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Comment by orthecreedence | Hacker News Reader

Snowden pointed and everyone looked at his finger. I feel like US citizens as a whole are a lost cause.

We're basically living the 1984 surveillance nightmare (remember the monitoring devices that lived in everyone's homes that were watching them?). The only difference is we've actually been duped to pay for the devices that spy on us and install them willingly. But it's soOoO convenient to ask Alexa "what's the weather like outside" (because sticking your head out the fucking front door is just, ugh, such a nightmare) or to save you from the unbelievably arduous and thankless task of having to flip a light switch with your finger.

Definitely worth it.

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It's not like 1984 at all. You're missing the important half of the equation. No one's (at an aggregate level) getting Room 101ed from it.

Assange still hasn't been put on trial. It's been well over a decade. Same for the guys at Guantanamo.

The CIA runs a global network of unaccountable torture prisons.

They once grounded (over Austria) and swatted the plane of a head of state flying from Moscow to Bolivia because they thought Snowden might be on it.

They don't use the power very often, but it is there when they want to, at any time.

Ignoring for the moment the merits of prosecuting Assange in the first place, I don't think you can really blame the government for the delay there, at least most of it.

Like the last 2 years, after the courts ruled that he should not be shipped to the US for prosecution, but he's been held in a dungeon waiting for the appeal from the US government to be ruled on?

Assange's current status is that the UK has approved his extradition and he's appealing it. The US did appeal from a previous decision Assange had won blocking the transfer, and it won that appeal something around a year later.

Again, if the position is that the whole prosecution is unjust, a mockery of the First Amendment, chilling to journalism and free speech, then fine. But saying the US is responsible for the delay in putting him on trial is strange to me.

https://news.yahoo.com/kidnapping-assassination-and-a-london...

The fundamental argument isn't that the power (indiscriminate & pervasive one-way invasion of privacy) wielded by the NSA is actively being abused (which isn't to say it's never abused, but that's besides the point), rather, the argument is that, as a democratic and free people, we should be staunchly opposed to freely granting the right for such power to exist.

If one of our primary objectives as a liberal, democratic society is to avoid that kind of oppressive totalitarianism (as would be expected of a liberal democracy), then we have a duty to seek and employ the most effective strategy possible in avoiding that outcome.

Two things are required for the type of totalitarian surveillance described in 1984: the technological means and the will of the state to demand such evil acts be committed.

I'd argue that the best strategy to prevent an outcome that requires both means and will is to target the means. If the means exist, the state lacks only the will to utilize those means for evil ends (putting people in Room 101).

If the state lacks the means, then even once the will to do evil does inevitably come along, the state will be rightfully shackled and lack the requisite tools to enforce such tyranny.

> No one's (at an aggregate level) getting Room 101ed from it.

Start a political party that has enough success to threaten the status quo. Be Assange. Be Snowden. Talk is cheap.

This is true, at the moment. My concern is that things change over time, but what is the likelihood that the data is going away, or that the spying will suddenly stop? It seems almost inevitable that abuse will increase over time.

OH, my bad. You're right. An enormous surveillance apparatus silently orchestrated by a marriage of industry and state that actively spies on its own citizens is fine and will never actually be used against the people. I don't know why I was so worried haha!

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