Why does Big Brother want to know who you are, where you’ve been, your magazine subscriptions, your financial records, and what brand of toothpaste you buy?
The reasons are multifaceted. It’s not just making sure the serfs know who their master is.
Take ID cards for example, or just the very notion of having to present some form of identification to a designated authority figure.
This could apply to airport security or drunk driving checkpoints, seatbelt checkpoints any situation in which an authority figure demands to see ID.
The process of showing your identification is not primarily so the authority figure knows who you are, it’s to ensure that your behavioural tendencies show a willing obedience to authority.
Here’s an example, if airport security asks you to show extra identification and you respond by saying you forgot to bring any in a simpering, inferior manner, more likely than not they will let you through, over and above if you refuse to show identity because you believe it’s a violation of your God-given rights.
The benchmark isn’t whether or not you show identity, it’s whether or not you display obedience to authority.
This flip side of this is the commercial aspect. With the advent of RFID technology and its many applications in the commercial sector, we’re entering a Minority Report experience. The RFID chip in your national ID card and eventually the one implanted in your arm, will store reams of data about your buying habits.
This is to enable personal targeted advertising via directed audio beams which hit your inner ear. The type of advertising will be determined on the basis of what your chip says your buying habits are.
Already major Japanese cities have Coke vending machines which transmit the sound of coca-cola being poured into a glass to passers by.
And then there’s the criminal application, where the transponder tags on your cars which will become mandatory will be scanned for any minor insurance or unpaid ticket violation.
The Eurocopter, a police helicopter recently introduced into the UK, can scan five cars a second and immediately log drivers license plates from 2,000 feet in the air. And in the US the bootfinder system is already being used to target people for overdue library books.
And yet a lot of people ghave gone back to sleep because they tell us the Matrix database system has been shut down. When in actual fact a lot of these programs just go dark and get funding through the black budget and industry donations. So it’s just one tentacle of a sprawling leviathan.
We are at the precipice of the next major expansion of the surveillance state. Many people will willingly accept this because they’ve been conditioned for years that the convenience elements, via the cellphone, the supermarket loyalty card, the GPS satellite navigation system in the car, the Onstar system, override the mammoth applications that both government and monopoly corporatism have planned for all this and are already implementing.
Big Brother doesn't just want to know where you are, he wants to know what you're thinking and if necessary, change your mind.
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Big Brother (1984)
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For other uses, see Big Brother.
Big Brother as portrayed in the BBC's 1954 production of Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Big Brother as portrayed in the BBC's 1954 production of Nineteen Eighty-Four.
"Big Brother" is a fictional character in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the enigmatic dictator of Oceania, a totalitarian state taken to its utmost logical consequence. In the society that Orwell describes, everybody is under complete surveillance by the authorities. The people are constantly reminded of this by the phrase "Big Brother is watching you", which is the core "truth" of the propaganda system in this state.
The physical description of "Big Brother" is reminiscent of Joseph Stalin or Lord Kitchener. In the novel, it is not clear if he actually exists as a person, or is an image crafted by the state. However, since Inner Party torturer O'Brien at one point tells Winston Smith that Big Brother can never die, the implication is that Big Brother is the personification of the party. In a book supposedly written by the rebel Emmanuel Goldstein (but later revealed to have a more complex origin) it is stated that "nobody has ever seen Big Brother. He is a face on the hoardings, a voice on the telescreen… Big Brother is the guise in which the Party chooses to exhibit itself to the world. His function is to act as a focusing point for love, fear, and reverence, emotions which are more easily felt towards an individual than towards an organization." (See Goldstein's book) In Party propaganda, however, Big Brother is presented as a real person, who was one of the founders of the Party along with Emmanuel Goldstein. His real name is never mentioned and it is not publicly known.
Since the publication of Nineteen Eighty-Four, the phrase "Big Brother" has entered general usage, to describe any overly-inquisitive or overly-controlling authority figure or attempts by government to increase surveillance. The reality TV program Big Brother takes its name from Nineteen Eighty-Four and a similarly named figure is big mama — the informal name for the internet censor on web boards in the People's Republic of China.
Book magazine ranked Big Brother number 59 on its list of the 100 best fictional characters since 1900.
Big Brother (on the telescreens) in the 1984 film version.
Enlarge
Big Brother (on the telescreens) in the 1984 film version.
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Purported origins of Big Brother
In the essay section of his novel 1985, Anthony Burgess states that Orwell got the idea for Big Brother from advertising hoardings current during WWII for educational correspondence courses run by a company called Bennett's.
The original posters are claimed to have shown Bennett himself - a kindly looking old man offering guidance and support to would-be students, with the slogan "Let me be your father."
