How Much Surveillance Can Democracy Withstand?

wired.com

34 points·Libertatea··5 comments

Or to rephrase it: when much surveillance turn a free society turn into a police state?

I feel this is one of the most important articles I've read in the wake of Snowden's patriotic disclosure. Thank you Libertatea for sharing it.

Admittedly skimmed this once I saw it is a list of "remedies" that will, unfortunately, never happen.

Stallman is right again, but he leaves out a very important point about privacy and constitutionally limited government: Without privacy, ANY law can be implemented.

Imagine re-arguing abortion in this era of big data. If makers of pregnancy and baby products can reliably infer that you are pregnant, do you still have an expectation of privacy in what it going on inside your body? The government almost certainly knows you are pregnant. They have your call to your mother recorded. You have admitted it!

The government knows you are pregnant or not. There is no barrier to fairly and uniformly enforcing laws against abortion because reliable information is universally available to any prosecution.

Let's imagine all the other previously impractical laws that would improve society!

Originally a big push back against the social security system was that it would assign a number to every individual allowing each to be tracked by the federal government. Seems to me the original founders intended that the federal government dealt directly with the states and NEVER had anything to do with individual citizens. How much the US has changed....

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