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Has Orwell's '1984' Come 22 Years Later?
gabec asks: "This weekend my mother bought a grille lighter, something like this butane lighter. The self-scanner at Kroger's locked itself up and paged a clerk, who had to enter our drivers license numbers into her kiosk before we could continue. Last week my girlfriend bought four peaches. An alert came up stating that peaches were a restricted item and she had to identify herself before being able to purchase such a decidedly high quantity of the dangerous fruit. My video games spy on me, reporting the applications I run, the websites I visit, the accounts of the people I IM. My ISP is being strong-armed into a two-year archive of each action I take online under the guise of catching pedophiles, the companies I trust to free information are my enemies, the people looking out for me are being watched. As if that weren't enough, my own computer spies on me daily, my bank has been compromised, my phone is tapped--has been for years--and my phone company is A-OK with it. What's a guy that doesn't even consider himself paranoid to think of the current state of affairs?" The sad state of affairs is that Big Brother probably became a quiet part of our lives a lot earlier. The big question now is: how much worse can it get?
Am I just accustomed to old ways? Does the new generation, born with these restrictions, feel the weight of these bonds and recoil from my fears as paranoia? What can I, a person with no political interests--a person that would really rather think that the people in office are there because they're looking out for us, our rights, and our freedoms and not because their short-sightedness is creating a police state--do to stem the tide?"
I don't think you can claim that the store told you that four peaches was a "restricted item" without at least explaining the situation a little bit further.
Id for grille lighters and peaches, huh? And why didn't you just walk away loudly commenting on the store's idiotic policy?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
So if there are many other real-world, "legitimate" examples of our freedoms being eroded how can you not have sympathy? Are your examples more important than the ones he considers important?
I reserve the right to think for myself. Others' opinions are optional. Puppy on lap = typos...not illiteracy.
"The big question now is: how much worse can it get?" Wrong. The big question is what are we going to do to stop this. It's our government, dammit.
Don't forget that it's not just about privacy. The government basically has to create a state of perpetual fear, stir up hatred of the enemy, torture people, have an ongoing war, control information, and basically convince you to willingly see things that are false.
Now, don't get me wrong, but I don't think we've come to that yet.
cough cough fake terror alerts hussein abu ghraib war on terrorism fox news wmd in iraq cough
This isn't a real question, this is a thinly veiled attempt at getting a conversation going about how terrible the US government is.
Yes, there's a lot of censorship and surveillance going on. Yes, we have to be vigilant about everything we've heard.
My fear is, the fact that we find out about these domestic wiretaps, secret European prisons - means that the people put in charge of these things are morons. Most people in the position to be doing important secret 1984-type dealings are smart. The things we know about are pretty bad - how much worse are the things we don't know about?
Whoo, signature!
DesireCampbell.com
The sad state of affairs is that Big Brother probably became a quiet part of our lives a lot earlier.
Disagree.
Most of these things came from the Bush administration. The last 6 years has been a cancer eating away at the very fabric of what it used to mean to be american.
Phrases like 'truth, justice, and the american way' ring very hollow these days...especially to the rest of the world.
1984 was about the state controlling everything. In the current situation, the state is peering more heavily into everything we're doing because a lot of people are so afraid of Islamic terrorists that they're willing to give the state more power. This may or may not be a temporary situation, but the state obviously hasn't reached the level of control that Big Brother did in 1984.
As for corporations watching what you do, the real question is whether Microsoft checking to see if you're using a pirated version of their software is somehow going to affect your political rights, or if it is just a stupid move on their part that will only push customers away from their products. After all, you only have one state. You can choose software vendors.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Get some political interests
Sticking your head in the sand will not help. So pull it out, shake out the sand, and get involved. And I don't mean you should flip a coin, pick the red team or the blue team, and blindly follow them.
I mean that you should get active in holding your elected officials accountable for their actions, regardless of their party affiliation. Keep up on the issues and be vocal about them. Read and listen to opposing points of view and try to form and propagate valid opinions. Make sure your representatives know that someone is watching them, and follows what they do. If they lie, cheat, steal, or sell you down the river, nail them. Vote them out in the primary if you can, and in the general if you can't. Cross party lines if you need to, because you are far better off with an honest member of the opposing party than one of "your own party" who is willing to sell you to the devil for a few hookers.
And, for that matter, do the same with your news outlets. And your local ballot boxes. If we paid half the attention to keeping the system honest that we do American idol or celebrity babies, we wouldn't have this problem.
--MarkusQ
It's simple, its profiling or random checking for criminals. Even criminals have to buy food, and if they scan in their license there is a general known area s/he frequents.
