6 ms·

Absolute knowledge is absolute power

68 points by motter 13y ago

tezza 13y ago
"Absolute knowledge is absolute power and absolute power corrupts absolutely." This is simply not true, rather a cobbled together bit of psychobabble. Okay... I have absolute knowledge a freight train is coming towards me and I'm tied to the rail. I clearly do not therefore have absolute power to change the outcome. The government could likewise know everything and not be able to stop a bad outcome ( say their overthrow ). --- Nicolae Ceaușescu had an impressive surveillance state... it didn't stop him being shot ( in the street? ) along with his wife https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolae_Ceau%C8%99escu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolae_Ceau%C8%99escu
- Ensorceled 13y ago
  Oh please. This is childish pedantry, please refute the quote in it's context of government leadership and NOT create a lame scenario where the actual rules don't apply. If I have absolute power I am NOT going to end up tied to a train track with the Secret Service strangely absent. The point in this article is that if we are digitally dependent being off the grid, or using an encrypted grid, IS information that can be used to stop an overthrow. You can't be an unstoppable force if you can't coordinate and organize.
  - tezza 13y ago
    At the risk of increasing my flame-downvote surface... > The point in this article is that if we are digitally dependent being off the grid, or using an encrypted grid, IS information that can be used to stop an overthrow. You can't be an unstoppable force if you can't coordinate and organize. Well then why didn't the author just say that? Rather than padding his point with psycho-babble ?
  - saraid216 13y ago
    > used to stop an overthrow I thought we weren't creating lame scenarios where the actual rules don't apply.
- mathattack 13y ago
  I think the context here is different than the strength of the quote. The context is about the government knowing everyone's petty mistakes in life, or Achilles heal. If they know this for everyone, then they can push or manipulate people as they see fit.
  - mpyne 13y ago
    Yeah, that's pretty scary... I can only imagine what would happen if we were foolish enough to give a government even more dangerous stuff, like millions of small arms, heavy weaponry, or even nuclear weapons. Why, the sheer power would probably instantly turn them into a dystopia.
  - alan_cx 13y ago
    Wouldn't mind so much if that information was known about the politicians that their minions. What have they got to hide? Heh, and if they are pure, clean and perfect, who the hell do they represent? If they know it about us, we should damn well know it about them.
  - tezza 13y ago
    I don't agree with the context either. 1) If the Government has a problem with you, then a few IM chat records and your pr0n site subscription history will be the least of your problems. Previously 'undesirables' would be tailed by agents or a private eye. 2) They can simply frame you. Child pr0n planted on your computer somehow, hell even your best friends / wife would disown you. 3) Is "recording more" either "finding needles" or just "making the haystack bigger" ?
- mtgx 13y ago
  Yes...after 40 years in power and needing a revolution to do it, where many people died. The point is, you should never allow a president or a group of people, to get even close to that much power, if you're going to need a revolution to stop it later.
- Shorel 13y ago
  This is exactly the same as the often repeated in F1: 'anything can happen'. It is meaningless out of context.
btilly 13y ago
I do not like the title, but the central point is good. The real problem with PRISM is not that you, individually, are going to be targeted. It is that the tools have been put in place to subvert the political process by personally targeting anyone with views that are inconvenient for those of influence. These tools may be being used fairly now, but based on past history, we cannot assume that they will continue to be so. And the past history to look at is not even that of distant times and places. Take a look at how the FBI under Hoover tried to affect the political process in the USA with COINTELPRO.
- alan_cx 13y ago
  Christ, imagine if Hoover had today's tool available to him. Imagine the reach and power of McCarthyism. I guess many would suggest that is exactly what we have right now. Just more subtle, opaque, and deniable.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    > I guess many would suggest that is exactly what we have right now. Just more subtle, opaque, and deniable. I can't see how anyone who has studied American history could think that what we have now even approaches what existed at the time of McCarthyism. McCarthyism required a level of public acquiescence and homogeneity of thought that could only exist under the threat of Soviet domination and nuclear holocaust. The bogeyman of terrorism doesn't have nearly that kind of grip on the public consciousness. Heck, just look at the wars that were justified by the two fears: Korea (36,516 Americans dead) and Vietnam (58,209) versus Afghanistan (2,229) and Iraq (4,488). Not to minimize the causalities of those wars, but if you can measure the power of a scary idea by the number of U.S. soldiers that die before the public puts a stop to the war, then there is no comparison between the specter of communism versus the specter of terrorism.
    - flyinRyan 13y ago
      But communism was a made-up threat, just like terrorism is. They can ramp up the fear factor any time they want and now they have all that infra in place to support it.
molbioguy 13y ago
I think a key feature of privacy is empowerment or control. People generally want to feel that they are in control of their lives. By being selective about what information you make available to others or even generally available to all, is a very important way to express your sense of control over your own life. Even if you like to broadcast as many of your thoughts, photographs, likes, and geolocations as possible, you do that with a sense of control. You decided what to release. When the NSA sifts through your data, they decide what to collect, what to use, who to share it with. And they never tell you any of it. I think that loss of control is one of the factors that makes people uncomfortable with loss of privacy.
woah 13y ago
Site broken on nexus 7
giardini 13y ago
And now we find that the gummint is gathering information from all sorts of corporations. It's as if the ACLU's nightmare overview surveillance system was used as a blueprint by the government to design PRISM et al. So your credit card, supermarket, gas card, library card, debit card, pharmacy card, prescriptions, public records (home and auto ownership, license tags, taxes, school records, etc.) are all Hoovered (as in "J. Edgar Hoover") up and ready for analysis. This is tied into your state's automobile licensing system: police cars have scanners that incessantly search for all license plates in the visible roadway and, for each, perform an automated search for outstanding warrants and criminal history in the state's database. And if the driver is good-looking and has a clean record, the officer can _still_ force a search of state records to retrieve addresses, phone numbers, etc. so he can stop her, talk to her and then optionally, hit on her later at his convenience ("What a small world, what are the odds of us meeting again! Must be fate.").
- btilly 13y ago
  You remind me of a true story from the 1990s. Woman, on her way back from Canada, is pulled over in NY for speeding. She's got a plate of home-made cookies in the seat next to her and offers the officer one. About 200 miles later, not speeding, she's pulled over again. As the officer approaches she says, "What did I do wrong?" He replies, "Nothing, but I heard that you've got the most amazing cookies!"

