George Orwell created a dystopian future in his novel 1984. Winston Smith is an outer party member who works in the records department in the Ministry of Truth. His job is to rewrite the past so it is in accordance with the present. Winston is not like the others in Oceania. He secretly hates Big Brother and The Party. Winston has a love affair with another outer party member named Julia. Winston and Julia elope to a room above an old antique shop owned by Mr. Charrington. O'Brien, an inner party member, senses Winston's discontent for the The Party and invites him to his home to become a part of "The Brotherhood" an underground organization with the intent of bringing down Big Brother. One day while Winston and Julia are in the room above the antique shop the "Thought Police" charge into the room and arrest Winston and Julia for being "thought criminals". Winston is taken to the Ministry of Love to be interrogated. While there Winston discovers that O'Brien is actually a supporter of The Party and set Winston up. While in the Ministry of Love O'Brien explains he will make Winston "love Big Brother" which he eventually does. In the novel 1984 George Orwell correctly foresaw public surveillance, and people willingly giving up their right to privacy out of fear. Orwell incorrectly predicted the government trying to break the ties people have with their families and each other, and trying to abolish the act of sex.
Orwell imagined a system of public surveillance where people do not have privacy in public or in their own homes. In reality what the government is able to do is more sophisticated. In the case of U.S.A. v. Manuel Cuevas Perez circuit judge Wood said "They made the system that George Orwell depicted in his novel, 1984, seem clumsy and avoidable by comparison." This quote says that the system of surveillance imagined by Orwell pales in comparison to what the government is capable of doing.