The funny thing is that people are totally happy with letting companies and goverment track them. Every purchase with your CC is tracked. Every purchase with an "awards card" is tracked, and people are totally fine with this type of tracking.
Personally I think it will get to the point where you no longer just punch in for a job. You punch in to leave your house, enter your house, enter buildings, ride public transit and so on. it will be so simple, we all ready have a trackable ID on us. It would be simple too since they all ready do it with people on house arrest (talk into the phone and a device).
But with RFID it will be even easier, and less noticable.
TruePunk | Games
I was ID'd for a lighter the other day. Now, I am a bit younger looking, and I know that restricting lighter sales is the first step to restricting consumption of other products. In California, and at a Walmart, at that. The real issue that would make me start to worry is data aggregation. And that is where I think it all falls apart (knock on wood). If they could aggregate all the data of my purchases, communications, etc, I would be a lot more worried. If you ARE paranoid, a major step to eliminate tracking is to go cash only. Stop using electronic payments of any kind. Stop using grocery discount cards too. They track spending habits.
But again, data aggregation is key, and they don't have that yet.
And it's not even on the shelf. You have to take a card to the pharmacy and then show your ID. They want your phone number too. Like I need all that extra hassle when I feel like shit from having a bad cold.
I reserve the right to think for myself. Others' opinions are optional. Puppy on lap = typos...not illiteracy.
1984 is when the authorities catch a clue.
Or, as Benny hill once said in a sketch, "My dog likes to chase cars, but if he ever caught one, he wouldn't know what to do with the damn thing!"
Right now, the powers that be are dogs chasing cars, but they are close to figuing out what they'll do when they catch one.
Enjoy this moment while it lasts.
Mmmmmm... Bold, yet refreshing!
No, I'm not a libertarian.
I would be if they were balls-out scrappers for freedom and liberty for all humans. But too often they stop at property rights, and assume that a good round of deregulation and tax cuts will fix everything else.
Freedom and rights have to be fought for. The enemy isn't just the government; it includes corporations.
Human rights must come before corporate rights. Too many Libertarians I know seem uncomfortable with that.
So, which party to turn to? Right now, there's no clear choice. But for now, the first step is denying Bush the convenience of a rubber stamp congress.
That means holding your nose and voting Democratic this fall.
And stop being afraid.
It wasn’t really about the surveillance. That was merely a plot device. It was about a state of mind and the means to achieve that state.
In the superficial sense, i.e. electronic surveillance, much of what you mentioned has fallen into place over the past ten to fifteen years. And most of it has been implemented by commercial interests. As for the mindset? I, and I’m sure a whole lot of others around here, would say that the overwhelming majority of it has sprung up in the body politic within the past 58 months.
May you live in interesting times, comrade.
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
Suppose we raise it to $60 an hour. Better? Would you still have a job?
OK, that's too much. Well, how many lost jobs are acceptable? Can you give a number? If we raise the minimum wage to $12 an hour and lay off 15% of the workforce, is that good?
More money is great as long as YOU don't lose your job. Everybody, even those already on minimum wage, thinks it'll be the other guy who loses his job or that some rich guy won't be so rich. Sure, and pigs fly really well.
To pay the cleaning people their new minimum wage, we can get rid of one web developer. The other guys can work overtime to make up the loss. Then again, maybe it's just time for the company to go bankrupt and get rid of EVERYBODY.
It goes the other way too. A smelly drunk isn't likely to get hired at $5.15 an hour, but his value might be above zero. He deserves a chance to work. The same goes for the fat girl with acne that makes people feel ill, the guy who stares inappropriately, the lady who has conversations with her knuckles... They all deserve a chance to work.
What needs to happen now is for people to understand what is going on. This kind of activity has a draining effect on society, basically sapping them of their notion of "freedom." Ask your neighbors, your parents, your kids, your peers: many of them will tell you that they don't mind that they are being treated like criminals. "Why worry if you're not doing anything wrong?" is the typical response. These people don't understand what "freedom" means. These days the word has come to mean "freedom to love America" when in fact it's the opposite we need to allow. So you can start by making sure the people you know, and others if you can, that if our freedom does have a chance of disappearing, and you need to educate them as to what that means.
I'm not saying that this is happening now, though. We're getting closer, but the real danger comes from people who will welcome it when it comes. The single most important battle to be won is in the battle of ideas - that's politics these days.
