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> The big difference is that authoritarian regimes make no secret of their collecting information. This is entirely different from what the rest of your post s
by saraid216 13y ago
> The big difference is that authoritarian regimes make no secret of their collecting information.
This is entirely different from what the rest of your post says. Your actual point seems to be that the big difference is that authoritarian regimes are authoritarian, not that their surveillance implementations are particularly secretive.
Lumping India in as an authoritarian regime is sort of odd, but okay. How about Egypt? Singapore? Kenya? Brazil? Argentina? Turkey? My point is just that this kind of surveillance is a global phenomenon. My unstated point is that it's a product of national boundaries. Just like the existence of strong corporations results in corporate espionage and internal monitoring, the existence of strong governments results in government espionage and internal monitoring. If you tell them to compete, they're going to compete, and they're not going to be nice about it.
- mercurial 13y agoSee my answer to a similar question below. Are you arguing that Egypt is not an authoritarian regime? As for the others you mention, I have no information about their surveillance program. But you are right, my use of "Western" was inappropriate. I should have said "country with a functional democracy" instead. But essentially, if you don't already have separation of powers, an independent judiciary and the sort of check and balances which are typical of democracies, you are going to get mass surveillance anyway, as long as the tech level is sufficient, because there is no reason for an authoritarian regime not to do. Mass surveillance is a feature of authoritarian regimes (see 1984 or what the Stasi tried to do). In democracies, it's a bug. So you'd need to transition Russia to a democratic state before you could tackle mass surveillance.