/u/161719 tells us all why surveillance is not OK
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"161719" is absolutely right, it probably won't be Obama, or the next President, or the President after that abuses the surveillance architecture that has been put in place. However, the day will come when the chips are down on some administration, because of some terrorist attack (domestic or foreign) or politically volatile situation, and there will be immense political and moral support for them to utilize our, now, nascent surveillance architecture to stop bad things from happening that are morally gray (like a political movement that is highly divisive). That's the nightmare scenario. Those who take the government's surveillance abuses seriously aren't (de facto) anti-security or anti-law-and-order they are concerned, I think, rightly so about the path we are headed down.
Blackmail has been happening regularly for the past four thousand years, ever since we noticed that politics is a thing. These "nightmare scenarios" are like Socrates talking about how people won't understand each other anymore because everything's being written down, or how people say the Internet is making us stupid because filter bubble or what not. You guys keep going on about how, if you don't stop things now, it'll be bad down the road. This is blind idiocy. The nightmare scenario already showed up a thousand years ago. You need to figure out how to respond to it, rather than trying to prevent it.
Figuring out how to scare the sheeple isn't a pissing contest between you and the state.
You'd be surprised how fast things can go downhill under proper conditions.
In 1984, Sarajevo, which prided itself as being the most cosmopolitan and tolerant of cities in Yugoslavia, was at the top of the world. At the time, Yugoslavia a very advanced and prosperous country with the world's sixth largest army and fifth largest air force (by air assets), and nearly matched the largest economies of the Eastern Block by GDP (Poland and Czechoslovakia). It also enjoyed significantly more political freedom than the Eastern Block, with most citizens able to freely travel to both Western Europe and the Eastern Block countries.
That year, Sarajevo hosted the Winter Olympics, and basked in the admiration of the world. There was little to no talk of "ethnic tensions" or "ancient hatreds", and all three major religions mixed freely, along with a sizable Jewish population dating back to the 1400s. Sarajevo had by far the highest rate of interreligious marriage of any Yugoslav city.
Six years later, Bosnia was in a state of horrific sectarian war, Sarajevo was under siege, and a campaign of religious genocide against the local Muslim population was well underway in the countryside around the city. War refugees brought with them tales of violence unheard of in Europe since the Nazi years. The brutal war lasted for another 3 bloody years, with almost 200,000 dying in Bosnia alone from the violence.
My point is, given the right conditions, things can go downhill from "pretty good" to "god-awful" incredibly fast.
And that was with the... "luxury" of being at significant remove from the actual circumstances.
I agree. One can't count on inertia. Or, perhaps it might be said, inertia can be a two-edged sword. Once the direction begins changing, it can be very difficult to stop.
People should also note that the Ukranian activities have been a long, unfolding process - there was the Orange Revolution there just 10 years ago. The recent events are not unanticipated.
I mention these b/c your post refutes the PP's belief that the U.S. is far from "downhill." I do not believe the U.S. is anywhere near "proper" :) conditions for things to go downhill. It is still wise for us to inhibit the growth of surveillance apparatus, but the U.S. is quite different from the war-torn former Communist republics. We have had some challenges like recessions, the Enron scandal, etc., but we are simply too large, too diverse and have too much momentum for damage in any part of our country to spread and threaten the entirety of it.
I believe the majority of the spying apparatus which has been uncovered has been for national and individual economic cheating and gaining military initiative rather than controlling the population. Gaining access to individuals of interest, however, is a handy fringe benefit, I imagine, and we should certainly curtail the growth of systems which abet this activity. We could start by not working for and not letting our friends work for, the architects and implementers of these systems! Of course it's not a problem for most of us in this particular sphere, because so many of us focus on delighting and creating value for customers instead! yay!
Suppose the parent was correct and the US was a decade from the same sort of chaos. In such a 2024 world, loads of people could write about the conditions that led up to the current conditions. The rise of the surveillance state, the beginnings of an anti-government movement in the Tea Party, those things would be obvious in 2024. However, if (as is more likely) 2024 America is a lot like 2014 America, no one is going to be writing those articles about how the rise of the surveillance state led to...not much.
