Do you believe that the country needs a government that has power over them? Or, are people better off with a government that adjusts to their will? In Michael Petry’s The Code Breaker, the Puppet Master does not believe that the government should hold the power to strictly implement laws and orders that control the people. The Puppet Master makes a solid argument that the government’s power needs to be limited because, left unchecked, government leaders are often corrupted by their own authority and make decisions that are self-serving rather than for the common good.
The government mostly uses its power to protect itself from being overthrown. In the Codebreaker, it becomes clear that Secretary of Defense Rutledge cares more about …show more content…
For example, when Secretary of Defense Rutledge explains the motivation behind the Y2K bug, he stated, ”‘We invented the Y2K scare. It’s not real. It never was. We used the government’s propaganda machine to play on capitalist fears. Organizations across the globe lined up to install the Y2K Circuit. They didn’t realize they were uploading the most powerful reconnaissance tool ever created’” (Petry 75). Making artificial fear just to take control over the whole world is just a dirty tactic to pull against companies and the population. By using artificial fear, they had the whole world in a panic and “protected” the world from a false threat that was created by them. The Y2K Circuit was their plan to stop the “threat” but behind the scenes it was used to keep track of every single company and person. The amount of power the government held was revealed by Secretary of Defense Rutledge when he declared, “Once a digital device containing the Y2K Circuit communicated with another device the circuit replicated itself on that device. It has the ability to spread undetected through email, text messaging, social media, anything connected to a server or networking system,’ he continues. ‘It’s like a virus, lying dormant, waiting to be activated’” (Petry 75). This quote shows the absolute power the Y2K Circuit has over the people. …show more content…
While it is natural to believe that the government is not as malicious as the story states, in the past few years there has been a surge of knowledge about the government’s “stalkerish” behavior. For example, in a NY Times article the reporters states, “The N.S.A. broke federal privacy laws, or exceeded its authority, thousands of times per year, according to the agency’s own internal auditor”(The Editorial Board). The National Security Agency was put into place by President Truman in order to send information to other intelligence agencies and is responsible for the global monitoring of the world. However, as Snowden revealed, “the vast scope of the National Security Agency’s reach into the lives of hundreds of millions of people in the United States and around the globe, as it collects information about their phone calls, their email messages, their friends and contacts, how they spend their days and where they spend their nights. The public learned in great detail how the agency has exceeded its mandate and abused its authority…” (The Editorial Board). As shown by the information given, it has come to attention that if any branch of government falls into corruption, then the system itself has failed to serve the purpose it was built to do. Edward Snowden gave the public information that stated that the government abuses its power by stalking people without
The government mostly uses its power to protect itself from being overthrown. In the Codebreaker, it becomes clear that Secretary of Defense Rutledge cares more about …show more content…
For example, when Secretary of Defense Rutledge explains the motivation behind the Y2K bug, he stated, ”‘We invented the Y2K scare. It’s not real. It never was. We used the government’s propaganda machine to play on capitalist fears. Organizations across the globe lined up to install the Y2K Circuit. They didn’t realize they were uploading the most powerful reconnaissance tool ever created’” (Petry 75). Making artificial fear just to take control over the whole world is just a dirty tactic to pull against companies and the population. By using artificial fear, they had the whole world in a panic and “protected” the world from a false threat that was created by them. The Y2K Circuit was their plan to stop the “threat” but behind the scenes it was used to keep track of every single company and person. The amount of power the government held was revealed by Secretary of Defense Rutledge when he declared, “Once a digital device containing the Y2K Circuit communicated with another device the circuit replicated itself on that device. It has the ability to spread undetected through email, text messaging, social media, anything connected to a server or networking system,’ he continues. ‘It’s like a virus, lying dormant, waiting to be activated’” (Petry 75). This quote shows the absolute power the Y2K Circuit has over the people. …show more content…
While it is natural to believe that the government is not as malicious as the story states, in the past few years there has been a surge of knowledge about the government’s “stalkerish” behavior. For example, in a NY Times article the reporters states, “The N.S.A. broke federal privacy laws, or exceeded its authority, thousands of times per year, according to the agency’s own internal auditor”(The Editorial Board). The National Security Agency was put into place by President Truman in order to send information to other intelligence agencies and is responsible for the global monitoring of the world. However, as Snowden revealed, “the vast scope of the National Security Agency’s reach into the lives of hundreds of millions of people in the United States and around the globe, as it collects information about their phone calls, their email messages, their friends and contacts, how they spend their days and where they spend their nights. The public learned in great detail how the agency has exceeded its mandate and abused its authority…” (The Editorial Board). As shown by the information given, it has come to attention that if any branch of government falls into corruption, then the system itself has failed to serve the purpose it was built to do. Edward Snowden gave the public information that stated that the government abuses its power by stalking people without