Technology: Another Form Of Government Contr

Samuel Santiago
English III
Mrs. Pharo
May 25, 2012

Technology: Another Form of Government Control
War Is Peace
Freedom Is Slavery
Ignorance Is Strength
These words from George Orwell’s novel 1984 seem to be the new guidelines that many of our world’s government share in common in order to control the people, whether they are democratic, socialistic or communistic. Although there aremany ways to carry out these words, the most effective way has become the control or suppression of technology by any government. The raison d'être is that technology is constantly surrounding and attracting us, therefore, making it easier for the government to reach us and efficiently control us.
To begin with, one of the most effective ways that the government controls us is through theinternet, since according to its definition it is a system were large and small computer networks connect worldwide; it might include governmental, social, educational and other networks all of which use the same set of protocols (Dictionary.com). A great prove of this is Communistic China which in January 2006 it censored Google China because “If the user is Chinese, allowing listings of Web sitesregarding human rights, religious freedom, and Chinese government abuses of religious freedom may perhaps expose the user to information the government considers "threatening" (Zhang). Furthermore, since 2004 Yahoo has being criticized because it was revealed that it had handed over e-mail account information for a dissident named Shi Tao which it helped the Chinese government to track this him down,and with the evidence provided by Yahoo, convicted, and sentenced to 10 years of prison (Bray). And this case can make one wonder when another country such as the United States will do the same.
Another fascinating case happened in Egypt which was called the Egyptian government blackout in 2011; the peculiar aspect of this case is that it was done by a republic type of government. This case hasbecome a controversy since it seemed it was a deliberated attack on the internet from only Egypt because “some countries routinely block access to specific Web sites, but this is the first time that a country has voluntarily severed its own Internet connection” (McMillan). About three to five days after the blackout the internet came back, but the aftermath was devastating for Egypt sinceaccording to the research done by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimates that the blackout cost on Egyptian economy was of about $90 million, or $18 million per day (Schwartz). So the true purpose behind the blackout is still unknown because what would encourage a government to harm itself.
A second popular way that government uses technology to control human kind is bymonitoring our movements. The first way is by using the social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, or MySpace because many of the government agencies can gather information about the private lives of people without spending money by making surveys or spying people. This seems to be already happening in the United Kingdom where recent reports “suggest that the UK government will be going ahead withits proposed plans of storing and monitoring Facebook, Twitter as well as other personal communication data over the Web without first consulting the country's ISPs (internet service providers)” (Norton). The only ones that one has to worry about the most is those who work in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) because they use the “items of interest” (IOI) which allows the DHS tosearch documents that contains “potential life or death circumstances” or keywords such as assassination, dirty bomb, nuclear, chemical spill, airport, and virus (Golijan). But a course the DHS does not do the dirty work but instead it hires “monitor social networks–use to generate real-time IOI reports” to avoid direct control of the social network (Golijan).
The government really wants to extend...