Hacker News Reader

> They don't want new powers, they want their old powers back

Maybe you're too young to remember a time when no one carried a GPS in their pocket, most payments were done in cash and only banks had CCTV cameras. I'd love to see states and companies take back the "powers" they had back then :)

View on HN

No, I'm not that young, but I've read enough history knowing that countries had a passing knowledge about the state of the population under their control. You don't need Stasi or NSA level of access to know the state of your citizens.

Intelligence is an old craft. Insiders are old as well. However, speed of life and increase in population coupled with new communication methods invalidate these old methods.

To protect their status quo, governments want their so-called vision back, and then some...

True, but your phone calls, letters and packages were very easy to silently tap and interdict and were all controlled by central monopolies. Nobody encrypted anything, so raids on offices gave a lot juicy information in plain paper.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com