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Comment by optforfon | Hacker News Reader

Google wants to manipulate you into buying things and hading them over more information. If you know even a little about marketing/sales you know how powerful these forces are especially when targeted at a whole nation. On an individual level we never feel like the CocaCola ad makes us buy more coke, but it does.

"your life will be made a living hell until you are rendered neutral" ... sorry, but that just doesn't match up with reality. Maybe your fantasy of the future?

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Many journalists, lawyers, political activists, and civil rights advocates would disagree with your characterization. Just because you personally aren't aware of abuses doesn't mean that they don't occur.

Bush-era antiwar groups, Occupy Wall Street, leftist political groups, security researchers, environmental activists, whistleblowers, lawyers representing "sensitive" clients, and MLK himself... all have faced some kind of illegal surveillance or intimidation tactics. (There are many known targets that I didn't list here, and likely many that we don't hear about, simply because the oppressed often lack access to media channels.)

I would much rather be manipulated into buying more Coke than targeted for harassment, intimidation, no-fly lists, and smear campaigns because of my political beliefs. Not that marketers are angels, but they don't hold a candle to the type of abuse that the government can dish out when someone is "marked" as inconvenient.

Yeah, but wouldn't you agree that each time the government does overstep it's authority there is a backlash and they stop? Society seems to keep the government in check. Things like the MLK scenario are a lot less likely now-a-days. If you're say prodrug legalization, it's very very unlikely you'll be blackmailed for your extramarital affairs by a government official (in fact that seems kinda absurd). Yes bad things happen on a small scale, I wouldn't deny that, but I just don't see it as something slipperyslopping anywhere. There isn't a direct mechanism keeping the government in check other than education (and the values that it fosters) along with citizen outrage. Government's fear of it's citizens seems to have worked everywhere in the 1st world.

No, they never stop. 21st century governments use secrecy to avoid having to deal with the public. And they use national security to justify secrecy. Sometimes they screw up, or there's a leak (like with TTIP), but for the most part we don't know about what's happening until its too late to do anything about it. That's why you need to study history to see the pattern of abuse. Once you see how it happens historically, you can see pieces of the puzzle indicating where its still happening today. Or, you look to the few journalists still doing investigative reporting (e.g. theintercept.com) to expose the man-behind-the-curtain.

Yeah, but wouldn't you agree that each time the government does overstep it's authority there is a backlash and they stop?

Most definitely NOT. Even discounting things like the PATRIOT act, which wasn't even hidden, the government only gets backlash when it's actually CAUGHT, and then only when it's particularly provable.

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