“Big Brother is watching you”. Many people have heard of George Orwell’s prophetic novel “1984”. In most high schools, this is required reading. The book has a plot which revolves around one man’s struggle with the government and how observant it is. The world of 1984 is one where where no one can do anything without being watched. This is what he believed the year 1984 in real life would be like. In the book, nearly every street corner has some sort of camera, and the police have the authority to just barge into someone’s house unannounced to make sure they weren’t up to no good. And by no good this means expressing opinions and enjoying free will. Orwell was a visionary for his time, and many people believed his predictions would come true; the government would officially take over.

This scared the citizens of that era, around the 1950’s. They grew up in a time where they did not question authority, and this meant the government. This surrender of their will to their government would have made it easy for them to be controlled. Since at about this time  technology was going places that mankind could never have foreseen, Orwell’s fictional world seemed more imminent than ever. Ever since America broke off from the British rulers those decades ago, we have always had a healthy skepticism for any sort of government power. Although the government is not all controlling, people still are prone to views of it taking over and of martial law. The biggest problem and fear people have though is with privacy, and to this extent the government is the least of their worries.

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In any culture, bad people are always involved. Whenever some other person has a large amount of money or has an excellent life along with their excellent job, some other person who puts no effort into life finds them and robs them of it. The epitome of the old school thieves is the good old “hold you at gunpoint” breed. These low lifes might lurk in some gloomy alleyway for all of your cash and jewels, and then leave you poor or dead. This is the most memorable view of the old-style crook.

This type of criminal would have a starring role in an old gangster movie, the ones so overplayed they would be in a stark non-color and grainy version. As with their movie persona, these bad guys committed some atrocities. The film portrayals simply scared the viewers, but real street crooks are the ones to be held accountable for almost of the fright and damage to people. These bad people are the ones who make the cities unsafe at night, and are bait for most news reports adding to the hysteria.

These men and women were the most evil of the bad in their era. They were the outcasts of society, the ones that, when friends and families saw them in court, would avert their gaze, as if their gaze had some strange and hypnotic power. These were the reasons that the United States treads lightly with its prison system. It is a strange thing that such an accepting society conjures: you have these boundless rights and freedoms, yet it is just assumed that you will not abuse them. Unfortunately, while most of us take care of these rights, guys like these don’t and it tears at the very foundation of our country.

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Do you remember a time, long ago in our past, when one had to go out to buy something and bring it home? It seems like a crazy concept, but it really happened. People drove their cars to a sort of vending center, where they exchanged monetary units for perishables and other items. They would then buy enough to last them for some time, and when they needed more, they would head back again and again. Someday kids will read about this very outdated practice in their history textbooks. All joking aside though, the idea that one would actually go out to a store to buy something is becoming obsolete. These stores have fewer users than they did fifty years ago, even with a larger population. The world of explosive technology has penetrated nearly every aspect of life, and shopping certainly under that umbrella.

People’s lives around the globe|world] today, especially those of the United States citizens, are of a highly mobile type. We use our cars to go anywhere, work a whole bunch of separate shifts to augment our bank accounts, and have more entertainment in our house than does a whole circus. Consider going out to the movies in the present day; in the prehistoric days, before the VCR player, you would have to buy a ticket for the theater playing at your time. Now you can simply download movies temporarily whenever you choose by taking your pick from an on-demand service. Our homes these days are like the best place to relax and have fun; it almost defeats the point of going out. This self-containment is a must today though because we have more going on in our lives than ever before.

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An inmate in a maximum security prison was recently involved in a privacy case that went all the way to Maryland’s highest court. Usually inmates, especially those who have committed heinous enough crimes to land themselves into a maximum security prison, are expected and granted no privacy. These people have forfeited that right by taking away someone else’s rights, sometimes even through murder. This man actually killed another prisoner while already serving his prison sentence.

What happened was he wrote a letter to his dad and left it in an unsealed envelope. The letter described his confusion with his actions, and how he was disturbed that he killed another man. Prison officials seized the letter and used it as evidence against the man in a case against him. This letter provided irrefutable proof that he did indeed kill the man, and this would certainly land him a guilty charge, with no contest. This man would be in prison for the rest of his life, if not land him on death row.

In court, prison officials argued that the letter wasn’t sealed, and that all prisoners have to have all of their mail scanned and censored, both out-going and incoming. This, they argue, would have had the letter found anyway, so they would have gotten him like that. They also argue the letter is good evidence. The man argues that his Fourth Amendment rights were being violated by them reading and seizing his un-sent letter. Even though it was unsealed, they still should have not been allowed to get into it. By doing this, the evidence should be negated he said, and he wasn’t planning on sending the letter anyway, it was just a venting system.

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In the old days, before the dawning of the “Information Age”, when criminals would commit a crime, they would be fugitives on the run for a long time; laying low. They would re-emerge after hiding out for a number of years and slowly re-make their empire. The times have changed, and so have the criminals. Criminals now brazenly go directly to court to change their names and escape police records.

When police bring someone in, obviously they remember a face, but after it has been a long time they simply look someone’s name up to see who’s who. A violent gang member who was arrested by police recently changed his name to Tony Soprano, after the popular Sopranos television show character. The police did not know him as Tony Soprano though. After his name change, if the police were to pull him over and run his license, they would have no record of “Tony Soprano” a being violent criminal. When they run someone’s license, if the person comes back as a past felon, they will approach with caution. Tony Soprano had no record though, and they probably just laughed about the irony of his name being the same as a murderous television show character’s. Little do they know he likely is armed.

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