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It's interesting the the internet has been a tool that has allowed people in repressive states to rebel and at the same time has made states that were supposedl

It's interesting the the internet has been a tool that has allowed people in repressive states to rebel and at the same time has made states that were supposedly 'free' become more and more like that states those people were rebelling against. The difference is that those other states were open about their corruption - everybody knew it and understood it - and rebellion could take place. The internet allows the 'free' governments to break laws in relative secrecy and even when caught regular people find it difficult to understand the details anyway.

adventured 12y ago
It's not the Internet that made the US or the UK act less free. It's enabling them to do things they wanted to but lacked the technology for. Were this 1965 or 1970, and were the Internet deployed to the extent it is now, Hoover and or Nixon would be all over these same types of programs. The abuse would be rampant, the secrecy would be extreme. Echelon dates to the 1960s, but it wasn't capable of easily reaching into the pocket of every citizen; they lacked the technology to record everything, and to automatically sift through everything. The sole difference between then and now, in terms of doing these programs, is the technology 40 years ago made it impossible. What the modern Internet has exposed, is culture rot inside many countries. That rot has existed in the US for a very long time. You're merely seeing the military industrial complex laid bare; it has been there for 60+ years. Rather than making the US or UK act less free, what the Internet is doing is showing you the rotten insides.
- lifeisstillgood 12y ago
  Sadly this is probably true. So what do we do about it. Conor Gearty (LSE podcast) recently talked about the awful idea of UKs withdrawal from the EU Human rights declaration. To me (and I am still working on this) it seems we need to understand the new and old landscapes and hopefully put in place trustworthy institutions (and I would class crypto-currency as an institution too) - ensure we keep the 18th/19th/20th century evolution of human rights (ie rights for white men through to rights for all) - expand (somehow) rights to privacy and rights to ownership and control of data about oneself (I suspect commercial ownership of my data is a solution) - start persuading the new UKIP voters that print for a different set of politicians is not the same as ending this. In the end I think that the new Labour Party is really the Pirate Party

adventured 12y ago

It's not the Internet that made the US or the UK act less free. It's enabling them to do things they wanted to but lacked the technology for. Were this 1965 or 1970, and were the Internet deployed to the extent it is now, Hoover and or Nixon would be all over these same types of programs. The abuse would be rampant, the secrecy would be extreme. Echelon dates to the 1960s, but it wasn't capable of easily reaching into the pocket of every citizen; they lacked the technology to record everything, and to automatically sift through everything. The sole difference between then and now, in terms of doing these programs, is the technology 40 years ago made it impossible. What the modern Internet has exposed, is culture rot inside many countries. That rot has existed in the US for a very long time. You're merely seeing the military industrial complex laid bare; it has been there for 60+ years. Rather than making the US or UK act less free, what the Internet is doing is showing you the rotten insides.

lifeisstillgood 12y ago
Sadly this is probably true. So what do we do about it. Conor Gearty (LSE podcast) recently talked about the awful idea of UKs withdrawal from the EU Human rights declaration. To me (and I am still working on this) it seems we need to understand the new and old landscapes and hopefully put in place trustworthy institutions (and I would class crypto-currency as an institution too) - ensure we keep the 18th/19th/20th century evolution of human rights (ie rights for white men through to rights for all) - expand (somehow) rights to privacy and rights to ownership and control of data about oneself (I suspect commercial ownership of my data is a solution) - start persuading the new UKIP voters that print for a different set of politicians is not the same as ending this. In the end I think that the new Labour Party is really the Pirate Party