It's a huge stretch because the U.S. doesn't really have ethnic factions like YU used to. And its army is not really Texas-controlled, or even if it were nobody would care. :-)
The first two conflicts were mostly Serb vs. Croat. However, members of those ethnic groups in Bosnia tended to be more extremist, and there was the additional complication of there being a large Muslim minority involved in plenty of grudges dating back to Turkish occupation. It was pretty clearly a barrel of gunpowder just waiting to explode.
Having said that the Yugoslav conflicts really had very little to do with a surveillance state and an evil government. It was more a sectarian war with somewhat even sides. Yugoslavia was a lot better on the 'Orwellian government' scale than the rest of the Eastern bloc.
My point was that things can do rapidly downhill even in prosperous countries. That was the sole thesis of my comment.
And of course it was clear what would happen in Bosnia once the war started in Croatia (Slovenia was over so quickly). My emphasis was that none of this was expected back in 1984.
Protest the government peacefully, but in an area they don't like? Terrorist. https://www.aclu.org/national-security/how-usa-patriot-act-r...
Really, break any law? Terrorist. http://wilmington.patch.com/groups/police-and-fire/p/for-pol...
Do anything whatsoever? Terrorist. http://www.storyleak.com/everyone-now-terrorist-us-governmen...
Really, we're seeing this constant broadening of what can be labelled terrorism, and once you're labelled that, you effectively lose all your rights.
With that, and pervasive surveillance, any act you make to change the government, or to voice your concerns as a citizen, makes you vulnerable to having all of your rights revoked. That's -terrifying-.
This is because the US government (and Five Eyes countries) has not, and probably will never define what the word "terrorist" means to them.
The conundrum, at least for me, is that I am perfectly willing to accept that government--as an institution, not specifically any current government--is a good thing. Government can and should do things like build roads, provide mass transit, raise a military, promulgate regulations for things like the economy and the environment and the RF spectrum, and even make provision for health care and a social safety net. All of these things can and should exist in a modern country with a modern government.
However, this only works if the people doing the governing recognize that they, too, are governed. Our (the United States) government has delegated so much to private entities and hidden agencies and "dark" budgets that the folks in those groups no longer need to feel as though they are limited. They _can_ do almost anything because our public government has _given_ them that ability. I don't think that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, just that a good idea can inevitably be twisted into something foul.
So you could say the US is facing two threats: government overreach and corporate feudalism. The question then becomes which of the two is the more serious, and more imminent threat? Considering American culture and history, and combining it with a sober, non-ideological analysis of the current forces affecting government and its structure, I'd say that corporate feudalism is a lot more likely, and a much bigger threat.
But you can't avoid the government.
In many ways this is far worse than what the government does because what the government does irks people; it generates anger. Google does not, and they have people like you maintain the illusion that you can opt out of Google, when, in fact, "opting out" is really hard. In 1984 Orwell made it clear that Big Brother rules through love, not violence or coercion. Few would rebel against a power that creates an illusion that it is not oppressive. A government does not have this advantage.
Wait, who said it's not abused as we speak?
In fact, illegal surveillance was going on (and abused) at least since the J.E Hoover days.
The real danger facing the US at the present time is not of becoming a fascist surveillance state. It's of becoming a corporation, with a vast sea of indentured servants, where the owners of the corporation are a small group of people with wealth beyond one's wildest dreams. This is the dystopian scenario that Orwell would write about if he were alive today. In this future, you will have to be on good terms with the management of the corporation, or you will find yourself in great difficulties. The owners will take pride in the acts of charity and goodwill that they bestow upon you, the poor, and will expect gratitude in return.
To the contrary, I think the eventuality described in TFA is almost necessary for establishing the corporatist state you fear.
So, what you really want, is remove opportunities for corporations to use free money. Then everything they do, they'd have to pay for out of their own pocket. And that would be a game changer.
This isn't hypothetical. This was the situation in the US about 100 years ago when the robber barons ruled the country. And by the way, some of them did pay for their own police force (the Pinkertons) to fight the unions.
I'm not saying I think he would do that, but hey, who really knows what he would think about things today.
(Maybe take this as whinging that people should try to speak for themselves)
When we talk about surveillance on western forums, we mostly refer to the work by the five eyes community, but they're not the only community interested in or doing this sort of thing. Russia's SORM-2, expanded for the Sochi Olympics is a prime example, the Chinese have something similar too.
