Very sadly, he is completely wrong.
This is the beginning:
"How Much Surveillance Can Democracy Withstand?
The current level of general surveillance in society is incompatible with human rights. To recover our freedom and restore democracy, we must reduce surveillance to the point where it is possible for whistleblowers of all kinds to talk with journalists without being spotted. To do this reliably, we must reduce the surveillance capacity of the systems we use."
Not true. Not even slightly true. Its so tragic.
In principle, I could not agree with him more, but that does not appear to be a reality the vast majority can be bothered with.
Why? The vast majority simply do not care. Worse still a huge chunk of society, on a daily basis, give up more personal information than any government can possibly hope to ask for. We in the UK groan when the census comes up, every 10 years. But the average facebook profile contains more personal information than any census has ever asked for. And many many people up date FB daily. Imagine a government asked us to document our lives daily? I could go on, but that's the general thrust.
So, how much surveillance can society withstand? Loads more.
Is it incompatible with human rights? Well, humans don't seem over bothered, in fact they offer up more information that the government could ever ask for. Hence the NSA/GCHQ slurping.
Because the government will only ever use the data in a small targeted way, it will never ever negatively effect the vast majority of people. So they will never be inconvenienced by it. Only "those" people will be effected, and "they" are guilty evil doers. So, there will never be an uprising or revolt, because most people are unaffected.
See, even people most out raged by this agree that its good if they can round up terrorists, pedophiles or who ever the current bogyman is. Well, while we accept that, we accept the method, and there for that "evil" must exist. When it exists, it can be easily and silently abused. The expectations are the gaps through which evil seeps. This is why we are or try to be absolute about torture, chemical or biological weapons, racism, and so on. We know if we allow it in any way, mission creep will happen.
Of course, the real hypocrisy of people is that when something bad happens, we blame government for not having enough control over circumstances. We immediately say, "why didn't they do this that or the other. They failed." What if all this slurping of data could have prevented 9/11?
But in the end, from what I have seen, society can easily with stand a hell of a lot more surveillance. We allow it, government moderates it's use such that most never see the down side, government loves control, and we expect government to have that control.
Truth is, really, people want more surveillance so that they can live nice risk free lives. Frankly, I'm not sure people really want real freedom at all. They want a freedom, or their freedom, one that suits their daily lives. But are only too happy to deny freedom to others as long as their freedoms are preserved.
If this slurping is really that evil and unacceptable, incompatibly with human rights, why haven't millions of people descended on Washington and London, rioting in the streets, bringing down our respective governments?
Or are all these out raged people trusting democracy and the ballot box will sort it out?
Or, is it that really they don't care?