Pages

Sunday, July 31, 2016

Big Brother is Watching Us – But We are Watching Back.

Another student post about whether we are living in Orwell's 1984.

Available to purchase through amazon.com

Sitting in the idyllic, countryside surroundings of Cambridge, England, it’s easy to feel like I have been thrown into another time. I am aware of and grateful for the luxury of focusing on a specific topic, diving deeply into the background and context to seek understanding and hopefully, someday, a solution. The topic is counter-terrorism, which is in stark contrast to the rolling green hills, walking paths of this university environment.

But a closer look reveals the ugly truths of modern day life where cameras are hidden in plain sight, monitoring our every move. Like most people, I try not to think too much about who might really be watching, and why. To do so would surely incite conspiracy theories and a compulsion to line the windows with tin foil. But the cameras are there, and suddenly it seems that possibly 1984 is here as well.

The themes of Orwell’s iconic, futuristic novel were so considered to be beyond imagination that the book itself created the term “Orwellian” as the definition of government collusion, abuse of power, and mass use of secret surveillance. However, the advent of modern day technology has enabled monitoring for the greater good to keep us safe.

In England alone, there are more than 4 million cameras, one for approximately every eleven citizens. And those are the ones that we know about. Put in place for protection, the cameras have also come to serve a different use and have evolved to extend the reach of law enforcement. Big Brother it seems is really here.

Image from Wikiquote
The Orwellian themes of an endless war, surveillance state, and manipulation of history that were outlined in 1984 seem to be part of our current reality. Since World War II, there have been 8 wars going on in the world at any given time. Terrorism and various insurgencies have made war a perpetual state. This, of course, is the slippery slope upon which the need to surveillance is based. The actions of those who may have malicious intent must be monitored for our safety, by the government, for our own good. But to do so comes at a pretty price – and wrapped in language that is hard to argue against.

For us in the USA, the surveillance state is called the Patriot Act. Who would not be for patriotism, even if at the expense of personal freedom? Cell phones, the Internet, and fiber optics have made monitoring more accessible as both our reliance on this technology and the digital trail we leave are prevalent in today’s connected lifestyle. The concept of ‘telescreens’ does not seem so unreal.

Image from Pinterest
(https://in.pinterest.com/pin/428334614533022089/)
And, as I sit in my room watching online the horror of black lives being taken by law enforcement in my home country, I am struck also by the notion that citizens are now forced to use surveillance on authority as a means of protection and proof. The people now feel they have no choice but to record it. History is being manipulated, power is being abused, and black men are dying at the hands of police brutality. White privilege is not too far away from the elite authoritarian state that existed in 1984, and so technology is being used to monitor the lives and actions of the police as a means to correct the manipulation of the narrative. The YouTube video of the murder of Alton Sterling and the live-streamed video of Philando Castile’s shooting at the hands of police have accumulated millions of views and ignited a movement against the authoritarian state. Big Brother is watching – but now we have the power to watch back and ultimately force change.

Works Cited

Posted by at
Labels: ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)