Constantly, we are monitored and observed by the United States government. The government has a complex surveillance system that controls the flow of information and data through the usage of flagging people and intercepting communication messages through the internet or postal service. In Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, one can see a government have total control over a society through surveillance. The government utilizes electronic media to manipulate the citizens through the censoring of information. The censorship of information involved destroying knowledge that existed and creating new information to control the population. They eliminated any information that would disagree with the way the government rules, since it could fuel or potentially start a revolution. Also, the government “kept those watched subordinate by means of uncertainty” (Lyon 60). In other words, the citizens always had a possibility that someone was watching them or reading their minds. They had a certain pressure to be always be in line with the government because they never knew when Big Brother was watching.
Furthermore, the surveillance utilized in Orwell’s book is similar to how our government controls the flow of information today. The United States government utilizes the identification of code or key words that alerts the government of potential threats. Also, the government can listen in on phone calls and intercept text messages to get rid of potential threats. In addition, the government has a detailed account of every single citizen through the categorization of search engines. Clearly, the government in Orwell’s book is very similar to our government today.
David Lyon, “From Big Brother to the Electronic Panopticon” from The Electronic Eye: The Rise of Surveillance Society (1994)
rakim 
scpatrick
As Lyon points out, there are indeed similarities between modern governments and Big Brother, but he also wants us to see some of the differences. Which are…Reference
I would have to disagree with you when you said how the “surveillance utilized in Orwell’s book is similar to how our government controls the flow of information today. ” In 1984, anyone who denounced the Big Brother would automatically be put into jail and in more severe cases, his/her record will be completely eradicated. Yet, there are numerous incidents today in which people publicly criticize Obama for the decisions he make, which would have been totally unacceptable in Orwell’s book. To name a specific case, Donald Trump constantly derides Obama and how America has gotten tremendously worse since he took over. Just four hours ago, he uploaded a 12 second video on Facebook and mocked Obama for “chewing gum, taking it out of his mouth and putting it back in his mouth.” In the last few months, he uploaded another video blaming Obama for ebola in New York. Basically, anytime Trump thinks Obama has made a mistake, he publicly calls him out by uploading a video onto his Facebook page. If this was done in 1984, he would have been long gone.
Additionally, your point about how “the government can listen in on phone calls and intercept text messages to get rid of potential threats” is minimized when you put it into the big picture. In 2012, a total of 3,395 wiretaps were authorized; put that over the total number of phone calls made, and its far smaller than half of a half of one percent. Meaning, the government isn’t listening to our (ordinary citizens)’s calls; therefore, the vast majority of us do not feel a “certain pressure to always be in line with the government” because in reality, they don’t care. For the minuscule amount of calls that are actually wiretapped, I would want them to happen because just like you said it prevents “potential threats”
A point of clarification: the 3,395 wiretaps issued in 2012 (or the 3,576 issued in 2013) refer only to court-issued wiretaps from conventional law enforcement agencies like the FBI or local police. As this chart shows, those numbers have steadily increased every year. But, and this is important, these numbers do not include wiretaps issued by FISA—those numbers are secret. And, these numbers ignore the vast monitoring capabilities of the NSA, which is not only constantly monitoring hundreds of thousands of communications devices, but is recording metadata from even more.
I believe that this post raises some very important questions surrounding US government surveillance power. Should the government have total control over our technological lives? Do they have the right to monitor our technological activity for the sake of homeland security? At what point does government surveillance begin to violate standard US human rights?
Relative to Orwell’s book published in 1949, government surveillance was was much more active during this time because it was a far less technologically-advanced society and information was less publicly available. Additionally, the government was able to play on the global fears of the post-WWII era. Thus, my argument would be that the US government had a much larger role in data portrayal/manipulation during Orwell’s era than today but still operated and took actions for the sake of national security.
Fast forward to today’s era where anyone with a smart phone can have access to millions of sources of information and social media interactions. This post highlights the fact that the government can listen to phone calls and monitor key words online to get rid of “potential threats,” which I do not believe violates human rights. The grey area then becomes: what is defined as a “potential threat?” Surely now in the post-9/11 era, terrorist activity world-wide has led to an increase in “potential threats.” Recent news of ISIS in Iraq and Syria explains how the terrorist organization uses Twitter and Facebook globally to recruit new members. Therefore, the government should have the power to domestically protect against these actions for the sake of US security.
So I do not believe that the government strives to “control” the flow of information today as it did in Orwell’s book but rather today they aim to monitor the flow of information for the sake of national security and protection against terrorist activity.
It’s interesting that you frame the debate about surveillance in terms of human rights. Human rights are generally thought of as basic guarantees of safety and dignity that should exist regardless of government type (democracy, theocracy, representative, monarchy, etc.). But it’s more accurate to use the concept of civil liberties when discussing surveillance. Civil liberties are more specific than human rights; civil liberties refer distinctly to rights that exist in democracies and republics that protect people from government interference in what they write, say, and do. (Think the Bill of Rights.) So, a case could be made that while ubiquitous surveillance doesn’t violate human rights, it still violates civil liberties, especially when the surveillance breaks long-held constitutional doctrines.