Comment by Homunculiheaded | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Homunculiheaded | Hacker News Reader

Homunculiheaded

"This is despite the fact that science, alone, can lay claim to a wealth of empirical evidence on the psychological effects of surveillance."

Why do people ever expect reason to be a part of this? This quote shows exactly the point of surveillance (and torture for that matter). In a reasonable world, science and reason hold the greatest possible power. To perform surveillance despite the fact that it doesn't make sense is to exert one's power over reason itself. You cannot argue with an entity wielding such power, they have empirically shown that they are more powerful than reason. Follow this line and the only reasoning you are left with as an individual is submit or...

I've pasted this a million times but I strongly believe this is the absolutely most important quote from 1984 (from O'Brien torturing Winston Part 3, Chapter 3):

"We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?' "

We could easily add to that 'the object of surveillance is surveillance'. There is no end game in any of these assertions of power other than expression and confirmation of power: not security, not prosperity, not even the welfare of the nation.

This can be the thread of repeat quotes as I've posted this one before also. The author rightly uses the word 'bondage' as surveillance is part of servitude. Servitude of the powerless is the ultimate goal of power.

"Next in importance to personal freedom is immunity from suspicions, and jealous observation. Men may be without restraints upon their liberty: they may pass to and fro at pleasure: but if their steps are tracked by spies and informers, their words noted down for crimination, their associates watched as conspirators, who shall say that they are free? Nothing is more revolting to Englishmen than the espionage which forms part of the administrative system of continental despotisms. It haunts men like an evil genius, chills their gaiety, restrains their wit, casts a shadow over their friendships, and blights their domestic hearth.

The freedom of a country may be measured by its immunity from this baleful agency. Rulers who distrust their own people, must govern in a spirit of absolutism; and suspected subjects will be ever sensible of their bondage."

The Constitutional History Of England Vol II (1863), pg. 288

by T. E. May

http://archive.org/stream/constitutionalhi029622mbp#page/n31...

Except of course for religion.

The object of torture is torture.

And so answers a question in the thread Don't fly during Ramadan. Why, when picked for examination/interrogation, does TSA threaten or actually re-search bags & people over and over knowing nothing new will be found? This.

> We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.

I am not entirely sure of this btw. We've seen a number of very short-lived successful coup de'etats in Ecuador which can only be under the assumption that the military seized power to make a political statement on behalf of protesters, and then quickly relinquished power. Additionally I have to wonder about Felix Sulla's restoration of the Roman republic near the end of his rule. I think it is likely that these are exceptions that prove the rule but "no one ever" is way too broad to be true on its face.

I think the larger problem is that organizations have a will to live independent of their members, and killing an organization is hard. What is the object of surveillance? It depends on who you ask. For the government agencies involved, this is a matter of extending their territory and so your view may hold some water there, but for a wider class, the object of surveillance is money, and they are the ones calling the shots I think.

One could argue the fact there's been so many coup d'etats by the military shows the military continues to hold the power.

I don't think that is the case. I think it is more likely that because of the banking crisis, people lost faith in their political institutions because the moneyed interests controlled everything and that even the army knew they could not really stand up to them. In other words, I think it is more likely that the army never had power than that they always had it.

Money == Power

The coup in Portugal in 1974 another example that gave up power soon afterwards.

The article's lead photo shows a frame from a movie version of 1984. The actor depicting the freedom-seeking protagonist, standing in front of an image of Big Brother, later depicted a near-identical Big Brother character in the 1984-ish V for Vendetta.

All too often those young idealists morph into the power structure they seek to topple. They may not start out with the objective of dictatorship per se, but they know no other path than to impose their own.

I always assumed mass surveillance was established not for the sake of surveillance, but to enable government to frame any citizen of some federal crime, a.k.a. terrorize the nation in order to hold the political influence and the money in their hands tightly.

Bingo. That and business intelligence/insider trading. Surveillance is very profitable.

I don't think the argument is really an argument against power. America has a wider political class, that holds power through democracy (at least partly, we hope). In many ways, in fact, democracy, free expression and privacy have the unique selling point of the West's system of governance. The argument is that this power isn't strengthened by surveillance but rather weakened and threatened (and the value of America-as-brand as well, I'd add). It is thus in the interests of those who hold power through democracy to put an end to the present level of surveillance. Whether there is really enough leverage for that to happen is another and less comforting question.

It is thus in the interests of those who hold power through democracy to put an end to the present level of surveillance.

I think you may have inadvertently hit on the problem. The people who hold the most power in the US don't do so because of democracy, they do so because of money. Campaign financing means that the winners are those who are able to wield a significant amount of money.

It isn't necessary that the people with the most money win elections either, just the fact that you must have millions to even get on the playing field means democracy is not the foundation of their power, it's just an obstacle.

It's less informative to say 'Power is its own end' than to explain why people try to acquire power, what they do with it, and what they do to keep it. Since we're doing quotes:

"As if giving grounds did not come to an end sometime. But the end is not an ungrounded presupposition: it is an ungrounded way of acting."

It's much, much simpler than that. It's laziness, and the desire to look like you're doing something. It's much, much easier to simply collect, collect, collect than actually analyse the intelligence... intelligently.

You're totally right, of course, but you can't blame folks for trying.

Yes you can and I do.

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