In fact, whenever you bring it up in a debate about surveillance, people instantaneously dismiss it as inapplicable, and what they say is, "" Oh, well in '1984,' there were monitors in people's homes, they were being watched at every given moment, and that has nothing to do with the surveillance state that we face. "" That is an actual fundamental misapprehension of the warnings that Orwell issued in "" 1984. "" The warning that he was issuing was about a surveillance state not that monitored everybody at all times, but where people were aware that they could be monitored at any given moment.