The other thing you can do is begin securing all aspects of your life. Try and use encryption over the internet; encrypt your emails and messages. Start using cash to buy stuff - the Japanese do it all the time; paying with credit or debit at a store is pretty much rare in Japan. Refuse to buy from the grocery store if they require your drivers license to prove you won't make cyanide when you buy peaches (are peach trees illegal now??).
But important: if you DO make a fuss, DO NOT LOOK LIKE AN ASSHOLE. This is probably what most of you are capable of doing. If you do "fight the man," please do so in an orderly, respectful, and unannoying manner. If you get asked for your license at the grocer's, don't scream about it - people want to get through the line. Simply refuse to purchase from the store, and explain to those around you that you are being asked for your driver's license to buy peaches. The worst thing that can happen is for your ideals to be tied in with obnoxious behavior (this is what happened to liberals).
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
must avoid starting a tangental flamewar... must avoid starting a tangental flamewar... must avoi... oh, screw it.
How come 30 million people have to try to live on $5.15 an hour?
Because 29,999,999 other people also have a similarily qualified skill/opportunity/motivation set and will work for $5.75/hr.
If a minimum wage exceeds the real value of a minimum-wage worker, especially in the case of a nationally-enforced minimum wage, you'd just be playing leapfrog with inflation that constantly creeps up to drive the real income of a minimum wage worker back down to what their work is actually worth to the market. That inflation would also have the effect of making everyone's savings worth less and less (not taking into account interest, which would mitigate the effect to some extent.)
This is not to say I'm for throwing out the minimum wage or other such "minimum" labor laws. If you cut out the floor, you end up screwing people over throughout the chain by allowing people willing to be underpaid to undercut, and thus lessen the value of trades and push out more qualified workers who actually wish to make a living. (Okay, so I do have somewhat of a protectionist streak to me as well.) Until some better structural solution (and don't give me any fulla'-holes 'isms) comes along, the only real solution is to keep the minimum wage at the realistic value of minimum wage work. At the moment, folks seem to think "$5.15".
(No, I'm not an economist, and yes, I welcome you to shoot these arguments full of holes, especially if you can provide links to informative material.)
Wait... what were we talking about?
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
When's the last time you read 1984? The fact that you can post this question on Slashdot, that you can go to a store and have a selection of products (and have the money to pay for them), even the fact that you have a girlfriend suggests we aren't living in the totalitarian "future" of Orwell's book. Orwell was reacting to Stalinist Russia, and we're about as far in the opposite direction now as you can get from that-- it's a lot more like the capitalism-run-amok chaos of a Gibson or Dick novel.
Hell, many of the examples you gave are about corporations trying to peg exactly who you are to market to you, not some Big Brother entity who wants to enslave you. I would even venture to say that the powers-that-be aren't really afraid of outspoken political speakers any more. It's become so easy to express your thoughts to the world, and there are so many people doing so, it's almost impossible for one person (no matter how charismatic or persuasive) to sway enough opinions to matter.
I could be wrong, and the jackbooted thugs and black helicopters could be waiting around the corner... But I don't think so. I think the reality is everyone just wants your money. And they want your data, but only because it will lead them to your money.
Let me play Devil's advocate here:
The 'free market' ended in 1930's for the same reason 'anarchy' ended in the stone age: a single strongman will fuck up the playing field for everybody by assimilating, subjugating, and repressing everyone else (while getting even stronger in the process). To take it to extreme, in a 'free market' there is nothing to stop some asshole buying a nuclear weapon, then collecting 'protection' money from you and me. There is nothing to stop GSK from patenting antibiotics as a concept, then charging $10,000,000 per pill. So what that 50% of children will not survive to adulthood (a la 19th century America), that's because they are too lazy to do anything else.
Yes, the free market is the best possible scenario, except that human nature being what it is, the market will quickly degrade into something horrible if completely uncontrolled.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
If you're interested in reading the account of someone who started out pretty much where you are, except that he's an attorney specializing in constitutional law, you might want to check out How Would a Patriot Act
From the back cover:
--MarkusQBecause everyone knows all the minimum wage jobs are the easy ones... Strawberry picking, aspalt laying, etc aren't hard at all
You should visit some public high schools in poor areas some day. Hard work won't change that drugs are rampant, gangs rule the hallways, and you can't get a real education.
Maybe you should go talk to real people that are poor. Two parents working two full time minimum wage jobs have trouble supporting a family. It may open your eyes that even though hard work can often result in success, for those in impovershied areas, or for those who are born with disadvantages or into a disadvantageous situation, hard work is necessary for survival, and that is often barely achieved.
You're the one that needs to get real and realize that not everyone is born with a bevy of opportunities, and it's not easy to succeed, even with hard work.
