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I am baffled how we went from a liberal "free" democracy to this ersatz of a totalitarian regime where all our conversations/messages/photos need to be dissecte

I am baffled how we went from a liberal "free" democracy to this ersatz of a totalitarian regime where all our conversations/messages/photos need to be dissected, catalogued and approved by un-elected bureaucrats. I mean you can literally go to eastern Europe to see the vestiges of the Stasi where they used to listen to the conversations of their citizens while trying to find dissidents among them. This isn't some kind of distant past, this is almost like yesterday and yet here we are again. How come we end up here again? Why can't the powers that be just leave the people to live their lives in peace without being snooped on by the surveillance apparatus? And then to turn around and seeing the EU wanting to give lessons of democracy to China or NK? What a joke. The future is grim and to be honest I would just rather they came out in the open and acknowledged the fact that democracy and privacy as we know it is dead. Then each and everyone can decide to accept this fact or fight back. Instead we get this grandstanding about civil liberties but in the background they are ever so working on diminishing our individual freedoms.

phero_cnstrcts 3y ago
> Then each and everyone can decide to accept this fact or fight back. That’s exactly what they want to avoid. Problem/reaction/solution or manufactured consent is much easier.
RandomLensman 3y ago
The "how" is simple: because it could be done with relative ease now. So those charged with preventing crimes can push for it and pushing back against crime fighting is a tough stance to take. Also, assuming high levels of privacy in the days of old might be in error, depending on what you were doing.
- mnw21cam 3y ago
  I think in this case the "how" became the "why". Because it is now easy.
rakoo 3y ago
> I am baffled how we went from a liberal "free" democracy to this ersatz of a totalitarian regime > How come we end up here again? Why can't the powers that be just leave the people to live their lives in peace without being snooped on by the surveillance apparatus? You need to read more anarchist/communist literature that explains the situation as it has always been: the presence of a State, as an entity, implies that the population has never been in control. The State has always been. Yes, sure, sometimes the State gives a facade of openness, but it's always been a facade. Whatever the "free" era we think happened, that era was still definitely not free for a part of the population: marginalized people, non-obedient people, people with an identity considered deviant, .... It wasn't "free", it was just "free for me"
- rdm_blackhole 3y ago
  I agree with you, that's why I put the "free" in quotes. I am not deluded to the point that I think everyone had a great time in the last 30 years or so but since the fall of the USSR and some of it's satellites states , it seemed like we were on an upward trajectory in terms of human rights, democracy and civil liberties. If the last 30 years have only been a blip in terms of freedom acquired by some parts of the global population, does this mean that we are just returning to the mean value of freedom and that we are by definition always meant to be under some kind of semi-authoritarian regime?
  - rakoo 3y ago
    > since the fall of the USSR and some of it's satellites states , it seemed like we were on an upward trajectory in terms of human rights, democracy and civil liberties. The fall of the USSR is the victory of capitalism and most above all the spread of neoliberalism, definitely not an upward trajectory for human rights, democracy or civil liberties. If you think it's been going up, it's because you were not in the group that has been crushed by it, which means you were in the group that, on the global stage, was crushing the other. Our collective well-being always depends on exploiting someone else, unless you're one of those who is simply exploited > we are by definition always meant to be under some kind of semi-authoritarian regime? No, we are not doomed to live under a semi-authoritarian regime because we are not doomed to live under a "regime", or more precisely, a State. Alternatives have existed and have all been crushed by conservative, usually capitalist movements but also Stalinism. They failed not because of their inner issues but because they didn't have enough power in the balance to survive against antagonist movements. Which is enough for me to believe there is some good in it, and it's worth fighting for it
