On Wed, 2013-08-21 at 07:47 +0530, Udhay Shankar N wrote: > Shades of "if you aren't doing anything wrong, why do you object?" in > your response. I'll revisit this later.
Yes, but I will explain below. First let me respond to this quote > 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 None of this is new. George Orwell predicted it. It happened in Stalin's Russia, and China has been well into this for decades. Power and control have always meant control over what people say. The anger and indignation in my view comes from the idea that some "free" societies were somehow immune to this. To my mind the only way to counter this is by subversion from within the system, not by fighting the system. The system looks out for those who fight it. The system needs to be inundated with people who are doing no wrong. A world of sheeple who do not worry about surveillance makes it easier to look out for those who are avoiding surveillance. In my view the thing to do is to accept surveillance, embrace it, and set up the mechanism for subterfuge. Only that route can allow creative ways of spooking the system to emerge. If I were a criminal, this is exactly what I would do. Surveillance is designed to discourage criminals (specifically terrorists) from using the existing system and restricting their ability to communicate and plan. A useful side effect for the government is that everyone gets watched. The criminal would be the last person to complain about being watched - only honest people do - although criminals might add to the protests acting like "Honest people who genuinely want privacy" simply as a political ploy to pressurize governments who are high on their ability to control. I am not trying to criticize or mock anyone, but I have noticed that in America the constitution guarantees certain freedoms and those freedoms are being removed, leading to protests. If I extrapolate this I predict that there is an outside chance that Americans might win court battles that protect US citizens, but non US citizens will continue to face everything that can be thrown at them by way of control and monitoring. Under the circumstances, I see no option other than to simply cooperate with the system and discover my own ways of doing what I might want to do in private. Incidentally is there a "right to privacy?". I have no idea. shiv
