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The thing is that people are no nearer to understanding why it was that this spying on the general public had to happen. Capitalism - and any other system - ha
by Theodores 8y ago
The thing is that people are no nearer to understanding why it was that this spying on the general public had to happen.
Capitalism - and any other system - has to have bogeymen and terrorism as a fear, the thinking being that anything outside the system is a fate worse than death and therefore the system, in this case capitalism as we know it is better than the alternatives. We all know there aren't any 'al-qaeda' terrorists really, it certainly is not necessary to monitor everyone's phone just because of that.
Going through the courts to discern whether these Stasi style systems were/are constitutional or not is noble and good on the EFF for doing these things. However we have not acknowledged why these things had to happen, we still go along with the 'al-qaeda terrorist fear' meme.
The point of surveillance and letting everyone know that they are under surveillance is to stop people communicating in a way tantamount to dissent. The Catholic Church and the Stasi had these things in place, not to root out protestants or Western spies, it was always to keep people in line with their system of rule. When it comes to our own Western surveillance we somehow believe the authorities that it is to catch the terrorists, a noble cause that nobody could possibly argue with. Yet really it is to keep people in line and not dissenting.
In the Bush years the powers-that-be were genuinely concerned they might have a Berlin Wall moment where people just see through the lies and decide not to stand shoulder to shoulder waving flags.
Their fears were seriously unfounded though, people really were deeply wedded to the system to the point of being indoctrinated and brainwashed. No matter how feeble the phantom enemy was people went along with it, it sold newspapers and meant people didn't even dream of getting organised in some revolutionary way. Occupy Wall Street was about it, a very damp squib.
Whether the details of the mass surveillance infrastructure were technically constitutional or not does not answer the bigger question regarding what the Bush government were so scared of.
- TeMPOraL 8y agoI don't think this situation requires any level of intentional conspiracy. Intelligence agencies always want to know more secrets, law enforcement wants their job to be easier, and digital media were trivial to wiretap since early beginnings. Surveillance systems like NSA's seem like something that would naturally evolve - and accelerate post 9/11, as there was suddenly lots of money available to anyone uttering the words "fighting terrorism" and "national security".
- sametmax 8y agoPretty much. You build an mowner, it's going to mown. If you give it more horse power, it's going to mown more. If you make it autonomous, it's going to mown everthing it can. The mowner is nor good or bad, but it still hurts if your foot is the way and the safeguards were badly designed.
- Theodores 8y agoI am not sure that analogy is that helpful. Did the NSA catch hordes of these evil al-qaeda types with their dragnet? No. Were any of these card-carrying al-qaeda terror operatives given due process? No. There are logical fallacies that we must endeavour to see through. Did the spy dragnet keep the al-qaeda menace at bay? Originally there were supposed to be tens of thousands of al-qaeda terror operatives in sleeper cells. They said the same about the Russians a generation earlier. It wasn't so. There may be fancy computers at Fort Mead but these still cost money. Money that could have been spent on infrastructure that benefited the citizens. There is opportunity cost, many people have actually died in collapsed bridges since the NSA went crazy.
- sametmax 8y agoI agree. We have a super mowner in the third floor of the USA building. It's a great mowner. But it's very damaging to the living room.
- prolikewh0a 8y agoI don't know if I've ever heard of the NSA having any good effect on the USA, just always negative. Always leaks about how everything they're doing is illegal. There have still been terrorist attacks and mass shootings all around the country since it's inception. I agree with your point above that it's probably likely that these agencies are more so there to track and crush domestic and foreign dissent (and I think it's intentional, see COINTELPRO). That money definitely could've been spent on infrastructure that benefited the actual citizens of this country and actually saved lives. Unfortunately a great part of American culture is pure jingoism and war propaganda, so nothing changes.