lazide 3y ago
Many people look at things like the Stasi and think - the problem with it was who was in charge, not that it existed. We’re the good guys so it would be a good thing. Not a bad thing. The problem is, they’re almost always the absolute worst to deal with, as almost any evil is excusable when done ‘for the right reasons’ or when ‘we’re the good guys’, where selfish evil at least sometimes takes a break or feels bad. And selfish evil is usually more predictable. It’s a constant struggle. The underlying need for some to control others, to know what others are doing at all times (and the corresponding elements of control and manipulation) has always lived in every group. How a group does is more about what it does with it, and how it directs it/reins it in (and acknowledges it), rather than its lack of existence.
- rdm_blackhole 3y ago
  > Many people look at things like the Stasi and think - the problem with it was who was in charge, not that it existed. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. It seems to me that most of the Eastern European states would be against this law but as it stands, they most certainly welcome it. > How a group does is more about what it does with it, and how it directs it/reins it in (and acknowledges it), rather than its lack of existence I am not sure I understand what you mean
  - lazide 3y ago
    The tricky part is, everyone tends to forget the inconvenient things. Or just not research them. Even if it’s staring them in the face. And denying that we could be bad (or have bad tendencies) that need to be resisted makes it more likely that we would, ultimately, be really bad. But acknowledging we can be bad ‘hurts’. People want to feel good, and right, and justified. The more pain they are in, the more true it is. People don’t like pain. When it gets really bad, they look for scapegoats and seek comfort in delusion, anger, etc. There is a balancing act in here somewhere. Frankly though, looking at history as best as I can - the wheel exists, and the analogy of the wheel is so apt because it does keep going in cycles. Pretending that knowing history will somehow insulate us from repeating it is a delusion. It will all happen again. The best we can hope for, is that we can make it less painful or evil when it does.
SenAnder 3y ago
> How come we end up here again? Through failure of instinct. Seeing government agents open your letters, copy their contents, then re-seal them to send them on their way, or tap your phone and listen attentively with headphones, provokes an immediate, instinctive, visceral reaction. There's no need to construct elaborate scenarios how an ordinary law-abiding citizen could fall afoul of his government to make them see the threat. But change those human spies into innocuous databases and convenient phones, and you lose the benefit of instinct.
- rdm_blackhole 3y ago
  The problem is that the new law would certainly have people involved in it to double check the false positives which could amount to millions of photos and messages being shared each year with LEOs. Not to mention that they would use all this data to train the next generation of algorithms.
0xbadcafebee 3y ago
> Why can't the powers that be just leave the people to live their lives in peace without being snooped on by the surveillance apparatus? The very microsecond that some tragedy befalls the populace, the very first thing people start screaming about is how pathetic the government is for not knowing about the tragedy in advance and preventing it. We don't live in 1923. We live in 2023. You can't put a secret agent in a room with a bunch of nefarious terrorists anymore, because those terrorists don't sit in a room with each other. They talk on Telegram. We, the tech nerds and libertarians obsessed with privacy and the freedom to do whatever we want, have been fermenting a technological arms race for decades. The more bullet-proof encryption we create, the more the government has to encroach on our privacy to do the thing we require them to do: keep us safe from the real threats that do actually exist in the world, and hide among us. If you want more privacy, paradoxically, the best thing would be to actually give up some privacy. Telephones and letter mail have been automatically scanned for like 50 years, and this doesn't seem to concern us, and was good enough for intelligence services that they didn't need to collect anything more. So we could stop sending all our communications with bulletproof