"Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime is death" (Orwell,). This is the core of the society in which Winston Smith resided in, in 1984 by George Orwell. In the world of Oceania, thoughtcrime was defined as speaking or thinking against the government, a crime punishable by death. In this world, every controversial action resulted in demise, for the purpose of total control, and in some ways, security. Winston Smith believed he had one main purpose in life, to be good at his job, re-creating history. All day long he worked at his desk creating and recreating ideas, personalities, and erasing politically disruptive people from history, identified as unpersons. Eventually, however, Winston began to think of superior ways to live, and he began to clash with the government’s plans for the future. This quote also describes a more contemporary novel, Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. After the Bay Bridge was bombed in San Francisco, California, the Department of Homeland security turned to extreme power to ensure that the threat of a terrorist attack ceased to exist in the future. They targeted a group of hardly suspicious friends on the street, including Marcus Yallow, a senior at Chavez High School, taking them hostage as suspects of the terrorist attack. Marcus and his friends’ days were full of questioning and detainment. Later when Marcus was released, he swore revenge on the department who captured him. By maneuvering the Xnet, an untraceable internet, Marcus wreaked havoc on his city and the means of governing it. Cory Doctorow's Little Brother and 1984 by George Orwell show that governments go to unnecessary extremes to control citizens in the name of safety (1984). While the books' audiences have been shown the effects of costly actions, governments today continue to make the same hazardous mistakes.