When Bennett died, his company was inherited by his son, whose rather aggressive-looking face appeared on the posters instead, accompanied by the unappealing slogan: "Let me be your big brother".
The ideological basis for Big Brother likely comes from Leo Tolstoy's novel War and Peace, particularly the discussion of the science of history in part two of that book's epilogue. Napoleon Bonaparte and various other military and political figures traditionally revered as geniuses, are presented in the theory of history Tolstoy opposes as the cause of the movement of humanity and nations. Orwell appears to call upon this previous work by his invention of just such a patriarchal figure.
The historical background during which Orwell wrote his work included several national leaders who had held considerable power, including British prime minister Winston Churchill, US president Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Stalin, among other leaders, is often claimed to have developed a personality cult around himself.
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See also
* Cult of personality
* Mass surveillance
Nineteen Eighty-Four v d e
By George Orwell
Characters Winston Smith | Julia | O'Brien | Big Brother | Emmanuel Goldstein
Places Oceania | Eastasia | Eurasia | Airstrip One | Room 101
Classes Inner Party | Outer Party | Proles
Ministries Love | Peace | Plenty | Truth
Concepts Ingsoc | Newspeak | Doublethink | Goodthink | Crimestop
Two plus two | Thoughtcrime | Ownlife | Prolefeed
Miscellaneous Thought Police | Telescreen | Memory hole | The Book
Other media Film | TV programme | Opera | 1985 | Me and the Big Guy
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Brother_%281984%29"
Categories: Nineteen Eighty-Four | Surveillance | Characters in written fiction | Fictional dictators
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EB EXCLUSIVE
By Jessica Bennett
Newsweek
Updated: 12:16 p.m. ET March 15, 2006
March 15, 2006 - When the Spotsylvania School Board resolved a year and a half ago to install a vast network of high-tech surveillance cameras in and around the county's 28 public schools, a silent sigh of relief swept through this northern Virginia county of 112,000. Civil liberties didn't seem to be this community's major concern. Rather, with memories of the Washington-area sniper shootings still sharp in their minds (two of the victims were shot there), many welcomed the sense of security. "That [year of the shootings] was the worst fall I have ever spent in my 36-year career as a school teacher and administrator," said Donald Alvey, secondary education director for the school district, who said parents and school officials were terrified of students' vulnerability during sports functions, recess or simply walking home from school. "It was a no-brainer after that that we needed to put cameras in the schools to help kids and parents feel safer."
The 550-lens digital-camera system now in place in Alvey's district is nothing short of "Star Trek" material, and the growing popularity of such systems is testament to the promises of technology that would have seemed impossible just a few years ago. Nationwide, new technology is revolutionizing the way we think about surveillance, and enabling thousands of cameras to be installed in schools, subways, buildings and street corners—by city governments, law enforcement and businesses. It is creating systems that proponents say are cheaper to operate, easier to use, and virtually eliminate the need for personnel to watch over the monitors 24/7. It is also carving out a major niche in the economy. "There are two to three million cameras being installed every year in commercial, government and education centers," says Fredrik Nilsson, the general manager of Axis Communications, a Swedish-based security company that provided Spotsylvania with its cameras. "The more efficient the system becomes, the more cameras there will be."
Video surveillance has become the fastest-growing industry within the major categories of electronic security—with nearly one in four major cities in America investing in new technology, analysts say. It has more than doubled in the last five years, becoming an estimated $9.2 billion business in 2005 and expected to grow to $21 billion by 2010, says Joe Freeman, a columnist for Security Technology & Design Magazine and founder and president of J.P. Freeman, a market research and consulting firm. "What we have is a huge industry that is attracting competitors from everywhere," says Freeman. "In this world of constant threat, it's almost impossible to predict what might happen ... But the one overarching thing that we know is that security, which used to be a quietly growing industry, is now an international attention of the first order."
Until recently, closed-circuit video (which is still in use by police departments and private businesses in many cities) had been the only option for anyone who wanted to invest in surveillance programs. These systems are VCR based, and require that a human being constantly scan over the images in a room full of monitors. Tapes need to be changed every six hours or so, and if an incident needs to be reviewed, it could take countless hours to sift through grainy black-and-white footage. Separate cables were often needed for each camera, which proved costly, and to stop a crime in progress, a security employee would need to be looking at the right screen at precisely the right moment.
Cameraspotting: Brown leads a group on a tour of surveillance devices in New York
The future of video surveillance, using so-called "intelligent cameras" and software, is designed to function far beyond what is humanly possible. These systems are Internet-based, so feeds from hundreds of cameras can be combined into a single desktop view, and they can be accessed from anywhere in the world. They are high resolution, and can recognize sounds and movements—if necessary, sending signals to appropriate authorities. Their manufacturers say they can tell if a gunshot goes off: using acoustic sensors to point the camera toward the direction of the shot, and can recognize if a suitcase is left unattended or a car is parked illegally. They can monitor erratic behavior, and create invisible "trip wires" to guard no-trespassing zones. They'll even inform authorities with suggestions on how to respond to what they see.