The fact is that even if western governments turn round to their intelligence agencies and tell them to stop all of this, other countries will still fill the gap.
If Germany tells America to stop spying on German citizens in Germany, do you think America will stop spying on them? No, of course not. Do you think the German intelligence community will give up benefiting from such information if it helps them bypass any new privacy laws put in place? No, of course not.
It's here. The difference between the Stasi and the NSA when it comes to surveillance is not intent, simply capability. Any intelligence agency that would've had this level of capability would've pushed it as far as they can, it's what they do and they're not going to change.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6QbLK5aySU&t=2m47s
The actual document he is referring to: http://imgur.com/NobVcQD
Examples: government officials actually should be very transparent, as in "they can't refuse they are constantly monitored by public". Legal opportunities for various kinds of "closed doors negotiations" should be sharply reduced, as in "closed door negotiations are only allowed in cases 1), 2) and 3)", for example, military, international talks. Many decisions involving specific actions are required to have the name of the decider, who is both required to be questioned by public and, if public decides, removed from the position (mechanism of decision is another matter).
The USA has had a history of intimidating select citizens with operations like COINTELPRO and Operation Mockingbird (suppression and influence of journalism and the media). So, it's not really that large of a jump. Even if it is, it's already been made decades ago.
There. Whole bunch of drama, as you can read about if you enable subredit CSS.
And, while I find that there is an ongoing debate on topics llike racism on that /r/ -- they tend to be efforts to distract from the core content.
The fact is that there IS, INDEED, an effort to maintain control over the people who have-not, by those who have.
As such it is critical to continue to talk about these topics...
There is a lot of corrupt BS happening. /r/conspiracy would need not exist if people weren't being deluded about the fact that a small portion of the global population is exploiting a great percentage of the global population.
Oh, and /u/flytape, a mod of the subreddit, is a holocaust denier.
That story is just over-reaching.
Conspiracy is a dog biting its own tail, I'm sure many people try to use conspiracy for political goals, just like Nazi propaganda did.
If I were a politician, there are many ways I could use conspiracy theories to change the public opinion. I don't think it entirely make any conspiracy theory wrong, but as always, be careful of movements of groups of people.
If you don't understand what I mean, watch Promised Land (Gus Van Sant movie with matt damon about fracking in a small US town). It describes very well how to use FUD in politics to efficiently change the public opinion.
i don't see how the story is over-reaching. people like you are the reason systems like prism exist - "oh, things got bad in some far away country, but this is america, something like that would never happen here. our politicians would never abuse the powers they are illegally giving themselves, so we don't really have anything to worry about".
this is the world we live in now. things are going to get worse before (if) they get better. unfortunately, i may never be able to tell you "i told you so", because in the future there may be no platform for us to express our discontent.
Statements like this make people roll their eyes and walk away. You don't need hyperbole to explain why mass surveillance is dangerous.
I actually believe free speech is a strong set of checks and balances, which once acquired, is hard to remove. It's a strong safety against abuse. It's something people actually believe in. Do you really think evil people are crazy enough to plot against free speech ? It's easier to just use free speech to prove someone's claims are stupid.
Oppression occurs mostly because of economics, not because of surveillance.
Aren't you happy Snowden remembered free speech ? It's a great example of summoning the courage to defend important concept, but there is no reason to compare a developed country, democratically-elected government, using congress and plenty of other of other functional institutions, with developing and third world countries. You got to watch history too.
On top of it, I agree about how surveillance can be used to blackmail people, but I doubt you can entirely shut dissent with just blackmail. Blackmail is not a good thing, but you can't honestly believe, with the amount of communications and books, that Orwell predicted the future. Orwell warned us, just like Huxley, so it's not like it's going to happen in the US.
I just want to have a honest debate, and I will shoot any emotional attempts to explain how this or that is good or bad, because it's not enough. This comment is just using emotions and fear to make a point. FUD if you prefer. I want to believe that surveillance is setting an apocalypse, but I'm just skeptic enough to just think twice.
I'd like to point out that the protagonist loses the moment he turns on his friends. That's the turning point.
/u/161719 is not even good for writing fiction; is not even good for writing anything at all