[1] - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/09/nsa-spies-onli...
[1] https://www.wired.com/story/far-right-took-over-steam-discor...
Even if one pressed play expecting Carre or The Wire, I imagine by the time the main character finds himself slow-motion dog-piled under 5 Brazilian jujitsu experts who are brothers and dress identically (after just such a scenario was lightly foreshadowed several scenes before), viewers might realize they’ve walked into something unexpected (and imo magical).
It’s not about the way things work — it’s about the way life feels.
You're right there are things you cannot or should not do. Surveilling communications where there is no expectation of privacy does not strike me as falling into that category. Surveilling the town square for potential leaks of classified information isn't oppressive. Equating that to surveilling all communications of every single journalist would charitably be described as misleading. Yes, historically nations did not have such elaborate surveillance mechanisms, but historically, communications had significantly more friction, lower velocity, and limited mechanisms for distribution.
I mean we're not not only doing the exact same stuff, but going above and beyond it. The thing about authoritarianism is that people seem to associate with some leader just oppressing the people - helpless to resist, but historically that's not how it works at all. In reality, authoritarianism tends to have an in-group and an out-group. And the in-group often feels neutral to highly positive about the authoritarian government, and feel they're only doing what is necessary to maintain proper peace, order, and value. To this day you can find people with extremely positive views of Stalin - not just for defeating Nazism but for his reign in general. This includes many whose family (and in some instances even themselves - though their numbers are decreasing due to age) lived through this time! This video [1] turned into a meme, but it's genuine and part of a real interview.
I somehow get the impression you're around my age. If I'm correct there then imagine taking yourself back to the early 2000s or maybe even earlier, and describing to your youthful self what America would be like in 20 years. You wouldn't believe yourself - it'd sound like absolute insanity. But because it's all happened inch by inch, it all feels kind of normal. But I think, and hope, that when you describing what we're going through today, to your children or your children's children 20 or 40 years from now, that they'll find it just as unbelievable as the you of 20 years ago might have found it.
I get the concern about authoritarianism, and I share it. Realistically though, intelligence services have been doing exactly that kind of activity since before networks or computers existed. It's the nature of intelligence work that without the proper checks and balances, it can be abused by an authoritarian regime. It's also a reality that the advent of networks and computers has made it far easier to exfiltrate information much more quickly and much more broadly.
> I somehow get the impression you're around my age. If I'm correct there then imagine taking yourself back to the early 2000s or maybe even earlier, and describing to your youthful self what America would be like in 20 years.
I like the idea that I was youthful in the early 2000's. ;-) I guess I wasn't middle aged then, so that counts as youthful, right?
Truth be told, in the early 2000's I was already aware that intelligence services were able to listen in on phone calls, surveil any newsgroups/mailing lists/etc. That was around the time when Skipjack (which absolutely strikes me as authoritarian creep) was having nails put in its coffin. Police could do wire taps on this stuff with a search warrant. This was also an era when intelligence services were deliberately crippling cryptographic protocols so they could compromise them as needed. The "inch-by-inch" change has been the volume of data that is being produced and the volume of data that is being gathered by intelligence services.
The "creep" that I'm worried about is less on the capability side and much more on the legal & political side. The PATRIOT Act is a pretty good example of broad, sweeping powers that we've given to the state, with far fewer restrictions, that is unlike what it has traditionally had. I also worry about the broad erosion of our institutions. That's the kind of "inch by inch" I'm concerned about.
Obviously I'm referencing the giant orange elephant in the room here, but we can take far less divisive issues as well. For instance there's 0 chance the Founding Fathers would have felt that the current systems of mass surveillance ought be allowed under the 4th amendment. Yet here we are. It's not really laws that have been creeping further and further beyond the pale, but actions. And those actions grow only more extreme by the day. This is why, to me, I think we may have already crossed whatever 'border' there is into authoritarianism.