Surveillance And Sousveillance (Control Vs. Freedom) In Little Brother

Abstract

The world has become a global village. In a technologically advanced world, interaction, access to information and communication though, become so easy due to internet, yet it is not just an information superhighway. Not only it can be used for getting information and communication, it can also be used by non-state actors, terrorists, hackers and other criminal minded people. Internet is also an easy tool of creating fear, stalking, spreading fake news about others and damaging the status of the targeted people. Thus, it is also becoming a threat to human privacy and freedom. On one hand, it empowers us and on the other, it snatches the privacy and freedom of people. The present article explains this struggle at both the ends: to spy on others and to get freedom from spying. Close reading technique is used to dig out the relevant materials from the text for which conceptual framework is used as a lens. In the light of the concepts from different theories like: panopticism by Michael Foucault (1980; 2007) and Resistance and Sousveillance by Mann (2004), the novel Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (2008) is analyzed to reach to the intended results.