I like this a lot. It does a good job of dispelling the poor I've-got-nothing-to-hide defense. Being against a surveillance state isn't about being against the state being able to prosecute criminals, it's about being against giving the state (a group of people) the architecture to leverage personal information to maintain a political agenda. This sounds conspiratorial in the US and, I think, for now, it kind of is. However liberty is chipped away in bits and pieces, not in broad swings of an axe.
"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.
>"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.
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.
From my quick skimming of Yugoslavian history, the period from the end of World War II and in particular the 1970s up to 1986 was actually frought with economic and ethnic tensions. One of the sections of the Wikipedia page is titled "Ethnic Tensions and Economic Crisis." [1]
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!
I'm not necessarily arguing with you, but the Wikipedia page was obviously written long after the Yugoslav wars. Hindsight is always 20/20 -- after any major event, we can go back and pick out the causes, but that doesn't mean the causes were apparent or even extraordinary at the time. It's just an effect of confirmation bias.
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.
I remember how the conflict started in Slovenia. It was initiated by the Yugoslav federal army, which was Serb-dominated. To think of an analogous sequence of events in the U.S., you'd need the U.S. army dominated by one faction, e.g. Texas. Then say California decides to secede because they are tired of giving money to support red states. Federal army comes in (or actually is already in) and starts shooting at state-level national guard and police. That's roughly what Slovenia was like.
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. :-)
I grew up in Yugoslavia. I was surprised by the wars (it started in Slovenia) because up to that point things were peaceful, and being a kid, didn't really have insight into ethnic tensions. But even to me it was clear that once war broke out in Slovenia and Croatia, it would most certainly happen in Bosnia as well, and that there it would be much, much worse.
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.
I just noticed these comments. I just wanted to point out that I wasn't trying to draw some sort of analogy between the U.S. and the former Yugoslavia. I thought that much was clear.
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.
Watching that Olympics from Sarajevo, and then following the news of the war and atrocities just a few years later, was definitely a... "strange" experience.
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.
Here's the kicker though: everyone who defends this type of spying does so saying it's only to catch 'terrorists'. Even if we accepted the idea that this would be all it ever was used for...it still means every one of us, right now, can be surveilled, locked up on any excuse, and charged with terrorism.
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-.
everyone who defends this type of spying does so saying it's only to catch 'terrorists'. Even if we accepted the idea that this would be all it ever was used for...it still means every one of us, right now, can be surveilled, locked up on any excuse, and charged with terrorism.
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 definition of a terrorist is easy: someone who does something that the government does not like. Right now, for the United States, that definition mostly overlaps with what the governed people also do not like, such as ending people's lives and financial crimes and all that. The problem, at least for those not in charge, is that the definition can and does slip.
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.
One of these days, you guys are going to figure out how to make this argument without resorting to "In the grim darkness of the far future, blackmail will totally happen. This will be incredibly new and no one will have figured out it happens until it's too late!"
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.
>"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.
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 problem is that this misuse of power by the US government happens hand-in-hand with a power grab of the same scale by US corporations. Google collects similar amounts of information as the NSA, and certainly uses much more of it than the NSA does.
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 Google. First, the people you correspond with may be on Google. Second, and this is the most important point, Google does not make clear the terms of the contract you're entering with them (i.e. free services in exchange for semi-authorized surveillance). In effect, they're tricking people into surveillance.
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.
"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.