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Comment by guimarin | Hacker News Reader

Back when I was a kid, Enemy of the State was not a documentary.

But really, if you cared about Privacy/Security at all since the 80's you'd've known about Echelon, Echelon II, etc. You've also read up on ThinThread and Trailblazer.

My favorite is the No Such Agency adjunct that pulled like $200m a year in funding with 3 people in the division. Well and this patch: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Logo_of_... quite literally the greatest US Gov't Patch of all time.

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The dystopian film of the late 90's I recall being most frequently cited as a glimpse at our future was "GATTACA". While that portrayal may one day come to pass, it doesn't feel like something immediately dangerous.

"Enemy of the State" wasn't a particularly great film at the time it was released, but these days it feels remarkably prescient. We've willingly accepted an eerily similar world to live in, and we have to place an awful lot of trust into those at the helm...

For some reason Gattaca doesn't seem like that much of a dystopia. Poverty and disease are largely conquered. It's a harsh future that fosters alienation (or there wouldn't be much of a movie), yet the problems of that world seem fewer than those of today.

I didn't ever figure out why it was 'distopian'. Guy with a heart condition was cheating to get in an astronaut program. Disguised his cheating by playing on folks sympathy for a natural-born citizen (vs genetically designed). He was a real conniving bastard, through and through.

It's never really made completely clear if he actually has a heart condition or whether his genes just predict one.

Eugenics. How may society adapt to genomics.

Gattaca society used your genes determine your worth, your opportunities, our future. Stuff like nature vs nurture, triumph of an individual over prejudice, the apathy of genetic winners, etc.

Like Brave New World, it appeals to (most of) our distaste for treating people differently based on their class. Meritocracy and all that.

Sure I get all that. But that theme was poisoned by the fact that, he should not have been in the astronaut program, because heart condition. Which leaves him just a lying cheat, and not sympathetic.

He didn't have a heart condition, that was the whole point, congrats on an epic whoosh.

" high probability of several disorders and an estimated life span of 30.2 years"

I've always been partial to this one: https://i.imgur.com/XaIWseY.jpg

Sure, that's a great example of classic Bond-villain-like appeal, but I still have to recognize the design team who pushed this work of an entirely different level of greatness through committee approval:

http://www.nro.gov/images/launches/nrol-66/NROL-66-patch.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3c/NROL49_pa...

The text translates to: "Better the devil that you know".

A 2006 Italian movie, "In ascolto" ( The Listening ) [1] [2] [3] presents a much more realistic plot.

[1] The Listening (film)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Listening_(film)

[2] NYT Review

http://www.nytimes.com/movies/movie/351999/The-Listening/ove...

[3] Trailer - The Listening (2006)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlVK906Xzr8

Wow, an Italian film on Echelon starring Michael Parks and I didn't know the first thing about it... Thanks for the tip!

Back when I was a kid, Enemy of the State was not a documentary.