68 points by motter 13y ago

tezza 13y ago

"Absolute knowledge is absolute power and absolute power corrupts absolutely." This is simply not true, rather a cobbled together bit of psychobabble. Okay... I have absolute knowledge a freight train is coming towards me and I'm tied to the rail. I clearly do not therefore have absolute power to change the outcome. The government could likewise know everything and not be able to stop a bad outcome ( say their overthrow ). --- Nicolae Ceaușescu had an impressive surveillance state... it didn't stop him being shot ( in the street? ) along with his wife https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolae_Ceau%C8%99escu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolae_Ceau%C8%99escu

Ensorceled 13y ago
Oh please. This is childish pedantry, please refute the quote in it's context of government leadership and NOT create a lame scenario where the actual rules don't apply. If I have absolute power I am NOT going to end up tied to a train track with the Secret Service strangely absent. The point in this article is that if we are digitally dependent being off the grid, or using an encrypted grid, IS information that can be used to stop an overthrow. You can't be an unstoppable force if you can't coordinate and organize.
- tezza 13y ago
  At the risk of increasing my flame-downvote surface... > The point in this article is that if we are digitally dependent being off the grid, or using an encrypted grid, IS information that can be used to stop an overthrow. You can't be an unstoppable force if you can't coordinate and organize. Well then why didn't the author just say that? Rather than padding his point with psycho-babble ?
- saraid216 13y ago
  > used to stop an overthrow I thought we weren't creating lame scenarios where the actual rules don't apply.
mathattack 13y ago
I think the context here is different than the strength of the quote. The context is about the government knowing everyone's petty mistakes in life, or Achilles heal. If they know this for everyone, then they can push or manipulate people as they see fit.
- mpyne 13y ago
  Yeah, that's pretty scary... I can only imagine what would happen if we were foolish enough to give a government even more dangerous stuff, like millions of small arms, heavy weaponry, or even nuclear weapons. Why, the sheer power would probably instantly turn them into a dystopia.
- alan_cx 13y ago
  Wouldn't mind so much if that information was known about the politicians that their minions. What have they got to hide? Heh, and if they are pure, clean and perfect, who the hell do they represent? If they know it about us, we should damn well know it about them.
- tezza 13y ago
  I don't agree with the context either. 1) If the Government has a problem with you, then a few IM chat records and your pr0n site subscription history will be the least of your problems. Previously 'undesirables' would be tailed by agents or a private eye. 2) They can simply frame you. Child pr0n planted on your computer somehow, hell even your best friends / wife would disown you. 3) Is "recording more" either "finding needles" or just "making the haystack bigger" ?
mtgx 13y ago
Yes...after 40 years in power and needing a revolution to do it, where many people died. The point is, you should never allow a president or a group of people, to get even close to that much power, if you're going to need a revolution to stop it later.
Shorel 13y ago
This is exactly the same as the often repeated in F1: 'anything can happen'. It is meaningless out of context.

