Shades of "if you aren't doing anything wrong, why do you object?" in your response. I'll revisit this later.
On 20-Aug-13 10:06 PM, SS wrote: > My late mother grew up in her father's house with 4 siblings and 15 odd > cousins. Privacy was non existent and this makes people grow up in a > peculiar way. Everyone knows everything. You do not even fart in > private. (pressurizing people to fart in private is a reprehensible act > that should be condemned). Everyone knows everything about everyone > else. What is treated in the west as sensitive information whose leakage > could get a doctor sued is out in the open in India. > So I wonder why people must worry about being emotional with children on > email? What might it be that worries them? A couple of points in response: Firstly, the problem is that surveillance is one-way. The citizenry do not know anything about Big Brother, and THAT is the problem. When everybody knows everything about everybody else, there will be no problem, as a new social contract will evolve regarding privacy. Secondly, let me quote my friend Peter Cassidy on this (with permission) <quote> It's easy to be blase about electronic surveillance, given our relative wealth and comfort and experience knowing the peer-points have been shunting all traffic to Ft Meade forever, meeting and knowing NSA employees who were in many cases more liberal and more educated than our imaginations would have allowed us to believe on our own and experiencing none of the jack-booted oppressions which everyone on the Internet flings Godwinishly to describe everything from rules of order at the PTA meeting to the service profile of the local Home Depot. What's key is the legitimacy of the use of that data and the scope of its currency in a society. The Haunted Land, a book that delineates how East German society was completely reforged around the authority of secretly collected personal data illustrates how caustic routinized surveillance can become. Spouses ratted each other out to the authorities, in ways resonant with the odd stories of kids turning in their parents for smoking dope in the back yard. No one could have a personal life worthy of the name. In an environment of permanent legitimized electronic surveillance, you could argue the establishment of an East German scenario here is only a matter of time. </quote> -- ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
