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I don't think this issue really is a big one. I'm far more concerned by the/my impression that the public seems to have accepted total surveillance as "the new

by dan_bk 12y ago

I don't think this issue really is a big one. I'm far more concerned by the/my impression that the public seems to have accepted total surveillance as "the new normal". It seems like Snowden's work has resulted in the vetting of mass surveillance. I really hope I'm wrong.

krapp 12y ago
Bear in mind that "the new normal" as a qualifier for the current state of affairs, at least in the US, goes back to Dick Cheney and 9/11. I don't know that Snowden changed that many minds, outside of this particular bubble. Mostly, people are more upset with the minor annoyances of the TSA that discovering the government can read their emails.
vwoolf 12y ago
I'm far more concerned by the/my impression that the public seems to have accepted total surveillance as "the new normal". A lot of this is also a political / legal question; has the public ever been deeply interested in privacy questions? My (naive?) guess is no, but the judicial branch has historically done an okay job of representing the public interest, and giant scandals (like Nixon) have moved legislators.
- qnaal 12y ago
  Pretty soon some part of the system is going to catch on that everyone else is as subtly creeped out by all this shit as they are, and the military industrial complex will have to surrender some of its tentacles.
onnoonno 12y ago
I wonder whether this could be a manufactured opinion to an extent? I mean, we now know that online forums are subverted and socially engineered to keep 'bad opinions' down. Add to that the still persisting mass media with known effects - and I slowly start to think of the internet as being very much part of the 'mass media', too. For example, I noticed a lot of articles in newspapers being written by journalists that have agendas that diverge completely from the opinions of the people commenting on an article. The next step, I'd guess, is to 'properly' police these comments....
- ZenPro 12y ago
  That is not necessarily a bad thing. Free-market-oriented economists since Milton Friedman have strongly criticized the efficiency of democracy. They base this on the argument that voters are irrational, among other things. Their criticism towards democracy is that voters are highly uninformed about many political issues, especially relating to economics, and have a strong bias about the few issues on which they are fairly knowledgeable. No more is this point evidenced than on news forums regarding current events. There is every possibility that the journalists diverge from the masses because the masses are incorrect. If I had a $ for every forum commenter that talked about the oil in Afghanistan I would be richer than Peter Thiel. Have a read of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_democracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_democracy and just consider whether in some circumstances the consensus opinion may be the wrong one.

by dan_bk 12y ago

krapp 12y ago

Bear in mind that "the new normal" as a qualifier for the current state of affairs, at least in the US, goes back to Dick Cheney and 9/11. I don't know that Snowden changed that many minds, outside of this particular bubble. Mostly, people are more upset with the minor annoyances of the TSA that discovering the government can read their emails.

vwoolf 12y ago

I'm far more concerned by the/my impression that the public seems to have accepted total surveillance as "the new normal". A lot of this is also a political / legal question; has the public ever been deeply interested in privacy questions? My (naive?) guess is no, but the judicial branch has historically done an okay job of representing the public interest, and giant scandals (like Nixon) have moved legislators.

qnaal 12y ago
Pretty soon some part of the system is going to catch on that everyone else is as subtly creeped out by all this shit as they are, and the military industrial complex will have to surrender some of its tentacles.

onnoonno 12y ago

I wonder whether this could be a manufactured opinion to an extent? I mean, we now know that online forums are subverted and socially engineered to keep 'bad opinions' down. Add to that the still persisting mass media with known effects - and I slowly start to think of the internet as being very much part of the 'mass media', too. For example, I noticed a lot of articles in newspapers being written by journalists that have agendas that diverge completely from the opinions of the people commenting on an article. The next step, I'd guess, is to 'properly' police these comments....

ZenPro 12y ago
That is not necessarily a bad thing. Free-market-oriented economists since Milton Friedman have strongly criticized the efficiency of democracy. They base this on the argument that voters are irrational, among other things. Their criticism towards democracy is that voters are highly uninformed about many political issues, especially relating to economics, and have a strong bias about the few issues on which they are fairly knowledgeable. No more is this point evidenced than on news forums regarding current events. There is every possibility that the journalists diverge from the masses because the masses are incorrect. If I had a $ for every forum commenter that talked about the oil in Afghanistan I would be richer than Peter Thiel. Have a read of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_democracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_democracy and just consider whether in some circumstances the consensus opinion may be the wrong one.