btilly 13y ago

I do not like the title, but the central point is good. The real problem with PRISM is not that you, individually, are going to be targeted. It is that the tools have been put in place to subvert the political process by personally targeting anyone with views that are inconvenient for those of influence. These tools may be being used fairly now, but based on past history, we cannot assume that they will continue to be so. And the past history to look at is not even that of distant times and places. Take a look at how the FBI under Hoover tried to affect the political process in the USA with COINTELPRO.

alan_cx 13y ago
Christ, imagine if Hoover had today's tool available to him. Imagine the reach and power of McCarthyism. I guess many would suggest that is exactly what we have right now. Just more subtle, opaque, and deniable.
- rayiner 13y ago
  > I guess many would suggest that is exactly what we have right now. Just more subtle, opaque, and deniable. I can't see how anyone who has studied American history could think that what we have now even approaches what existed at the time of McCarthyism. McCarthyism required a level of public acquiescence and homogeneity of thought that could only exist under the threat of Soviet domination and nuclear holocaust. The bogeyman of terrorism doesn't have nearly that kind of grip on the public consciousness. Heck, just look at the wars that were justified by the two fears: Korea (36,516 Americans dead) and Vietnam (58,209) versus Afghanistan (2,229) and Iraq (4,488). Not to minimize the causalities of those wars, but if you can measure the power of a scary idea by the number of U.S. soldiers that die before the public puts a stop to the war, then there is no comparison between the specter of communism versus the specter of terrorism.
  - flyinRyan 13y ago
    But communism was a made-up threat, just like terrorism is. They can ramp up the fear factor any time they want and now they have all that infra in place to support it.

molbioguy 13y ago

I think a key feature of privacy is empowerment or control. People generally want to feel that they are in control of their lives. By being selective about what information you make available to others or even generally available to all, is a very important way to express your sense of control over your own life. Even if you like to broadcast as many of your thoughts, photographs, likes, and geolocations as possible, you do that with a sense of control. You decided what to release. When the NSA sifts through your data, they decide what to collect, what to use, who to share it with. And they never tell you any of it. I think that loss of control is one of the factors that makes people uncomfortable with loss of privacy.

woah 13y ago

Site broken on nexus 7

giardini 13y ago

And now we find that the gummint is gathering information from all sorts of corporations. It's as if the ACLU's nightmare overview surveillance system was used as a blueprint by the government to design PRISM et al. So your credit card, supermarket, gas card, library card, debit card, pharmacy card, prescriptions, public records (home and auto ownership, license tags, taxes, school records, etc.) are all Hoovered (as in "J. Edgar Hoover") up and ready for analysis. This is tied into your state's automobile licensing system: police cars have scanners that incessantly search for all license plates in the visible roadway and, for each, perform an automated search for outstanding warrants and criminal history in the state's database. And if the driver is good-looking and has a clean record, the officer can _still_ force a search of state records to retrieve addresses, phone numbers, etc. so he can stop her, talk to her and then optionally, hit on her later at his convenience ("What a small world, what are the odds of us meeting again! Must be fate.").

btilly 13y ago
You remind me of a true story from the 1990s. Woman, on her way back from Canada, is pulled over in NY for speeding. She's got a plate of home-made cookies in the seat next to her and offers the officer one. About 200 miles later, not speeding, she's pulled over again. As the officer approaches she says, "What did I do wrong?" He replies, "Nothing, but I heard that you've got the most amazing cookies!"