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The theoretical situation "if they completely remove all laws and just take all the data and break everyone's thumbs that doesn't give up encryption passwords"

The theoretical situation "if they completely remove all laws and just take all the data and break everyone's thumbs that doesn't give up encryption passwords" doesn't equal "they have more data on you today than the Stasi collected in East Germany". Similarly, just because we have better weapons now doesn't mean that your life is more threatened than a Jew's life in Nazi Germany. There's a huge difference between you uploading pictures of your dog to Facebook and your neighbor/friend becoming a secret agent reporting on private conversations to the intelligence services.

orbital-decay 6y ago
It's not a theoretical situation for most of the world, though.
- luckylion 6y ago
  I'd say it is. The number of countries that want to go super-authoritarian and are able to do so via control of information and data gathering (instead of simply putting a police guy with an AK47 on each corner and install an inquisitor) is small. China seems to be the only one that's capable of doing it and really wants to. Russia might at some point in the future if the establishment's grip on power lessens, but their issues are different. Other countries would certainly like to, but lack the abilities. Maybe China will supply them, but I don't know whether the Chinese system of surveillance and control would work in e.g. Turkey or Saudi-Arabia with very different cultures.
  - shadowprofile77 6y ago
    What you describe is only circumstantially the case for the time being. These technologies are only becoming more affordable to a wider range of governments that previously wouldn't have dreamed of the resources necessary for them. But, just as almost all computing becomes cheaper per unit of data processed or any other basic measure, so too does the apparatus for widespread digital surveillance. What China and only a few others can do now is something that more countries will be able to do in the coming decades unless some major technological or social shift occurs. That's an idea that bears much closer consideration The above works institutionally in the same way that you as an average person can today use a tiny device that's affordable to billions of people and fits in your pocket for doing things that 30 to 40 years ago would have been available only to very wealthy individuals and organizations.
shadowprofile77 6y ago
My comment was specifically directed at the mistaken notion that governments now have less information about individuals than they did before, not about the repressive acts they're willing to perform on any individual of interest to them. I agree,virtually no modern citizen of a western nation is at anywhere near the same risk of being beaten, tortured or murdered by his or her government as was a jew living in Nazi Germany, but I argue that yes, this modern individual has more of their daily life under passive surveillance and with the data being gathered up than the average German or even Jew had known about their daily life in the 1930's and early 40's. I don't see how you could argue against this idea given all the revelations of the last few years. That most of today's most advanced governments don't use their data collection capabilities to brutally repress their people as Nazi Germany was always willing to do is only a question of time, place and social politics, not of technical capability. If any currently more or less liberal government should change into a repressive dictatorship, the mechanisms for surveillance already in place would let them do a lot of repressing without even having to hire the neighbor or friend to be a secret agent.

orbital-decay 6y ago

It's not a theoretical situation for most of the world, though.

luckylion 6y ago
I'd say it is. The number of countries that want to go super-authoritarian and are able to do so via control of information and data gathering (instead of simply putting a police guy with an AK47 on each corner and install an inquisitor) is small. China seems to be the only one that's capable of doing it and really wants to. Russia might at some point in the future if the establishment's grip on power lessens, but their issues are different. Other countries would certainly like to, but lack the abilities. Maybe China will supply them, but I don't know whether the Chinese system of surveillance and control would work in e.g. Turkey or Saudi-Arabia with very different cultures.
- shadowprofile77 6y ago
  What you describe is only circumstantially the case for the time being. These technologies are only becoming more affordable to a wider range of governments that previously wouldn't have dreamed of the resources necessary for them. But, just as almost all computing becomes cheaper per unit of data processed or any other basic measure, so too does the apparatus for widespread digital surveillance. What China and only a few others can do now is something that more countries will be able to do in the coming decades unless some major technological or social shift occurs. That's an idea that bears much closer consideration The above works institutionally in the same way that you as an average person can today use a tiny device that's affordable to billions of people and fits in your pocket for doing things that 30 to 40 years ago would have been available only to very wealthy individuals and organizations.

shadowprofile77 6y ago

My comment was specifically directed at the mistaken notion that governments now have less information about individuals than they did before, not about the repressive acts they're willing to perform on any individual of interest to them. I agree,virtually no modern citizen of a western nation is at anywhere near the same risk of being beaten, tortured or murdered by his or her government as was a jew living in Nazi Germany, but I argue that yes, this modern individual has more of their daily life under passive surveillance and with the data being gathered up than the average German or even Jew had known about their daily life in the 1930's and early 40's. I don't see how you could argue against this idea given all the revelations of the last few years. That most of today's most advanced governments don't use their data collection capabilities to brutally repress their people as Nazi Germany was always willing to do is only a question of time, place and social politics, not of technical capability. If any currently more or less liberal government should change into a repressive dictatorship, the mechanisms for surveillance already in place would let them do a lot of repressing without even having to hire the neighbor or friend to be a secret agent.