encryption. We could give the federal government a bypass. Allow the security services to peek under the covers. If we give them some leeway, they won't feel the need to compromise all privacy and security. But if you give them nothing, they literally have no other recourse but to compromise everything, because they don't know where to look and they have no leads. Nobody wants the government snooping on them. But if you really can't handle any level of surveillance at all, tell your elected officials you no longer want any federal or state intelligence services, and deal with the consequences. When the nation falls to all the other nations' intelligence apparatuses and covert operations, you will decry it and ask why the government did nothing to stop it. You simply can not have your cake and eat it too.
- Kim_Bruning 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence Technically shouldn't be happening? Also, probably shouldn't be happening period. Every time it does, Stuff Goes Wrong (tm). I think the relevant Franklin quote was: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." > When the nation falls to all the other nations' intelligence apparatuses and covert operations, you will decry it and ask why the government did nothing to stop it. I don't quite understand your logic. My naive intuition says that applying the strongest possible security posture in all aspects of society will lead to the society being at its most secure. I'm aware that sometimes seemingly counter-intuitive things hold. If you state that weakening civilian security might somehow strengthen overall security, you may somehow be correct. But you're not quite connecting the dots for me here yet?
gosub100 3y ago
To me the difference between the iron curtain and today is storage and retrieval. The Bluffdale NAS has been quietly recording everything we say and do, and in 10-20 years it will be a gold mine for manipulating presidential elections. In fact, I can't wait (only for the satisfaction of seeing my prediction come true) to see the first election where the "dirt" on the candidate is an 8th-grade myspace/facebook post. Take this to NSA levels of privacy invasion and things are about to get _really_ interesting. Nixing candidates is only the beginning, you can sell them protection, or force them to pass/don't pass laws or foreign policy. To me, that's the _real_ benefit of all this. they probably couldn't care less about dissidents.
denton-scratch 3y ago
> The future is grim and to be honest I would just rather they came out in the open and acknowledged the fact that democracy and privacy as we know it is dead. That's overcooked. We've only had strong end-user crypto(graphy) for about 20 years; you can still have private conversations, whether in a field or in a private space that you are sure isn't bugged. This is no worse than it was 20 years ago. "Democracy [...] is dead" is a counsel of despair.
quickcheque 3y ago
Perhaps it was never a liberal 'free' democracy in the first place. Or if it was, then it resides at an unstable point, and the stable points are full of nightmares.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
illiac786 3y ago
The assumption surveillance stopped after stasi is astonishing. I believe it never went away and technology simply kept making it more pervasive, more efficient. It didn't suddenly happen in the last ten years or so, it was a continuous progression over decades. Hopefully technology can also help us defeat it.
- rdm_blackhole 3y ago
  I don't mean to say that surveillance stopped necessarily but I thought that the thought of having a police state such as it was in East Germany or in other Eastern European countries would have vaccinated the world against those tyrannical tendencies. It's little bit what we have now with respect to nuclear weapons, where we have used them twice and decided to not do it again (so far). I just cannot fathom that someone is genuinely ok with having their worst secrets and their deepest fear out there in the open being sorted and analyzed by some black box algorithm who may or may not start an investigation against them because they said the wrong thing or shared the wrong image.
  - illiac786 3y ago
    Agree. Many reason for people to accept it or resign though (none good): * everyone seems ok with it * I do not have a dark secret * I do have a dark secret but why would I be of interest? * my data is already out there anyway, no point encrypting anything now. * so far, so good, why change? * Nothing is secure anyway, everything is hacked, so what’s the point? etc. etc.