Such programs—elements of which were used to help solve last summer's London transit bombings—have become models for U.S. cities. Chicago has made recent headlines with its ongoing installation of 2,000 such cameras in its downtown areas, and the city is negotiating with local businesses to link their private cameras to the city system in an effort to form a single, unified network. And many small towns—in states from California to Vermont—have begun using cameras as a way to reduce the need for on-duty officers in local police precincts. "The idea is to utilize smart technology," says Andrew Velasquez, director of Chicago's Office of Emergency Management and Communications. "You can't have thousands of individuals monitoring [individual] cameras. [So] the idea is to employ smart technology that will assist."
Room for innovation within a growing market has helped forge surprising new ideas. Some programs offer customers the option of outsourcing video surveillance without the cost or commitment of installing and maintaining the cameras on their own. U.S. Relay, a San Diego-based company, has about 3,000 subscribers to its pay-per-view program, which allows customers to pay for access to the cameras that U.S. Relay has installed, based on time. William Ferris, the president of Dotworkz Systems, from which U.S. Relay is an offshoot, says his clients range from schools to businesses to police departments nationwide. "It's amazing what these cameras are capable of," contends Ferris, who says his company expects to triple its revenue over the next year. "The technology is moving almost faster than the industry can handle."
In New York City, a combination of government and private funds (including $200 million from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security last year) has created a network of cameras that reaches far into the thousands, spanning subway stations, traffic signals, overhead awnings and private businesses. The Metropolitan Transit Authority, which runs the city's buses, subways and commuter trains, recently signed a multimillion-dollar contract with a major security company—Lockheed Martin—to add 1,000 smart cameras to the system's already 3,000-camera-strong surveillance system, said spokesman Tom Kelly. The New York City Police Department operates an additional 3,000 cameras, the majority of which reside in the city's public housing developments, said spokesman Michael Cohen. But the total number of cameras—both public and private—is hard to gauge.
ill Brown, a kind of amateur surveillance-camera spotter, estimates the total number of cameras in New York City to exceed 15,000—a figure city officials say they have no way to verify because they lack a system of registry. But Brown, 46, who works as a proofreader, has studied the city's surveillance systems for years. On any given Sunday, you can find him leading tours through the maze of city streets that he describes as New York's "open museum" of surveillance. A member of a performance troop called the Surveillance Camera Players, he has also spent countless hours mapping—by hand—the city's growing camera population. On a recent trip to Manhattan's Times Square, Brown was able to point out, from a single street corner, more than 25 cameras visible to the naked eye. "People are in favor of surveillance when it's presented as a generality," says Brown. "But if you get them to look at specific cameras, then they begin to disapprove."
Debate over surveillance systems has long been a heated subject. But with new systems replacing the old, civil liberties groups are raising additional concerns about the pervasiveness—and room for abuse—within the new technology. As cameras pop up in grocery stores, schools, housing complexes or hospitals, opponents question how it's possible to screen everyone behind a camera. "These new cameras are vastly more sophisticated than the old generation of systems and can be manipulated and moved and magnified in a way that [those] using them can ... do things that heretofore we haven't had to conceive of," says Ed Yohnka, spokesman for the ACLU of Illinois. "The question is, what kind of training are people given to ensure that they aren't using those cameras [improperly]?"
In Chicago, officials say camera operators are required to complete training in civil liberties and the First and Fourth Amendments. And according to a recent poll, Chicagoans appear to be satisfied with that. A February survey of 700 registered Chicago voters found that eight out of 10 were in favor of cameras as a means to combat crime, with 58 percent saying they'd support a new proposal to require cameras in businesses open more than 12 hours. Yet, as civil liberties groups point out, room for abuse undoubtedly still exists: recent cases include a San Francisco police officer suspended after reportedly using cameras to ogle women at the city's international airport; two Arizona casino workers fired for using a company camera to point, tilt and zoom-in on womens' breasts; children filmed undressing in a middle school locker room in Tennessee.
Does the potential protection outweigh the occasional abuse or invasion of privacy? "There's some truth in the [Big Brother] argument," says Freeman, who, ironically, founded his consulting firm in 1984. "We have the interpretation of, 'Are we invading civil rights and right to privacy, or are we protecting America?' How do you interpret these things, and how do you create a balance for them? You have a seesaw with equal weights, [with] privacy on one end and protection on the other. Somewhere, it's going to come down to a debate."
