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Individual countries do stupid things from time to time, but what worries me is the global trend where countries are showing a desire to control communication.
by potamic 3y ago
Individual countries do stupid things from time to time, but what worries me is the global trend where countries are showing a desire to control communication. It comes in the form of encryption backdoors, age limits for social media, monitoring for child porn etc, but the end goal seems to be complete control of all communication channels between citizens.
The concept that governments will love to push for is where citizens need to provide identification for accessing all web services and all web activity is linked to their identification. Digital infrastructure these days is sophisticated enough to handle this and it only takes for one country to enact this and get the ball rolling for everyone else.
- nine_k 3y agoGovernments are created to control, so they strive to grab more control, by their nature. There may be no nefarious intent behind that tendency, or any intent at all. If something is made round, it will have a tendency to roll. This is why systems of checks and balances were invented, separation of powers, press freedoms, the democracy itself: these are systems that actively prevent the government from grabbing more and more power, just because it can. When the government is able to suppress or diminish the influence of these counterbalances, usually on the grounds of enforcing security and safety of the citizens, the process can escalate and end up in an authoritarian rule. Such (attempts at) power grabs will always happen, and will.always need a push back. It's a dynamic balance, when a balance can be achieved at all.