phero_cnstrcts 3y ago

> Then each and everyone can decide to accept this fact or fight back. That’s exactly what they want to avoid. Problem/reaction/solution or manufactured consent is much easier.

RandomLensman 3y ago

The "how" is simple: because it could be done with relative ease now. So those charged with preventing crimes can push for it and pushing back against crime fighting is a tough stance to take. Also, assuming high levels of privacy in the days of old might be in error, depending on what you were doing.

mnw21cam 3y ago
I think in this case the "how" became the "why". Because it is now easy.

rakoo 3y ago

> I am baffled how we went from a liberal "free" democracy to this ersatz of a totalitarian regime > How come we end up here again? Why can't the powers that be just leave the people to live their lives in peace without being snooped on by the surveillance apparatus? You need to read more anarchist/communist literature that explains the situation as it has always been: the presence of a State, as an entity, implies that the population has never been in control. The State has always been. Yes, sure, sometimes the State gives a facade of openness, but it's always been a facade. Whatever the "free" era we think happened, that era was still definitely not free for a part of the population: marginalized people, non-obedient people, people with an identity considered deviant, .... It wasn't "free", it was just "free for me"

rdm_blackhole 3y ago
I agree with you, that's why I put the "free" in quotes. I am not deluded to the point that I think everyone had a great time in the last 30 years or so but since the fall of the USSR and some of it's satellites states , it seemed like we were on an upward trajectory in terms of human rights, democracy and civil liberties. If the last 30 years have only been a blip in terms of freedom acquired by some parts of the global population, does this mean that we are just returning to the mean value of freedom and that we are by definition always meant to be under some kind of semi-authoritarian regime?
- rakoo 3y ago
  > since the fall of the USSR and some of it's satellites states , it seemed like we were on an upward trajectory in terms of human rights, democracy and civil liberties. The fall of the USSR is the victory of capitalism and most above all the spread of neoliberalism, definitely not an upward trajectory for human rights, democracy or civil liberties. If you think it's been going up, it's because you were not in the group that has been crushed by it, which means you were in the group that, on the global stage, was crushing the other. Our collective well-being always depends on exploiting someone else, unless you're one of those who is simply exploited > we are by definition always meant to be under some kind of semi-authoritarian regime? No, we are not doomed to live under a semi-authoritarian regime because we are not doomed to live under a "regime", or more precisely, a State. Alternatives have existed and have all been crushed by conservative, usually capitalist movements but also Stalinism. They failed not because of their inner issues but because they didn't have enough power in the balance to survive against antagonist movements. Which is enough for me to believe there is some good in it, and it's worth fighting for it

lazide 3y ago

Many people look at things like the Stasi and think - the problem with it was who was in charge, not that it existed. We’re the good guys so it would be a good thing. Not a bad thing. The problem is, they’re almost always the absolute worst to deal with, as almost any evil is excusable when done ‘for the right reasons’ or when ‘we’re the good guys’, where selfish evil at least sometimes takes a break or feels bad. And selfish evil is usually more predictable. It’s a constant struggle. The underlying need for some to control others, to know what others are doing at all times (and the corresponding elements of control and manipulation) has always lived in every group. How a group does is more about what it does with it, and how it directs it/reins it in (and acknowledges it), rather than its lack of existence.

rdm_blackhole 3y ago
> Many people look at things like the Stasi and think - the problem with it was who was in charge, not that it existed. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. It seems to me that most of the Eastern European states would be against this law but as it stands, they most certainly welcome it. > How a group does is more about what it does with it, and how it directs it/reins it in (and acknowledges it), rather than its lack of existence I am not sure I understand what you mean
- lazide 3y ago
  The tricky part is, everyone tends to forget the inconvenient things. Or just not research them. Even if it’s staring them in the face. And denying that we could be bad (or have bad tendencies) that need to be resisted makes it more likely that we would, ultimately, be really bad. But acknowledging we can be bad ‘hurts’. People want to feel good, and right, and justified. The more pain they are in, the more true it is. People don’t like pain. When it gets really bad, they look for scapegoats and seek comfort in delusion, anger, etc. There is a balancing act in here somewhere. Frankly though, looking at history as best as I can - the wheel exists, and the analogy of the wheel is so apt because it does keep going in cycles. Pretending that knowing history will somehow insulate us from repeating it is a delusion. It will all happen again. The best we can hope for, is that we can make it less painful or evil when it does.

SenAnder 3y ago

> How come we end up here again? Through failure of instinct. Seeing government agents open your letters, copy their contents, then re-seal them to send them on their way, or tap your phone and listen attentively with headphones, provokes an immediate, instinctive, visceral reaction. There's no need to construct elaborate scenarios how an ordinary law-abiding citizen could fall afoul of his government to make them see the threat. But change those human spies into innocuous databases and convenient phones, and you lose the benefit of instinct.

rdm_blackhole 3y ago
The problem is that the new law would certainly have people involved in it to double check the false positives which could amount to millions of photos and messages being shared each year with LEOs. Not to mention that they would use all this data to train the next generation of algorithms.

