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It's interesting to me why spying on citizens is like this foundational goal of all modern nation states. I get why a state might want to do this but its not cl

• matheusmoreira 5y ago
  Governments enjoy having power and control over their subjects. The only reason they didn't do this before is the technology didn't exist in previous centuries. The use of spies was more or less limited to high value targets in times of war. It's not like they could have assigned a spy to every citizen in the country. Things are different now. Espionage is now automatic and large scale, there's no longer any practical limit on the number of people they can spy on. This is alluring to all kinds of people, from the well-intentioned to the malicious. To them, total surveillance is simply an efficient way to accomplish some goal such as catching some heinous criminal or figuring out what your political opposition is planning. They generally couldn't care less that global surveillance destroys freedom and enables apalling abuses of power at unprecedented scales. The truth is they would very much enjoy the ability to manage "their" citizens the same way we manage running processes in our computers: total visibility at all times into everything they're doing and the ability to kill them if they become problematic. Traditional police investigations are too hard and time consuming, they want the ability to push a button to reveal the entire life of a suspect.
  • octoberfranklin 5y ago
    > It's not like they could have assigned a spy to every citizen in the country. The East German Stasi came pretty close.