We Can Avoid a Surveillance State Dystopia

An anonymous reader writes "After the past year's revelations about NSA spying, it's hard to read any commentary about society without dire warnings of the coming (or already present) surveillance state. Sci-fi author Ramez Naam makes the point that while government surveillance needs to be fought, it's actually not as bad as what we were promised in decades past. 'Aldous Huxley published Brave New World in 1932. And while Brave New World is remembered more for predicting government-controlled biological engineering of the masses, it also features government surveillance, media manipulation, and thought control. This is an old idea. Yet somehow, today, in most of the world, governments have dramatically less control over their people than they did when Huxley and Orwell wrote those words. Indeed, the average person on Earth is more free today, in 2014, than he or she would have been in the actual year 1984. The arc of history has bent towards more freedom.' Naam also explains that the technological advances allowing the bulk collection of personal data also provide us with cheap and easy means to fight government overreach."

Comments

Wait what

[Anonymous Coward]

So the government doesn't control the media and control us through fear of terrorism? Because it seems to me that they kind of do

Re:Wait what

[Killall -9 Bash]

In what country did you grow up in the 80's in, because all of the terrorism I remember happening in the 80's happened in other countries.

Re:Wait what

[Immerman]

And? Fear of a real thing is still a fear, and the world is full of real threats. The question is: is the fear proportional to the danger? And it's pretty clearly not where terrorism is concerned. Even in 2001, the undisputed high-water mark for US terrorism deaths, only a few thousand people died in the attacks, versus the roughly 40,000 who died in car crashes. It's pretty clear the fear had nothing to do with actual danger, but rather with media sensationalism and propaganda.

Re:Wait what

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL so did I 'constant real terror attacks'

yeah what 4-5 things happened which where hugely hyped up through the media,.. couldn't be a distraction from

Iran - 1980 - Americans aborted a rescue attempt to liberate 52 hostages seized in the Teheran embassy.
Libya - 1981 - American fighters shoot down two Libyan fighters.
El Salvador - 1981-92 - The CIA, troops, and advisers aid in El Salvador's war against the FMLN.
Nicaragua - 1981-90 - The CIA and NSC directed the Contra War against the Sandinistas.
Lebanon - 1982-84 - Marines occupied Beirut during Lebanon's civil war; 241 were killed in the American barracks and Reagan "redeployed" the troops to the Mediterranean.
Honduras - 1983-89 - Troops sent in to build bases near the Honduran border.
Grenada - 1983-84 - American invasion overthrew the Maurice Bishop government.
Iran - 1984 - American fighters shot down two Iranian planes over the Persian Gulf.
Libya - 1986 - American fighters hit targets in and around the capital city of Tripoli.
Bolivia - 1986 - The Army assisted government troops on raids of cocaine areas.
Iran - 1987-88 - The United States intervened on the side of Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War.
Libya - 1989 - Navy shot down two more Libyan jets.
Virgin Islands - 1989 - Troops landed during unrest among Virgin Island peoples.
Philippines - 1989 - Air Force provided air cover for government during coup.
Panama - 1989-90 - 27,000 Americans landed in overthrow of President

Re:Wait what

[maliqua]

its not even remotely possible that the terrorist attacks are inspired by the actions of your military are they?

Re:Wait what

[AHuxley]

Also recall the Strategy of tension http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...

Re:Wait what

[Immerman]

No, I think you've got that mostly backwards - the terrorist attacks were mostly because our military and black-ops teams have been continuously fucking with the region for the better part of a century at least. I think we can all agree that Saddam was a terrible, *terrible* leader - wouldn't you be pissed at the people who put him in power and continued to prop up his regime? (not that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11, but his is the name everybody knows)

Re:Wait what

[Opportunist]

That's a "long string of terrorist attacks"?

Gee, growing up in, say, Ireland or Israel would've probably shaken your precious soul...

Re:Wait what

[Opportunist]

Hey, c'mon, that's a trick question. No matter how he answers it it would be very anti-American. :)

Re:Wait what

[Immerman]

Not my fault our government makes it so easy. :(

Though I would like to assert that anti-US-government != anti-American. We lost control of the government a long time ago, if we ever really had it.

Re:Wait what

[Anonymous Coward]

Every terrorist group or totalitarian leader on the planet is always given the benefit of the doubt when it comes to the atrocities they commit.

As has the United States government & Military.

