I think that to some, surveillance often looks like a way to get the efficiency of distributed decision making while keeping central control (which has definitely been the philosophy behind China's economic experiments of the past 30y). But historically, it has arced towards enforcing centralized organization for reasons that have nothing to do with the efficiency of the tech involved - and that pattern has proven both bad for a population and self-defeating for regimes.
This is something that could only be targeted decades ago. Now its cost-admissible to run at scale - and to do so adaptively to improve the methods.
Come to think of it, I can't remember the last time HN had a good discussion about US censorship and surveillance.
Weird.
Your comments are so unproductive (i.e. emotional/irrelevant/us-vs-them) that they actually undermine the cause you say you're concerned about. You give the rest of us a bad name.
Defending him was your job, not mine.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19187633 was particularly unacceptable.