Obviously, you didn't read it carefully enough either. This is interesting, since you seem to feel quite superior to the rest of us that think it's a very relevant piece of work.
Surveillance and control are intimately linked. Once you remove the barriers against observation, you also remove the barriers against control. This would be one of the main themes of that entire book.
It is very relevant because in our hyper-informational society, it is becoming easier to surveille people than ever, and information is being used *against* us as opposed to *for us*.
The government should not be able to leverage what you do in your private life, what you do with your property, what you do with your money, against you, as long as you're not harming anyone else with your actions - and even when we do harm other people, we have institutions in place to protect ourself against the government - habeas corpus, the right to not incriminate ourselves, etc. It's the government that should be transparent and open to surveillance - not the populace. This is, after all, a *democracy* where the people, not any autocratic police government, are in power.
If at any moment it is possible that you are being observed by someone - anyone - aren't you less inclined to exercise your freedoms? I certainly am.
Sure there is: If they price themselves out of the mass market, they wouldn't make any money that way.
In any event, a patent is a government-enforced artificial monopoly. In a libertarian paradise (which you appear to be substituting for "free-market economy"), they wouldn't necessarily exist.
And so what? Why is it any of their business what you choose to put in your body? Whether it's meth or tide with bleach or patté (banned in many places now, ISYN,) it's no ones business but your own. Forgetting that basic principle and accepting the nanny state and the endless 'wars' (the war on (some) poverty, the war on (some) drugs, the war on (some) terrorists) is what's gotten us into this mess.
So far as the original posters question, no, 1984 didn't come late. 1984 was simply 1948, with a bit of embellishment. Today is even worse than you think.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
1) Register error. There are things like alcohol that will flag a stop and check for ID situation, and of course it's controlled from the central inventory software. It's not like the register is concious of what you order, it just checks to see if item #X has an ID flag set. If it is, it stops the sale and asks the clerk to check ID.
2) He's making shit up to try and be dramatic.
I mean peaches certianly aren't globally restricted. We just bought some the other day, no problems, as I imagine millions of people did. You would hear about it if they were sending flags up all over.
As for check ID items, it's up to the store how far they go. Like with alcohol I've had the entire range. Some simply dismiss the warning assuming fomr appearnace I'm over 21. Some check my ID each time. At grocery and convience stores they are usually more carefuly. Some check the ID and enter the birthdate in the register, some have you scan it in a little machine that checks. The most extreme case I saw was at a Frys which is near the university and a couple of high schools, thus lots of underage purchaes. They check your ID, record it, and make you sign the book they recorded it in.
Basically it's the levle of CYA they feel necessary to not get fined/shut down. Fact of the matter is, someone will fool them and buy underage. Well if a fuss is made of it, the liquor board investigates. They then have to prove they took steps to stop that from happening. The liquor board deicded based on that if they were really trying and it was an honest mistake, or if they are being delibratly lax.
thus the response depends on the store, it's not government mandidated, the government just says "You can't sell to minors and you are responsable for taking steps to make sure you don't." Up to you to determine the kind of steps and the proof you keep of them so you can defend yorself if need be.
But ya, I am not seeing any federal peach crackdown here. If that's the case, we'd probably hear about it on CNN.
"Already many jobs require good credit."
As someone who recently got refused a job that I went to school for on the basis of my credit rating, I agree with you that things have gone too far.
Bork!
First : "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death! " Patrick Henry
Second : "These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph." Thomas Paine
Third : "And that the said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms; or to raise standing armies, unless necessary for the defense of the United States, or of some one or more of them; or to prevent the people from petitioning, in a peaceable and orderly manner, the federal legislature, for a redress of grievances; or to subject the people to unreasonable searches and seizures of their persons, papers or possessions" --Samuel Adams, Debates of the Massachusetts Convention of 1788
Fourth : "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Ben Franklin
FYI, I am not a liberal. I did not like clinton, But I detest Bush. He has IMO clearly vioalted his oath of office
to preserve protect and defend the constitution.
Lastly,in response to your " I paraphrase the Administration spokesman here, I would rather the government collected my call records than my remains"
Patrick Henry was right, and americans today have become complete pussies to the point that most probably do not deserve freedom because they don't like the cost.
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
"Ghandi and King both worked in the open against unjust laws, and they won--by being in the open. If you're too cowardly to do whatever it is that you do out in the open, then you shouldn't be doing it."
