals. The issue of surveillance in George Orwell’s 1984 and modern society is inversely related, in which the novel views surveillance as a negative effect on people, while surveillance in modern society benefits the people. The similarities of technological usage between both the fictional and

real societies demonstrate the potential of the government to decide how surveillance controls the people.

The government in 1984 utilizes surveillance technology to externally suppress citizens to the point where all actions are watched or controlled against their will. In everyday life for citizens of the outer party, almost every movement or sound is detected by a telescreen. Telescreens, a combination of a camera and a microphone, can detect “Any sound… above the level of a very low whisper… moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard” (Orwell 3). With telescreens in a large multitude of areas, Winston’s actions will be watched continuously by the government. Although this is only detection technology, the government telescreens can talk back, and the police patrol can “[skim] down between the roofs… [going] into people’s windows” (2). The

government monitors and deals with citizens through telescreens and the police patrol, but they also watch people through the youth of the Party. The children in the society are treated as surveillance tools, since they are taught to hate thought criminals, and even rat out their own parents if they are seen doing criminal acts. As Winston is sent to jail, his neighbor explains that his children “Heard what [he] was saying, and nipped off to the patrols the very next day” (233). Thus, children are just like permanent cameras, that must be around parents most of the time. Due to the need for prosperity in the party, children are mandatory. This makes children a valuable source of surveillance to the party, and make it easier to spot criminals or traitors. Ultimately, the government looks at every member of the Party as a possible criminal, and keeps them under surveillance constantly with no leniency to privacy or people’s concerns.
In addition to external surveillance, the people are influenced psychologically through paranoia, lowering the possibility for rebellion, but also disregarding the rights of the citizens. With the existence of telescreens, paranoia is induced from the uncertainty of government observance. In their minds, the citizens have “no way of knowing whether [they] were being watched at any given moment” (3). This assumption “was guesswork” (3), and the unknown possibility of a Party member watching them forces people to think against rebellion. In conjunction with the telescreens, the idea of the thought police was even more striking than the police patrol. Although the police patrol would physically invade people’s houses, Winston believes that “only the thought police mattered” (2). Since anyone could be part of the thought police, the paranoia caused by the telescreen is transferred to the members of the party. Around any member of the party, it would be just the same as being around a telescreen due to the similar paranoia caused by both. In the future of the society, the possibility of rebellion would diminish due to the new language, Newspeak, making thoughtcrime “literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it” (52). Eliminating the capability of rebellion in thoughts would limit the people’s freedom of expression, which is already infringed upon by the presence of telescreens and the hidden thought police. With the government attempting to limit rebellion in every aspect of the people’s lives, the people have no place of true security or privacy.
Although George Orwell views surveillance as an invasion of privacy and a large controlling force, the surveillance in modern day society displays positive effects in stopping criminal activity, improving safety, and disclosing useful information. Since the airport security failure on September 11th, 2001, the United States began to “better connect the dots and learn from the mistakes that permitted those attacks to occur on 9/11'' (Savage). After years of correcting the mistakes the community found in the lack of surveillance, new technologies, some with the ability to “find lost children or people on Alzheimer's alert or criminals or terrorists” (Price), became exceptionally useful. Critical issues, including a stock exchange bomb plot and a bomb plot for the New York City subway, were stopped due to NSA surveillance, helping prevent another large security breach. Although it seems small, the jury of this stock exchange bomb plot “considered it serious, since they were all convicted” (Savage). The actions being made to actually stop terrorists go further, in a case of illegally “raising and sending about $8,500 to Al Shabab, a terrorist group in Somalia.” (Savage). Monitoring suspicious calling data was crucial in convicting the men responsible for this plot. Everyday criminals are also found with surveillance, occasionally found using stingray technology. By triangulating phone positions, police can detect a “[murderer] suddenly leaving the area at a high rate of speed, that cell phone owner is a potential suspect” (Hruska). Although telescreens in 1984 are virtually everywhere, along with other surveillance techniques, the lack of cameras can be detrimental. In the case of P.J. Avitto and Mikayla Capers, two kids were severely stabbed, with Mikayla in the hospital, and P.J. dead. The search for the murderer was “difficult because the building has no surveillance cameras” (Yee). Without cameras, murderers, along with criminals and thieves, can get away with disturbing innocent citizens.With a combination of thwarting criminal activity and increased security, surveillance is an advantage in modern society.
In contrast to these benefits, modern society has downsides much like 1984. However, this is due to flaws in laws and the government as opposed to being rooted in the usability of surveillance. Both 1984 and Society display surveillance on the lives of innocent people, and the faults of the government that allow liberties to be infringed upon. Much like telescreens, stingray technology can be used to track “the movements of innocent people with no regard for how that data might be misinterpreted or abused” (Hruska). The use of stingrays is supposed to be warranted, but police departments can get away with “using a stingray more than 200 times… without ever getting a warrant for its use” (Hruska). With data having a chance to be abused, and no regulation on this data extraction, modern society remains similar with the unjust surveillance used by the Party in 1984. However, this infringement is not due to the unjust qualities of the surveillance itself, but in the government enforcing rules and laws. Jim Harper, a man against the collection of personal data, admits that “The way to protect privacy online is by using established legal principle” (Price). He believes that when a group or business promises privacy, “the law should recognize that as a contract” (Price). With correct laws and contracts between the people afflicted by surveillance and the government exploiting surveillance, the depiction of this connection in 1984 is avoidable. The separation between the United States’ government and the Party is due to the rights and laws in society regulating how much surveillance is allowed to infringe the rights of the citizens. Although imperfect, this differentiation between the two societies display that it is possible for the laws and the government to regulate surveillance, regardless of the technology used.
Overall, the technology used in modern society and the society in 1984 is noticeably similar, although modern society yields more benefits from surveillance than 1984. The government in 1984 is domineering, with surveillance used for watching every single citizen of the party, while the people in 1984 are affected psychologically, unable to rebel, and have no security, privacy, or freedoms. While there is distrust between the government and the citizens in the book, modern society reveals that a stronger connection between the two allow for more benefits to be taken away from surveillance. Even though modern society still has flaws in its regulation of surveillance, the possibility for improvement is recognized, and can be acted upon. The legitimacy and the stability of the government and the law controls how surveillance will affect the people of the country, and the mutual relationship of the surveillants and the surveilled improve the benefits of surveillance for both groups.