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Total surveillance is sold under guise of preventing terrorism, but the main effect is simple: it allows the status quo to become entrenched and permanent. You

Total surveillance is sold under guise of preventing terrorism, but the main effect is simple: it allows the status quo to become entrenched and permanent. You are rendered economically exploitable and politically neutered. There is a reason the state and intelligencies, from the Pinkertons to the FBI, have had a historical obsession with extensive spying on political movements and economic assembly. Both have real potential to change society. Would the civil or labor rights movements be possible under these conditions? Both threatened the bottom lines of powerful people. The FBI tried to persuade MLK to commit suicide by digging up dirt from his love life. He was considered a national security threat[0]. [0] http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/magazine/what-an-uncensored-letter-to-mlk-reveals.html http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/magazine/what-an-uncens...

jflatow 10y ago
Yes. We are told these measures are taken to protect our national security, but in reality they are meant to protect the government. Take the ongoing incident with Hillary Clinton's email server, for example. Clinton was quick to support scrapping 4th amendment rights (Patriot Act) in the name of security, but when it came to state secrets, she played it fast and loose (at best). It took 15 years and a scandal before the Secretary of State's emails were finally secured. We started a mass surveillance program practically the day after 9/11. We are starting to forget we are supposed to have things like civil liberties, and that the exceptions made for wartime only work if war is not permanent. The war on terror has no end. Before terror, it was drugs and communism. The government will never stop coming up with reasons it needs more power.
- yuhong 10y ago
  The war where government agencies compete for more resources probably don't help either.
pjlegato 10y ago
"Entrenched and permanent" is a bit exaggerated, as the governments of pervasive-surveillance East Germany and the Soviet Union discovered.
- fucking_tragedy 10y ago
  The Stasi and KGB couldn't dream of the technology and telecommunications networks that enable today's surveillance society.
  - rangibaby 10y ago
    They would have considered every citizen paying money to carry around a tracking device with attached cameras and microphones and broadcasting nearly every detail of their private life to public forums fanciful science fiction.
    - tmptmp 10y ago
      A small correction: The communists (Stasi and KGB) would have made it compulsory to not broadcast it but to unicast/multicast it to servers owned by the Party politburo. Communism is horrendously corrupt and inflicts great control on all its "lesser equal" citizens. Read this report about how Chinese communists have told microblogging sites to hire “self-discipline commissioners” [1]. [1] https://rsf.org/en/news/weibo-microblog-users-be-deducted-points-violations https://rsf.org/en/news/weibo-microblog-users-be-deducted-po...
      - fucking_tragedy 10y ago
        To pretend this is unique to communism ignores that this can happen in any society where rights are ignored and authority has absolute power with no accountability. I've seen forums shut down because admins got a visit from the FBI and decided that running a site that garners that much attention from the state isn't a risk they want to take. One was a comedy forum that leaned a little more left of center near the 2012 election. Memes and words might endanger national security. > The communists (Stasi and KGB) would have made it compulsory to not broadcast it but to unicast/multicast it to servers owned by the Party politburo. Today, we see our government pushing for something similar: unencrypted communication over networks they have captured to servers they can access unimpeded (Google, FB, Skype etc).
      - 10y ago

jflatow 10y ago

Yes. We are told these measures are taken to protect our national security, but in reality they are meant to protect the government. Take the ongoing incident with Hillary Clinton's email server, for example. Clinton was quick to support scrapping 4th amendment rights (Patriot Act) in the name of security, but when it came to state secrets, she played it fast and loose (at best). It took 15 years and a scandal before the Secretary of State's emails were finally secured. We started a mass surveillance program practically the day after 9/11. We are starting to forget we are supposed to have things like civil liberties, and that the exceptions made for wartime only work if war is not permanent. The war on terror has no end. Before terror, it was drugs and communism. The government will never stop coming up with reasons it needs more power.

yuhong 10y ago
The war where government agencies compete for more resources probably don't help either.

pjlegato 10y ago

"Entrenched and permanent" is a bit exaggerated, as the governments of pervasive-surveillance East Germany and the Soviet Union discovered.

fucking_tragedy 10y ago
The Stasi and KGB couldn't dream of the technology and telecommunications networks that enable today's surveillance society.
- rangibaby 10y ago
  They would have considered every citizen paying money to carry around a tracking device with attached cameras and microphones and broadcasting nearly every detail of their private life to public forums fanciful science fiction.
  - tmptmp 10y ago
    A small correction: The communists (Stasi and KGB) would have made it compulsory to not broadcast it but to unicast/multicast it to servers owned by the Party politburo. Communism is horrendously corrupt and inflicts great control on all its "lesser equal" citizens. Read this report about how Chinese communists have told microblogging sites to hire “self-discipline commissioners” [1]. [1] https://rsf.org/en/news/weibo-microblog-users-be-deducted-points-violations https://rsf.org/en/news/weibo-microblog-users-be-deducted-po...
    - fucking_tragedy 10y ago
      To pretend this is unique to communism ignores that this can happen in any society where rights are ignored and authority has absolute power with no accountability. I've seen forums shut down because admins got a visit from the FBI and decided that running a site that garners that much attention from the state isn't a risk they want to take. One was a comedy forum that leaned a little more left of center near the 2012 election. Memes and words might endanger national security. > The communists (Stasi and KGB) would have made it compulsory to not broadcast it but to unicast/multicast it to servers owned by the Party politburo. Today, we see our government pushing for something similar: unencrypted communication over networks they have captured to servers they can access unimpeded (Google, FB, Skype etc).
    - 10y ago