That was an excellent read, as Vernor Vinge usually is. I've certainly used anti-surveillance arguments like "what if some employee misuses the data", and I me

That was an excellent read, as Vernor Vinge usually is. I've certainly used anti-surveillance arguments like "what if some employee misuses the data", and I mean them, but it's not my fundamental objection. On a much deeper level, I worry about surveillance as an inherent harm. Partly as the death of privacy (a right in itself, to me), largely as a de facto power transfer to the state. I think Seeing Like a State is right when it argues that states depend on 'legibility'. If it can't be logged, measured, or predicted, it can't be handled on the statistical level where states have to operate. And so everything that increases the legibility of our lives eases the real power of the state, without any need to expand its legal power.