One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

Re:Wait what

[Anonymous Coward]

"Terrorist" attacks happen for a reason; they do not occur in a vacuum. If you want to know why Islamic extremists target occidental assets and people, simply examine US and Soviet foreign policy since 1945. While "we" were conducting a Cold War using client States, and stoking regional, ethnic and religious conflict for our own ends, we were p*ssing a lot of people off.

This is not a justification, nor an excuse, for the attacks "we" have endured; it is an attempt to understand the processes at work. If you don't understand why events occur, if you don't heed the warnings from history, you are condemned to repeat them.

Re:Wait what

[ultranova]

As long as people continue to give the terrorists a free pass on their violence by blaming the victims it will never stop. Every terrorist group or totalitarian leader on the planet is always given the benefit of the doubt when it comes to the atrocities they commit.

When the Allies deposed Hitler, they did so with violence. Were they terrorists? No, they were military forces waging one of the most justifiable campaigns in human history. What about French Resistance, who posed as civilians and tried to oust a foreign conqueror from their homeland? Probably not. What about the commando who sank a passenger ferry carrying heavy water for German atomic bomb program in Norway? Sure, civilians died, but denying Nazis the atomic bomb was kinda important. So how about Iraqi insurgents, who posed as civilians and tried to oust a foreign conqueror from their homeland? Or Obama and the drone assasinations? Or the people rioting in Ukraine

It doesn't help that "terrorist" is used as the boogeyman nowadays, so you can't know if it refers to someone committing atrocities or someone airing your dear leaders dirty laundry.

Re:Wait what

[Opportunist]

This. A billion times this.

I have a lot of friends in the US and I do miss them. But with their government going apeshit I can't reliably believe that if I go visit them I will return safely again. You simply can't trust the country anymore to stick to its own rules. All they have to do when I piss them off sufficiently is slap the "terrorist" label on me and off I go and disappear. Yes, the chance is tiny but it's like with the death penalty: There's a nonzero chance that it might be used against me unjustly and there's nothing I could do to prevent it but staying out of the jurisdiction that could impose it.

But don't feel singled out, I don't go to Russia, Iran or China for similar reasons.

Re:Wait what

[BlueStrat]

Blame the victims? You have it backwards. The American army began sticking it's nose into middle eastern conflicts long before the locals retaliated. You are the aggressor, not the victim.

No, Barbary pirates operating mostly out of Tunis, Algiers, and Tripoli started a program of targeted piracy against US ships in the 1800s. The same place that's in violent turmoil today.They just found another attack vector and set of tactics for today's world.

That's why the US Marines were originally formed. They were called "Leathernecks" because they wore high reinforced collars as protection against beheading by scimitar during hand-to-hand battles.

Strat

Re:Wait what

[causality]

This is not a justification, nor an excuse, for the attacks "we" have endured; it is an attempt to understand the processes at work.

Anyone who needed to have that explained to them did not have an opinion worth listening to. Consider it a litmus test.

The small-minded and emotionally immature are perpetually concerned with fault and blame, be it international conflicts or their own personal lives. They have neither the presence of mind nor the objectivity to focus on cause and effect. For as long as they engage in such self-limitation, true understanding remains beyond their reach.

Re:Wait what

[causality]

Citizens have effectively zero effect on national politics. They're just easy sauce.

If half the effort spent fawning over American Idol and pop music were spent peacefully marching on Washington DC, that would change.

Re:Wait what

[AmiMoJo]

Ireland is a good example of what we need to do. It was a disaster all the time the UK government was taking a hard line against the terrorists, refusing to negotiate or compromise. Then in 1997 a Labour government got in and started a peace process with both sides around a table, and soon after the violence mostly ended to be replaced with a power sharing democratic government. Men who said they would never co-operate with the enemy and never accept anything other than total and unconditional victory, divided by their religions and hundreds of years of history, managed to work together.

Re:Wait what

[Opportunist]

That I'd probably feel safer if they didn't step up their intel ops.

Total security is a myth. The closest you could get to is a prison with everyone in isolation. That's about as close as you can get to total security. But then again, who'd want that?

If you want to be free, you have to pay the price. The price is responsibility and risk. But people don't want to pay that price, they don't want to be responsible and they want to be coddled, they want to be secure and safe without doing anything for it, and that makes it very easy for governments to sell an illusion of protection in exchange for taking away freedoms. All it takes is to scare the people a little and they will beg for it.

Personally, I'd rather accept the risk and responsibility. Yes, that means I have to watch out and take care, and it even means that I might one day be a victim of a terrorist attack. But I'll be a free man until that moment.

