"As commentators and pundits have weighed in on the (not entirely surprising) revelation that electronic surveillance has flourished during the Obama administration, words and phrases like ‘Orwellian’ and ‘Big Brother’ have abounded, while Amazon sales of “Nineteen Eighty-Four” have climbed a staggering 7000%. On MSNBC, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders warned against the “very Orwellian and inhibiting impact” unfettered surveillance will have on our lives; Megan Garber of the Atlantic called Boundless Informant, the NSA’s nickname for one of its data-mining tools, “Orwellian”; Eric Benson and Frank Rich have derided the “Orwellian excess” of the Patriot Act. Even The New Yorker’s Ian Crouch, though he points out that “we are far from the crushing, violent, single-party totalitarian regime of Orwell’s imagination,” found Obama’s initial response “vaguely Big Brotherian.”"
Posted on: Wed, 19 Jun 2013 20:44:35 +0000
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