Big Brother And The Profitability Of A Corporate Run Prison Society

Author George Orwell’s “Big Brother” from his novel 1984 was born quite some time ago. Big Brother has been growing up, and at long last, he’s getting ready to head out and take on the world.

In Britain, it is a reality and getting worse every day. Already, according to an article appearing on Red Herring’s site, remote controlled helicopter drones are being added to the surveillance apparatus of a nation where there is the equivalent of 1 monitoring camera for every 14 citizens in place already.

Britons live in the most monitored society on the planet. America is not far behind.

The claim goes something like this: “We need to be able to better monitor and track criminal activity.”

British citizens may be fine with that, and many Americans are not happy with the idea. America was founded on many premises—among them, freedom and liberty and the idea that too much government involvement in our daily lives is a bad thing. Unfortunately, we, as a society, have let ourselves grow more and more accustomed to government intrusion into every aspect of our daily lives. This bodes well for governments who dream of a global society with a single government that knows and controls everything, but is a looming threat to everyone who believes that is not the desired state of human existence.

Make no mistake—the notion of a global government that was pointed to by supposedly paranoid, extreme right-wing conspiracy theorists is clearly set in the minds of politicians and governments around the world. The European Union and similar efforts in Africa and Latin America are the next step in that direction. In North America, recent mutual defense and law enforcement agreements between the USA, Canada and Mexico have raised a lot of eyebrows.

My question is this: if it is so important to monitor society, then why is it that our government does nothing with what it knows already? Why give it more power, authority, and a greater right to invade privacy and infringe on liberties when it has already given away any moral authority by demonstrating a refusal to act in the interests of its people on existing issues?

Take illegal immigration, for example. We know it’s going on. We know they are here. Yet, the government debates laws and funding amendments rather than take action—simply because politicians are crooked, and special interest groups and cheap labor barons don’t have the interest of American citizens put first.

Economics and political implications come second to security concerns. Our government has failed for years and continues failing to provide its primary mandate as a government to those that it governs: security. We have had terrorist attacks on American soil by terrorists we knew were out there for decades and even refused to terminate when we had the chance. We have had an ongoing invasion of illegal aliens for more than half a century—yet, instead of taking action, politicians continue to bicker and grandstand (as they always do).

The only thing that keeps America working is that the bureaucracy is so big and ingrained in the minds of people to the point they accept such incompetence because “that’s just how it is.” Such a mindset is defeatism at its worst. We are a society that loses more freedom and liberties on a daily basis out of inaction by politicians, fear of punishment for speaking out against the government, and a lack of courage and conviction on the part of our citizens.

People of the world are retreating more and more behind the supposed safety of “government monitoring” and government involvement in personal affairs to insulate themselves from the challenges and trials of life that they feel increasingly powerless against and unable to cope with. You cannot ignore the following: we live in an information age. It is the mantra chanted by every government around the globe, and even the most undeveloped nations are doing their best to make use of information in whatever ways they possibly can.

Information is useful, but, unfortunately, the duality inherent both in knowledge and human nature make it a dangerous weapon as well. Ethical considerations have fallen by the wayside in societies obsessed with fanatical capitalism—where the only concerns are money, control, power, and the ability of the sheepish masses to live the easiest life possible overrides any concern for doing what is morally right.

Think about this simple fact: every year, more and more laws are passed. No citizen can possibly know the entirety of the law in America—not even attorneys whose profession it is to do so. It isn’t going to change with our present system of government. THERE WILL NEVER BE A POINT WHERE ENOUGH LAWS HAVE BEEN CREATED.

Already, America has more incarcerated people than many nations have people. Our values are vanishing, but the number of laws are increasing, and the government is invading our daily lives and monitoring society more and more as each week passes. Democracy is the tyranny of the masses, it has been said. Still, when it works, it offers hope and the ability to create change and bring out-of-control government back into line with the needs of the people governed.

One cannot help but wonder at what point bureaucracy seizes control from democracy of its own volition? What will become of those who dissent? “Big Brother” was born because of this very question, which is not the realm of speculative fiction any longer. It is a reality, and we live with it today.

However, it is the general unconcern of the masses that keeps feeding him, and allowing “Big Brother” to continue living and growing.

The only question left is this: “When will the fratricide begin, and what will be the outcome?”

Remember, we do not need such invasive surveillance for catching terrorists or criminals. We know who the criminals are and who the terrorists are, but we refuse to act on this knowledge. We refuse to take down drug dealers and instead pay them as informants. Those we do arrest, are soon back on the streets. Why? So they can be arrested again later, and attorneys get paid by the same client multiple times, and so a judge always has a job, and so privatized prisons run by corporations turn a profit.

If we truly wanted to eradicate terrorists, we would stop training them and funding them…or doing business with the governments that back them. We would have taken Bin Laden out back in the 1990’s when we had the chance instead of worrying what some other government who harbors terrorists would think if we did so.

If there is some apocalyptic hell in our future, the irony is that we encourage it. Worse, we’re splitting the kindling to fuel its fires.