Do Americans Have Less Privacy Than in George Orwell's Novel, 1984?

[pinochet]

George Orwell's famous novel, 1984, was published in 1949, and he predicted that people in the future would have no privacy, as governments would monitor all their activities. The "big brother is watching" phrase became well known.

But Orwell could never have predicted the technologies of the future, when he described a fictional system of oppression based on technologies that were available in 1949. In 1949, there were no personal computers, no cell phones, no internet, no satellites, etc. In the communist regimes of 1949, most people did not own telephones, therefore there were no phones to bug. Most people did not own radios and TVs, and the only way for the government to lie to people, was through newspapers, which the majority of people could not afford to buy on a regular basis.

I feel sorry for the young Americans who are below the age of 25. They will be living in a communist regime in the future, that is more oppressive than the communist regimes of Eastern Europe of the 1950s.

[pinochet]

One can pray that Eastern Europe will give the world the next Ronald Reagan and the next Margaret Thatcher, who will free the Americans of the future from totalitarian dictatorship. I hope the Eastern Europeans will be kind enough to accept refugees from America, who will be fleeing from American communism.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Yes, because George didn’t see the Interwebs coming.

[mountainlion]

Winston had a camera in his room and knew he was being watched and where to be to be out of view of the camera. Lots of us have cameras on out computers and think they are off but are they? A mosquito sized drone can plant a listening device and we would never know it is there.

When you are paranoid you only have to be right once to make it all worth wild!

[The Sons of Liberty]

Actor Shia LaBeouf apparently said years ago that he was told by an FBI agent that they could, and did, listen in through the communications connections on home security systems. At the time no one took him seriously, but now considering that even rudimentary systems have a way to speak to those monitoring, it seems very plausible.

[null and void]

Yes and no.

We have more privacy in terms of not actually having cameras in our houses and monitoring our every move in public.

We have less privacy in terms of the government’s ability to compile and coordinate and correlate every scrap of data they have into a coherent picture of each and every one of us.

Under Orwell’s dystopia, a monitoring system limited by the number of human data analysts, only a relative few number of people could get special attention.

With silicon doing the monitoring we’re all special.

[supremedoctrine]

Let’s put aside momentarily what the NSA has done-—we’ve already heard their song, and the lyrics aren’t gonna change.let’s concentrate instead on getting them to answer questions about the giant complex in Utah that they’re building with our money. Revelations coming out o* THAT and THAT ALONE would put the whole thing in perspective, and would alter their entire operation 4ever.

[Nowhere Man]

Well, yes and no. Yes because the computer technology we have now (or even the 1970's/1980's) is superior to the computer tech of Orwell's "1984." I got a big kick out of the John Hurt "!984" movie where Winston Smith used a rotary phone dial to control his PC workstation. The "no" part is that we do not have government controlled camera in our homes although many do have web cams that could be hacked perhaps.

BTW, I keep thinking when I said in 1983, "what if we ever became the Empire?" I also asked then, "what if the US became the USSR and the USSR became the US?"

[Nowhere Man]

Empire = Evil Empire

[Marcella]

“the giant complex in Utah that they’re building with our money. Revelations coming out of THAT and THAT ALONE would put the whole thing in perspective, and would alter their entire operation 4ever.”

I expect that place in Utah is now the number one target for a Russian nuclear bomb after they use their own methods to suck the information out.

[Jeff Head]

We are rapidly heading that way. Forget what the Obama administration and the RINOs say. Listen to what this 40 year career NSA individual has to say, William Benny, who became the Director of the Intelligence Division at the NSA, managing over 6,000 analysts, and has personal knowledge of this program's capabilities.

Former Director of NSA Intelligence reveals the full extent of PRISM capabilities. MUST SEE!

Another William Benny interview about PRISM and the NSA

This is going to get a lot worse before iot gets bwetter, and at this point, I am afraid only a general uprising by the American people themselves will be able to stop it.

SNOWDEN, PRISM AND THE NSA

[PaleoBob]

If people really feared having their emails read or their phone conversations listened in on, they’d stop using email and the phone.

But they keep posting and chatting and emailing and facebooking and then, insanely, fretting about their “privacy” as if it can’t be bought with a free email account or a good offer from Verizon.

The truth is that we all post, we all email, we all call, and nobody gives a damn about what we think or say. To stave off the lack of attention, we pretend that experts in the US military required to understand farsi or urdu or pashtun or arabic to even GET their job are secretly listening in on our latest reaction to what Ron Paul said last night and ignoring emerging Al Qaeda plots.

The new leader of the American conservative movement is a 29-year old self-important high school dropout doing the bidding of the communist Chinese government. But boy, as long as we all have our “privacy”... Whatever that is.

[pigsmith]

The technology we have today... we have refrigerators that connect to the internet. Whatever for?? So BB can monitor what we eat?