0xbadcafebee 3y ago

> Why can't the powers that be just leave the people to live their lives in peace without being snooped on by the surveillance apparatus? The very microsecond that some tragedy befalls the populace, the very first thing people start screaming about is how pathetic the government is for not knowing about the tragedy in advance and preventing it. We don't live in 1923. We live in 2023. You can't put a secret agent in a room with a bunch of nefarious terrorists anymore, because those terrorists don't sit in a room with each other. They talk on Telegram. We, the tech nerds and libertarians obsessed with privacy and the freedom to do whatever we want, have been fermenting a technological arms race for decades. The more bullet-proof encryption we create, the more the government has to encroach on our privacy to do the thing we require them to do: keep us safe from the real threats that do actually exist in the world, and hide among us. If you want more privacy, paradoxically, the best thing would be to actually give up some privacy. Telephones and letter mail have been automatically scanned for like 50 years, and this doesn't seem to concern us, and was good enough for intelligence services that they didn't need to collect anything more. So we could stop sending all our communications with bulletproof encryption. We could give the federal government a bypass. Allow the security services to peek under the covers. If we give them some leeway, they won't feel the need to compromise all privacy and security. But if you give them nothing, they literally have no other recourse but to compromise everything, because they don't know where to look and they have no leads. Nobody wants the government snooping on them. But if you really can't handle any level of surveillance at all, tell your elected officials you no longer want any federal or state intelligence services, and deal with the consequences. When the nation falls to all the other nations' intelligence apparatuses and covert operations, you will decry it and ask why the government did nothing to stop it. You simply can not have your cake and eat it too.

Kim_Bruning 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence Technically shouldn't be happening? Also, probably shouldn't be happening period. Every time it does, Stuff Goes Wrong (tm). I think the relevant Franklin quote was: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." > When the nation falls to all the other nations' intelligence apparatuses and covert operations, you will decry it and ask why the government did nothing to stop it. I don't quite understand your logic. My naive intuition says that applying the strongest possible security posture in all aspects of society will lead to the society being at its most secure. I'm aware that sometimes seemingly counter-intuitive things hold. If you state that weakening civilian security might somehow strengthen overall security, you may somehow be correct. But you're not quite connecting the dots for me here yet?

gosub100 3y ago

To me the difference between the iron curtain and today is storage and retrieval. The Bluffdale NAS has been quietly recording everything we say and do, and in 10-20 years it will be a gold mine for manipulating presidential elections. In fact, I can't wait (only for the satisfaction of seeing my prediction come true) to see the first election where the "dirt" on the candidate is an 8th-grade myspace/facebook post. Take this to NSA levels of privacy invasion and things are about to get _really_ interesting. Nixing candidates is only the beginning, you can sell them protection, or force them to pass/don't pass laws or foreign policy. To me, that's the _real_ benefit of all this. they probably couldn't care less about dissidents.

denton-scratch 3y ago

> The future is grim and to be honest I would just rather they came out in the open and acknowledged the fact that democracy and privacy as we know it is dead. That's overcooked. We've only had strong end-user crypto(graphy) for about 20 years; you can still have private conversations, whether in a field or in a private space that you are sure isn't bugged. This is no worse than it was 20 years ago. "Democracy [...] is dead" is a counsel of despair.

quickcheque 3y ago

Perhaps it was never a liberal 'free' democracy in the first place. Or if it was, then it resides at an unstable point, and the stable points are full of nightmares.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

illiac786 3y ago

The assumption surveillance stopped after stasi is astonishing. I believe it never went away and technology simply kept making it more pervasive, more efficient. It didn't suddenly happen in the last ten years or so, it was a continuous progression over decades. Hopefully technology can also help us defeat it.

rdm_blackhole 3y ago
I don't mean to say that surveillance stopped necessarily but I thought that the thought of having a police state such as it was in East Germany or in other Eastern European countries would have vaccinated the world against those tyrannical tendencies. It's little bit what we have now with respect to nuclear weapons, where we have used them twice and decided to not do it again (so far). I just cannot fathom that someone is genuinely ok with having their worst secrets and their deepest fear out there in the open being sorted and analyzed by some black box algorithm who may or may not start an investigation against them because they said the wrong thing or shared the wrong image.
- illiac786 3y ago
  Agree. Many reason for people to accept it or resign though (none good): * everyone seems ok with it * I do not have a dark secret * I do have a dark secret but why would I be of interest? * my data is already out there anyway, no point encrypting anything now. * so far, so good, why change? * Nothing is secure anyway, everything is hacked, so what’s the point? etc. etc.