George Orwell's Surveillance

In George Orwell’s famous dystopian style novel 1984 the theme of surveillance is central to the overall story of the book. In 1984 Orwell wrote of a dystopian world, where everyone is being watched at all times, whether in home or in the workplace. In this day, it remains terrifying warning, about the threat of posed by total surveillance by ones government. Now 66 years later and this threat couldn’t be more real, as Abbott ludicrous government’s passes legislation on tax payer funded metadata retention bill, and giving intelligence agency unbridled access to our exact position through social networking, which pretty much turns you phone into a portable telescreen form 1984. On top of that according to the former American CIA and NSA director
Unlike many authors of his time, and likewise today Orwell was the kind of writer who put his life willingly for his ideologies, in harm’s way; resulting in Orwell getting firsthand experience of chaos. At the outbreak of the Spanish civil war, Orwell travelled to the front lines as a volunteer fighter, assisting the democratic republican government of Spain against the left leaning nationalists, led by the military dictator Franco. Orwell’s firsthand experience in the Spanish civil war, lead him to witness firsthand the control, whether it be in the form of surveillance or propaganda, a government can have over its population. Additionally during World War 2, Orwell could not serve in the British army so he worked at the BBC for 2 years during 1941 and 1943 where he worked in the war propaganda department. Orwell’s firsthand experience as previously stated, in the Spanish civil war and later as a BBC news report during the second world war, gave him an insight a to the extend a governmental capabilities to monitor its population, eventually evolving into surveillance, as depicted in Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984 as the telescreen. Now 66 years later in Europe data retention schemes were used throughout the continent, and ruled
Well the ever advancing computer technology, our everyday lives are becoming more inter-connected with our technology in the form on mobile devices and computers. Through applications such as social media, GPS components in phones and new data collection software becoming increasingly more developed. Even now google software in phones shows you exactly where you were and when, and this may be exploited by governments. This could result in governments acting in an Orwellian manner, by keeping its population under a degree of surveillance, however the Australian government may follow Europe, as previously stated before and ban Metadata retention. The Australians government’s Metadata retention plan seems like the pages of Orwell’s 1984 are starting to come alive, this however simply is not the case. The Australian government’s decision to push Metadata retention laws is taking an Orwellian tone, this hopefully does not mean that Australia will become Oceania, and Tony Abbott will not become Big