Neither Ghandi or King masterbated in public.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Here's a hint: More than half of them aren't even old enough to vote if they wanted to (and if they were, they'd be statistically unlikely to vote anyway). The minimum wage is a heart-string issue. The Democrats tote it out to get emotional votes out of the section of their base that hasn't engaged their brain. It's the Democrats' version of school prayer.
wow.. you just trod all over your own argument.
that leaves 15 million people who are earning below poverty wages who are NOT dependents of others... in other words they NEED a living wage and are not getting it.
I have news for you people who complain about welfare leeches... half the time these people are pushed into that because if they make above a certain level of income.. they will be denied welfare, but their jobs will make them less than welfare!
maybe if you raised the minimum wage, their jobs would make them more than welfare and they would not feel compelled to remain unemployed.
So no.. it's not "the democrat's version of school prayer", it's a valid issue of exploiters paying sub-poverty wages, then lobbying for a "free market" whenever there is a push to raise those wages to a point where people can.. i don't know.. buy food AND a pay rent at the same time?
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
(This is one of the surprisngly modern parts of Christianity, btw -- "and what you whisper in shadows will be shouted from rooftops" and all that.)
If you are less inclined to exercise your freedoms when you are being observed, well, then you probably are confusing "excerise your freedoms" with "break the rules of good behavior". Please go back to kindergarten, I think you missed a few lessons on how to operate in civilzied society.
Spoken like someone for whom "civilized society" has always been synonymous with "my own cultural mores". Ironically, that culture only survived to become a mainstream belief by carefully protecting its privacy amidst a larger, often hostile society. The fish symbol which car owners and companies use to advertise their Christianity today was originally intended to do the opposite, as a passcode to help Christians keep their beliefs secret from observers who might do them harm.
the idea that for the last couple of years America in particular has been headed for a total repetition of Nazi Germany is a forgone conclusion so utterly obvious that it barely even warrants mention.
If that were the case, then you'd be cooling your heels in a cell somewhere, wouldn't you?
My grandfather did time for protesting a war by handing out leaflets at an induction center in Atlanta. in 1915. If GWB were even as much as an authoritarian as Wilson, let alone FDR, then most of the people denoucing him as a would-be Nazi would be unable to do so. What do you think would have happened to someone who marched down the street in 1944 with a sign that said "FDR = HITLER"?
There are things that this country has done in overreaction to 9/11 which will eventually be reversed, but you're not going to help that process by going off the deep end with rhetoric that makes you easy to dismiss as a fool.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Assuming a very conservative 2.5% annual inflation (and believe me, it was much more than that in the first decade) over the last 23 years, that $3.35 would have to be about $5.90 just to keep up. With a (probably more accurate) 3.5% average, it would have to be $7.40. And now Congress is debating a raise to $5.75? I'm not entirely a bleeding-heart liberal (although I do consider myself relatively progressive), but that's just pathetic.
You can argue that minimum wage isn't supposed to be a living wage, it's just a starting point, blah blah blah, but the point is, there are a lot of people who don't see the point of even trying for a minimum wage job because they can't afford the child care or transportation or whatever that it would cost them to hold the job in the first place.
You save only 59 seconds over 8 miles by going 75 instead of 65. Do you really have to pass that guy? Do the Math!
Big Brother lives by the same rules as the rest of the world. The most important of these is that manpower is expensive. This means that if people, on an individual basis, take extra time (only a minute or two) to fufill requests for information or call and ask some questions of a live person, then modern management will go nuts. Companies and organizations concentrate hard on reducing headcount and making things work more efficiently. Managers up and down the line are evaluated by these measurements. Bottom line employees are too. If you are in a grocery store and the checkout person wants some personal identification for some peaches or anything else, take an extra minute or two to give them the information. It's not hard, just ask a couple of questions about why they want it and make sure the explanation is clear.
This type of behavior causes lines to grow a little bit and things to run a little slower. Computers will notice this sort of thing and flag it. Does it mean the store has a lackadaisical manager who isn't hiring good people or is letting them slack off? The same applies to government organizations.
Much data is collected automatically. There is not much that can be done about that. However, the government has a different, but similar weakness. If you find the government is collecting some piece of information and you wish they would stop, call your representative or senator. Don't complain, just ask for an explanation about why it is needed. Insist on a good explanation. Elected officials have staffs and they cost money. As in most things some staffers are better than others. If voters start chewing up more staffer time the elected one will become unhappy. Hiring more staffers reduces quality which tends to give callers more bad experiences which leads to bad publicity.
Big Brother's weakness is that of every other organization, the bottom line, whether it be money or influence or elected position. Every organization stares at its bottom line for lack of a navel. It takes very little change to catch their notice.
Tristfardd