After the last few days of headlines on HN, I am starting to feel a bit (a lot) like a conspiracy theory wingnut. Am I going mad? Is it just me?
One of the usual arguments against "conspiracy" theories is that apparently it over estimates how clever and organised a government can be.
"Oh, don't be so silly, a government could never keep all that quiet, you silly little conspiracy theorist." Then as an aside, often talking tot the interviewer or audience, in a getting you on side tone, " Such poor weak people need to know that governments control everything. There is comfort in that for them".
Heard that kind of patronising put down before, used against people trying to be heard? Note how with the statements from both US and UK governments, they also avoid the direct answers? Same as google, FB, etc? "Trust us, we are only after the bad guys, and if you have nothing to fear..."
Hmmm, well, until a whistle blower spoke out, all that surveillance was conspiracy theory. Any one who spoke out or claimed it was happening was put down, patronised or accused of being a foil hatted nutter.
Except, it turned out to be true.
Or think back to how the illegal extraordinary rendition story broke. Rumours of secret night flights carrying kidnapped people and delivering them to off limits secret torture prisons in places out of jurisdiction. A very evil setup, denied left right and centre by the US government. Accusers were openly mocked. All until some UK plane spotters started taking down plane numbers and looking them up, connecting the dots.
So, yes, if you criticise the government or the power that be you are almost programmed to feel like a "wing nut", etc, etc. Just like you are made to feel "unpatriotic" or worse still, "traitorous".
Trust us, the are nukes in Iraq, we must invade......
A reasonable common-sense question is also - what use is a database with 8 million records in a situation dire enough to necessitate invoking continuity-of-government procedures/martial law/etc. Who exactly is going to go out and check up on 8 million 'potential threats' in case of, say, a nuclear attack?
History and psychology prove power in the hands of the few corrupts. The only difference this time is the technology being used - the goal is the same as it was in every other case, control of dissenters of the imposed status quo.
I would take care to stay focused on the actual issue and not get distracted by conspiracy theory bullshit. PRISM is bad enough. When our wingnuts start babbling about how this is just like <insert conspiracy theorist bullshit here> and trying to "demand answers" there, they weaken our position. The feeling you have now thanks to PRISM is, apparently, addictive. But the last thing you want to do is align your position with a bunch of easily dismissed nonsense. Attack the problem you know about first. Discover more problems later.
One thing that I am pretty certain about: blame is not the appropriate response; particularly as far as the security services are concerned. Assuming there were no procedural abuses (a big assumption), one has a great deal of sympathy for the difficult position the security services were in: asked to solve an (almost if not actually) impossible problem, they reached for exactly the same tools and techniques that I would have done, were I in the same situation. Given the same task, and the same constraints, I cannot see how I would have reacted differently.
For me, the real question is whether they should have been given that task in the first place. Intuitively, the answer seems to be an obvious and resounding "No"; although I do acknowledge that the problem is a difficult and nuanced one. The temptation to blame Bush for the whole thing is quite strong, although as I mentioned; I am sure that the debate is difficult and nuanced, and we do not have all the facts (although the trust that we might use in place of the facts is in precious thin supply).
Trust me - you'll like it.