Privacy and the Government

The best example of a government intrusion into privacy is when the Magrathean mice attempt to extract Arthur's brain despite Arthur's pleas for the mice to stop. Interestingly, in real life, neuroimaging data has led to privacy concerns, due to the fact that this data is identifiable to a person[2]. Some call for identifiable metadata to be replaced, and for additional security measures to be implemented[2].

According to the movie, Earth's mice are secretly Magratheans, the closest thing to a government that the universe of old had. Their observation of the unwitting humans is a grave breach of privacy for the human race. This could be analogous to the government's surveillance of online activities and social media. In the US, "The Depart­ment of Home­land Secur­ity, the FBI, and the State Depart­ment are among the many federal agen­cies that routinely monitor social plat­forms, for purposes ranging from conduct­ing invest­ig­a­tions to identi­fy­ing threats to screen­ing trav­el­ers and immig­rants" [1]. This has brought up concerns about privacy, as well as civil rights issues for communities often targeted by law enforcement [1].