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It always feel to me quite ironic that countries which used to advocate freedom and free speech these days have most intense surveillance operations.
by orian 11y ago
It always feel to me quite ironic that countries which used to advocate freedom and free speech these days have most intense surveillance operations.
- kozhevnikov 11y agoSurveillance is the opposite of privacy, the opposite of free speech is censorship, and GCHQ doesn't advocate that yet.
- agd 11y agoIt's not quite as simple as that. Mass surveillance alone harms free speech because it affects people's behaviour. If you know everything you say and do is recorded, you tend to say and do a lot less than you would otherwise.
- superuser2 11y ago>If you know everything you say and do is recorded Intelligence agencies didn't want us to know that, we learned it from whistleblowers.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoAnd it's not even that bad in principle. In a more perfect world you want to have is freedom of speech and an organization like S.H.I.E.L.D. which secretly scoops all communication to protect the public from greater threats. Unfortunately, what we got instead is a kind of Hydra that lacks ambition for world domination.
- agd 11y agoIntelligence agencies are full of smart people. They know that secrets this big can't be kept indefinitely. Once the cat's out of the bag, then the panopticon comes into effect. They have factored in the effect on free speech into their decisions.
- fauigerzigerk 11y agoThe UK government does block websites, but I think you are right that it doesn't amount to censorhip in the sense of blocking criticism of the UK government itself. I'm not sure what role GCHQ has with regard to blocking websites or if we know what they actually advocate. They have been known to do things clandestinely ;-)
- fit2rule 11y agoGCHQ ABSOLUTELY promote censorship and interference with free speech on a mass scale: https://theintercept.com/2015/06/22/controversial-gchq-unit-domestic-law-enforcement-propaganda/ https://theintercept.com/2015/06/22/controversial-gchq-unit-... Educate yourself! The GCHQ is a reprehensible organ of an authoritarian state! Under no circumstances must we allow those who grant themselves the privilege of extreme secrecy, the further miscreant privilege of rampant social engineering - of which censorship is but a minor aspect!
- damagednoob 11y agoI think it would be naïve to say that it doesn't have a chilling effect.
- tobltobs 11y agoCan you have freedom without having privacy?