It's odd that we're so easily giving up freedom for the weak promise of protection against a nebulous threat that may or may not exist while there are people facing very real and actually very likely repercussions or even death for the slim chance to ever reach that freedom we so easily throw away.

umm no

[dlt074]

we are not more free. we are over regulated, over ruled, over interfered with. period.

you can double-speak it anyway you like. spin spin spin. we are less free then ever here in the US of A.

Re:umm no

[Anonymous Coward]

Utterly predictable as well as off-topic.

Are you sure you're not a bot?

Re:umm no

[Dorianny]

Lets completely ignore the fact that what the economy is recovering from is the huge blunder of the private banking sector following deregulation. Lets repeal Dood-Frank, If they screw up again than we will simply bail them out with tax-payer money like last time, but I am sure they learned their lesson the first time around and what we need is even more deregulation.

Re:umm no

[SpankiMonki]

The housing crisis was "a huge blunder" that was a forced error due to Federal intervention trying to drive up home ownership.

For some reason, you failed to mention that the National Review article you linked to lists many causes of the sub-prime mortgage mess, not just intervention in the market by Fannie & Freddie. I'm sure it was a harmless oversight on your part, though.

I also suspect you're aware that the sub-prime crisis itself was only a part of the broader financial crisis of 2008, and it's pretty clear to me that GP is referring to the broader fiasco, not just the mortgage part.

Dodd-Frank is an impediment to recovery, and yet another excuse for Federal snooping

The Washington Examiner article you linked to says "The Dodd-Frank Act, which established CFPB, bars the bureau from collecting personally identifiable financial information on consumers", so how is it that Dodd-Frank provides an excuse for government snooping? Seems to me the law does just the opposite.

In any case, the relevance of Dodd-Frank and Obamacare to a discussion of avoiding a surveillance state is something that escapes me. But I'm sure you've got it all figured out. Care to share?

Re:umm no

[Zontar The Mindless]

You missed his huge hard-on for the National Security State.

The Problem

[nwaack]

The problem is that most 'normal' people aren't going to use things like Tor in order to not not be spied on by their own county, nor should they have to.

In some ways it's worse than promised.

[medv4380]

We're ether in a surveillance state run by the State, a surveillance state run by Corporations, or a mixture of both. Avoiding one means getting the other at this point. I don't see a third option without destroying the tech that makes it possible, and I'll be keeping my my computers until the Amish Technology Police State take them from my cold dead hands.

Intrusion

[Spazmania]

It's because we have so much freedom that we know enough to be alarmed by how much government intrusion there is.

Where to draw the line.

[Anonymous Coward]

we are not more free. we are over regulated, over ruled, over interfered with. period.

I think spying on Americans is shitty. Regulating discharge from mining companies or oil drilling companies is completely acceptable.

That's my opinion.

You may disagree.

But where does freedom begin and end.

As for me, business is always wrong because profit makes people eventually do evil. Capitalism makes people spiral to the bottom because of its nature. The excuse of "our bottom line" creates a mentality to destroy the commons and poison people. I have never seen an exception. Please, tell me when the profit motive has helped people over the long term. I would really like to know.

Yes, I am implying that Socialism is better over the long term. Although, it's still not good enough.

Economics is the most backwards 'science" ever - it's more of a religion, isn't it.

Re:Where to draw the line.

[Kjella]

As for me, business is always wrong because profit makes people eventually do evil. Capitalism makes people spiral to the bottom because of its nature. The excuse of "our bottom line" creates a mentality to destroy the commons and poison people. I have never seen an exception. Please, tell me when the profit motive has helped people over the long term. I would really like to know.

Money is what keeps me showing up at work five days a week. Now I'd like to think I'm doing something useful there, granted I'm not curing cancer or anything like that but still. Throw me in a "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" communist hellhole I'll do my best to be useless and needy. Or better yet, one of the people in power who decide if other people are useful or have needs. Give me the Star Trek utopia and I'll be the bloody useless guy who spends all his time on the holodeck. Which is why I think all the basic income people are on crack, because there's frankly jobs you wouldn't do if you could live well without doing them.

Money isn't really the cause of anything, it's just the objectification of "What's in it for me?" and honestly, I don't ever see most of my money. They just exist as numbers in a bank somewhere, I can't even wipe my ass with them. They're just easier to use as intermediaries and to gain interest on than buying lifestock and breeding them, forests that produce lumber or whatever else produces "interest". If we weren't using currency we'd still have economics, for example people would look for arbitrage in swapping cows for goats for corn for cows if the exchange rates were off. People would look at the ROI for giving you grain now in return for pork next summer. Maybe they weren't so formal about it, but it still happened long before we started using coins and notes.

