Big Brother Is Watching Me – Is That Bad Or Good?

Actually, I was reading the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell in the very year 1984. I thought it was a scary and a strange book. My conclusion was that this will never happen in reality, that someone would be able to control us so much. In my opinion, I thought it was a utopian world Orwell painted in his novel. Today I read in NWT that Swedes are registered in a variety of databases and registers. Not even the data inspection knows how many there are but they think it’s a hundred.

One has to remember that the society in 1984 was quite different than today. We still used money when we were shopping instead of paying with cards, as we more or less, do today. If we wanted to buy, for example, some kind of tickets we went to the place were they sold tickets and bought what we wanted. Today, a lot of people buy tickets through the Internet. As a matter of fact a lot of things are bought and sold through the Internet. Computers and mobiles development had not yet begun and the fear of terrorists was in its infancy. Nobody had heard of the words SMS, MSN, YouTube or reality shows.

On the one hand, my belief is that the more technology a society develops the more vulnerable it may be. If we return to the credit cards it developed ATM´s, a machine were you can withdraw money from your bank account. This resulted in that people started to be robbed at the ATM,s, which in turns led to that surveillance cameras became important. There are also criminals, who are trying to get over code numbers on credit cards and who empties these peoples personal bank accounts. Also when people disappear, you can make use of surveillance cameras, ATM withdrawals or any purchased the disappeared have done to try to locate the person.

On the other hand there are people who believe that we live in a surveillance society which impinge on human rights and we can’t go anywhere today without being under some form of surveillance. Go to your local store or your large super store, and somewhere there is a camera recording your every movement. Go online to shop, exchange emails, visit web sites, the chances are strong that someone is watching, whether it be your employer, a company seeking to profile online people, or a hacker who might have taken over your computer.

All in all, I think these different aspects leads to a society which needs to take a step forward according to humanity and technology. The technology is here to stay and will be further developed. It’s nothing we can do about that but I think we can discuss what kind of society we want to live in which is important to me because I don’t want our human rights to be forgotten among all surveillance stuff.

However, I’m not really concerned about the surveillance in our society. There are a lot of educated people in the issue and there are laws who protect us, ordinary people. I think it’s rather good if we can catch criminals and personally, I have nothing to hide so, as a matter of fact, this issue is something like a non issue to me.

Britt-Marie