Illustrations

From the most iconic work of literature about surveillance and privacy, George Orwell foretells a world where ‘Big Brother’ does not monitor everybody at all the times, but where people are aware that they could be monitored at any given moment.” Here is Orwell's narrator, Winston Smith describing the surveillance system they faced: “There was, of course, no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. 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.”