PRIVACYINTHE21st CENTURY

1984 - AN INDICTMENT OF PRIVACY VIOLATIONS

AND A PROPHECY OF THINGS TO COME
●“There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at
any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in
on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they
watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire
whenever they wanted to. You had to live—did live, from habit that became
instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and,
except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.”

- Winston Smith, narrator of 1984.

●
The panopticon – an architectural design based on the social reaction to observation used in prisons.
In this design, every prisoner is viewable from the center tower. Prisoners can not, however, see into
the tower, and must therefore assume they are being watched, thus restricting their behaviour
significantly.
 Left – the logo of PRISM, perhaps the world’s most well known
government surveillance programme – instituted by the USA’s
National Security agency. The program allowed access to:
Emails
Chat – both video, voice
Stored data
VoIP
File transfer data
Video Conferencing
Notifications of target activity, such as logins.
Online Social Networking details
And any other “special” information they required access too.

Right – Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee and whistleblower

who leaked data regarding the PRISM program