Position Paper 1
Sunshine Martinez
Barry Steinhardt speaks on his fear of being overexposed to the government. He stresses
the idea that our society is quickly becoming a place where there is so little privacy of our own
lives that second hand profiles of us will be easy to create from surveillance data. From
movement to transactional information, he is against and very afraid of his business falling into
the hands of informants. An informant is a disclosed person who provides privileged information
to an agency. They are typically used in terms of law enforcement, however they are sometimes
officially considered as Criminal Informants which ultimately foreshadows Steinhardt’s concern
on the real purpose of surveillance. To be a dystopian society is to be a community with
undesirable traits such as violence, injustice and suffering. Dystopia takes the form of Big
Brother in George Orewell’s 1984 and while the author of the source mentions that the up and
coming surveillance society will not be the “evil Big Brother of 1984,” his statement suggests a
rather dystopian society but no valid reason as to why we are moving into an authoritarian
position. Authoritarianism is an enforcement of strict obedience to the government at the expense
of personal freedom. This concept is also noticed in Orwell’s book but more commonly known
as totalitarianism.
The argument of whether or not we are rapidly moving toward a surveillance society
is simple. Many view it as a way to keep our community safe from the bad, away from a
dystopian civilization, a social contract. A social contract is our way of agreeing to listen and
trust what the government says to us as long as they have our best intentions at heart. The
opposing side to this would be the people who know the social contract is just a distraction.
These are the ones who have realized that the people supposedly keeping us safe from the bad, is
the bad themselves. People who agree with the source are at this standpoint however they may
Sunshine Martinez
Barry Steinhardt speaks on his fear of being overexposed to the government. He stresses
the idea that our society is quickly becoming a place where there is so little privacy of our own
lives that second hand profiles of us will be easy to create from surveillance data. From
movement to transactional information, he is against and very afraid of his business falling into
the hands of informants. An informant is a disclosed person who provides privileged information
to an agency. They are typically used in terms of law enforcement, however they are sometimes
officially considered as Criminal Informants which ultimately foreshadows Steinhardt’s concern
on the real purpose of surveillance. To be a dystopian society is to be a community with
undesirable traits such as violence, injustice and suffering. Dystopia takes the form of Big
Brother in George Orewell’s 1984 and while the author of the source mentions that the up and
coming surveillance society will not be the “evil Big Brother of 1984,” his statement suggests a
rather dystopian society but no valid reason as to why we are moving into an authoritarian
position. Authoritarianism is an enforcement of strict obedience to the government at the expense
of personal freedom. This concept is also noticed in Orwell’s book but more commonly known
as totalitarianism.
The argument of whether or not we are rapidly moving toward a surveillance society
is simple. Many view it as a way to keep our community safe from the bad, away from a
dystopian civilization, a social contract. A social contract is our way of agreeing to listen and
trust what the government says to us as long as they have our best intentions at heart. The
opposing side to this would be the people who know the social contract is just a distraction.
These are the ones who have realized that the people supposedly keeping us safe from the bad, is
the bad themselves. People who agree with the source are at this standpoint however they may
