For my hypertext I want to look into and research the question of privacy/civil rights vs. security for national safety. Where do we draw the line between the two? In Little Brother the author Cory Doctorow brings in aspect of this question to his story. For example how the DHS ignores the privacy rights of citizens all in the name for national security. In Little Brother, the DHS suspected Marcus as a terrorist and disregarded his civil rights just because of a slight suspicion that he could be a threat; the DHS had no real evidence that he was a terrorist aside from him being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Also, in the book, the concept of the government tracking the activity of every day, regular, normal people (none of whom have given the government any real reason for investigation).
I feel like this topic is relevant to our current world today in regards to our own war of terrorism we are fighting and the acts the government has made in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks regarding privacy and security. I think Doctorow is trying to raise the point that our government is disregarding civil rights in order to keep or nation more secure, but to which expense are we paying for that? Is it a good thing? I want to research this topic because I think its an important topic in the book and Doctorow is trying to connect his fiction to our real world, plus it’s something we should really be questioning.
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