[ctdonath2]

George didn’t see most people broadcasting so much personal information. He could only imagine invasive acquisition.

[Windflier]

So that’s it? You’re just going to lie down and surrender before a single shot has been fired?

[E. Pluribus Unum]

George didn’t see most people broadcasting so much personal information.

We are our own DIY paparazzi.

[grumpygresh]

The key ingredient for hard tyranny and the ubiquitous police state is the transformation of universal surveillance into the targeted persecution of a resistant population. The elites are busy demonizing conservatives, constitutionalists and libertarians into scape-goats and enemies of the state. While we are still behind Maoist China, USSR, Nazi Germany, we are well on our way. The totalitarian mindset has transformed and captured the education establishment, unions, MSM, the state and federal bureaucracies, and increasingly more of the military leadership. These are the dangerous totalitarian Leftist ideologues that have made the Faustian bargain with their Satanic transnational masterminds. They are the misguided party followers that will gladly turn their neighbors, family, friends and co-workers for violations and subversive activities against the state.
Once we have a society of snitches and scapegoats, 0bama’s demonic transformation of America will have taken his intended form.

[Nowhere Man]

From 1965

[Nowhere Man]

I expect that place in Utah is now the number one target for a Russian nuclear bomb after they use their own methods to suck the information out.

Well, I sometime think the powers that be are building a "Tower of Babel" in a way. I know it is powerful and intrusive but I think there will be a time and/or event that will knock it down like God did with the original tower. The more sophisticated you get, the easier it is to break it. The internet is hardy, but even after an atomic way, it might still be up in some local areas,, mini-internets, or intranets if you will, but all the ducks will not be in a row.

Utah is known for high seismic activity, if they have a huge quake, the who system will be damaged or destroyed. Then your example of it being a high priority target, maybe it is a huge conspiracy to get rid of the Mormons too. B-P I know if I was governor of the State of Utah, I'd say, "no way, man! You're not putting that thing in my State."

A side note, I'm a role playing gamer, one of my favorite games is "The Morrow Project" where the Project is there to rebuild the U.S. after an atomic war (or pick your favorite apocalypse). One of the game's scenarios was dealing with a sentient supercomputer ("Damocles") built by the U.S. Government (from the 1960's to 1989 when the war happened) in the center of the Michigan Upper Peninsula. I wonder why they did not choose an out of the way place like that. BTW, the computer can even protect itself with automatic machine gun turrets and a few robotic M60 tanks.

Getting back to the topic fully, I do believe one day, it will fall, either under its own weight and/or incompetence or somebody will toss in a monkey wrench somehow.

[Marcella]

You are quite astute to think of the “Tower of Babel” - that is exactly what it is and I hadn’t thought of that. Nimrod started building that with all their knowledge put into building it to go to the heavens.

God says in Genesis 11:6, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.” Perhaps all that knowledge/info. that will be in Utah has reached Babel proportions and God will intervene.

Thanks for your post.

[Nowhere Man]

You are quite astute to think of the “Tower of Babel” - that is exactly what it is and I hadn’t thought of that. Nimrod started building that with all their knowledge put into building it to go to the heavens.

God says in Genesis 11:6, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.” Perhaps all that knowledge/info. that will be in Utah has reached Babel proportions and God will intervene.

Thanks for your post.

Thanks. BTW, Rose from "Quinn and Rose" compared the system to Goliath to where a David can come along to take it down. I think both are applicable. I used to work in IT and there are lots of things that can go wrong with computer systems no matter how bulletproof you make them. I remember where I had to constantly make backups of data for an engineering firm I work for. I made three sets, one to store on site, another to the home office and one off site and we rotated them. Even so, if there is a tragic problem, even with backups, things can be lost, data can be corrupted and so on. Even if you lose a few hours or a few days work can be a major problem. Heck, I remember one time on one of the PC's, one of the engineers deleted some files for a $11 million bridge project and one of the company's VP's was upset. I told him that there is a chance (this was in the days of DOS) where I can undelete files, but I cannot promise anything. He told me to give it a try and I saved the project. There are other times I was not so lucky.

This is like a huge Tower of Babel, plus like Nimrod, Obama and the administration are acting so arrogant about all of this. It is quite easy for someone patriotic to take a system down, delete files, cause it to crash as well as God Himself to take the whole thing down. Even if you don't take it down directly, you can also cripple the thing by power interruption from the grid (the diesel backup generators will not run forever unless you keep trucking in diesel), data lines can be cut or blocked (by natural, Divine or man made causes), the cooling system could conk out (the A/C and if it is water cooled) and it overheats. Hard drives crash, tape drives crash, solid state memory could crash and so on. It will be the target of hackers everywhere.

It is a Tower of Babel, remove a few links in the chain or stones in the foundation, it will come crashing down, doubly so if the people behind it are arrogant. Remember the Titanic where is was said to be unsinkable? Well we know the rest of the story.