Edward Snowden revealed some government secrets, but due to the nature of these secrets, I believe that this act makes him a hero rather than a traitor. He revealed to the world that everything they do or look at on the internet is constantly being watched and recorded by the government. Some people now think of him as a traitor, but I think that this was important for people to know since it is an invasion of their privacy. This is eerily similar to the way that the characters live in the book “1984”. Every move they make is being watched by the government on telescreens. In the TED Talk, Snowden says, “People should be able to pick up the phone and to call their family, people should be able to send a text message to their loved ones, people should be able to buy a book online, they should be able to travel by train, they should be able to buy an airline ticket without wondering about how these events are going to look to an agent of the government, possibly not even your government years in the future, how they're going to be misinterpreted and what they're going to think your intentions were” (Snowden). He’s talking about how people can not do simple things like send text messages to loved ones without being watched, and he thinks that this is not right. In “1984”, they are so used to being watched by the government that no one seems to really be opposed to it. However, it is clear that the protagonist, Winston, is not always happy about it and the novel states, “Winston kept his back turned to the telescreen. It was safer, though, as he well knew, even a back can be revealing” (Orwell 5). With similar intentions, Snowden talked about his beliefs on the matter and said, “Journalism is not a crime, communication is not a crime, and we should not be monitored in our everyday activities” (Snowden). The people in the novel would probably think in this manner as well if there wasn’t great punishment for those thoughts. Snowden ended off his talk by saying, “we don't have to give up our privacy to have good government” (Snowden). This is a very knowledgeable thing to say and although in “1984” people do have to give up their privacy, neither the characters in the book nor people in the real world who wish to use the internet should have to in order to comply with their government.
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In the book “1984” by George Orwell, the government, also known as Big Brother, is constantly watching everyone and never gives anyone privacy. It seems that this theme could be sprouting in the real world with cameras that people are setting up in their homes such as Amazon Alexa’s and Google Home’s. These artificial intelligence devices assist people with their daily lives, but it’s also possible that they are watching and listening to people at all times. If they are constantly gathering data, that information could be hacked by someone else which could lead to dangers for whoever owns the device. An article exploring this topic states, “Some doomsayers call it “the end of privacy.” Whatever is coming, we stand barely at its Stone Age” (Abel). This shows that while some people are oblivious to the fact that these devices could be harmful, others know that they could lead to the end of privacy for everyone. To add on to this, in the book there are devices called telescreens set up by the government who watch and listen to the characters at all times. The main character Winston says to himself, “It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away” (Orwell 79). This illustrates in more detail just how closely the government is watching them and how much power they possess. In conclusion, even though these devices can be helpful, it’s important to make sure that the information they collect is protected so that we do not end up living in a world all too similar to that of the book “1984”. The catastrophic results of the Tiananmen Square protests in China which occurred in 1989 were oddly similar to those of the events which occured in the book “1984” by George Orwell. To begin, after the protests, the Chinese government tried to erase the events from everyone’s memories; essentially pretending that they never actually happened. The government did this by erasing all online articles which had anything to do with the events, and taking any information about them out of history textbooks so that children would not learn about them in schools. Also, the news reporters weren’t allowed to speak about the events, and when they wore black to honour those who died, the government went as far as to fire one of them from their job. As mentioned earlier, very similar things occurred in the story of “1984”. The whole premise is that the government is trying to take over everyone’s lives, and rewrite history. The government in the story does very similar things such as changing the information in articles and textbooks, and getting rid of people that have done something unhelpful to them. In the book Winston thinks about how the government gets rid of people and he says, “Your name was removed from the registers, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten. You were abolished, annihilated: vaporized was the usual word” (Orwell 21). The book was written in 1949 and is set in 1984 (at that time that year was the future). When it was written everyone thought that the ideas in the story were very far off and none of them would ever happen, but a while later it became clear that some of the things in the book really did happen in parts of the world, almost as if the story predicted the future. The fact that the protests occurred in the year 1989 shows how accurate parts of the book were as it’s set in 1984, only five years before 1989. Overall, the protests clearly connect quite well with the book, and it’s frightening to hear about what governments are capable of doing when people want to oppose them.
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December 2022
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