Re:Where to draw the line.

[Urza9814]

Money is what keeps me showing up at work five days a week. Now I'd like to think I'm doing something useful there, granted I'm not curing cancer or anything like that but still. Throw me in a "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" communist hellhole I'll do my best to be useless and needy. Or better yet, one of the people in power who decide if other people are useful or have needs. Give me the Star Trek utopia and I'll be the bloody useless guy who spends all his time on the holodeck. Which is why I think all the basic income people are on crack, because there's frankly jobs you wouldn't do if you could live well without doing them.

Personally, I've always found that work is the thing that *prevents* me from doing things I consider useful. Gimme three or more free days in a row, and suddenly I start writing code and building things and getting stuff done. Stick me in a cubicle for eight hours, I try to do as little as possible for those eight hours, then go home and stare at the TV until it's time to sleep. The more "free time" I have, the busier I become.

Of course, that's a different kind of work. At work I'm writing scripts for performance testing software. At home I'm building a web-based home theater system with a control console that pops up out of my coffee table. Although I do also volunteer for some community groups, and that goes WAY up when I don't have to work a 40 hour week -- from hours per month or year to hours per day. In the past, when I didn't *have* to work, I'd spend *more* than 40 hours a week volunteering for various groups.

As for the drugs and holodeck:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...

Re:Where to draw the line.

[sjames]

So you don't want the utopia because you are by your own admission a lazy selfish asshole? :-)

Not a problem. You go ahead and plant your ass firmly on the couch. In a year or two, you'll balloon to 800 pounds and die. Problem solved. The rest of us will be making ourselves useful.

But most of the Basic Income people aim for live 'OKish' without working. To live well, you need to get a job.

Re:Where to draw the line.

[sjames]

Let's take an example. Say the basic income is set at the current minimum wage. Would you be content with a minimum wage lifestyle (but with lots of free time) or might you want to do something useful to get money for nice camping equipment and a gym membership?

Keep in mind too that employers will no longer be able to make work a drudge like so many do today. They'll have to make jobs either highly rewarding and enjoyable to perform or pay very well. For example, no longer allowing sales to promise the moon followed by a 2 month deathmarch.

It's funny you should ask about a tri-athletes value during the multi-billion dollar spectacle that is the Winter Olympics. Many million people are watching right now as I type this. They must find some value in those athletes.

Consider how many potential atheletes are too busy working 50 hours a week to even consider training. Think of the potential small business owners who can't afford to even think about giving it a shot. Think how much safer neighborhoods were for kids when responsible adults were home during the day (but this time we could do it without sexism).

As for the less than amazing jobs, I knew a EE student (now an engineer) who liked his brain dead theater job because he needed to turn his brain off for a few hours after all that studying. McDonalds has already tested (successfully) a robotic burger flopper. It is slightly more expensive than minimum wage workers now, so instead of automating away drudgery, our economic system perpetuates it. Emptying trash bins would be dead simple for a robot. For the same stupid reason, we don't use ronbots for that. It is probable a robot could do the toilets as well. If not, it could be made a lot simpler and less objectionable but nobody does because we have enough desperate people to do it cheap with crappy tools. Meanwhile, the managers would have to be a lot nicer to the employees if they wanted to have any. No more crazy schedules, no more work on Thanksgiving no more demanding that people come in during a snowstorm for a non-emergency job. No more grinding people up and firing them when they burn out.

Some people like tending bar and driving cabs. Google may obsolete the latter soon. Sooner if cab companies demand it. Other public transit could help as well. Some people would probably do those jobs right now if they could afford the pay cut. Some jobs seem a lot better if they don't come with a rat-trap apartment featuring drug dealers in the hallway and a sense that you can never afford to quit. Sometimes just knowing you could quit makes you not want to.

Finally, how long do you suppose it will take for going to the beach to get old? It may seem like never now, but that's because your opportunities are limited. How long do you think you could stand being worthless at just above the poverty line?

No, you cant.

[nurb432]

You cant avoid it. You are not in control of it.

Re:It IS NOT a dystopia

[AHuxley]

The classic low res cameras at malls where not expected to be connected to parts of the US gov in some real time HD with sound public private partnership.
e.g. Philadelphia police look to register private cameras in SafeCam (April 25, 2013)
http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/st...
Add in cheap gov options for facial recognition, gait recognition, regional (state) license-plate tracking and over time with new networks and funding - welcome to a HD dystopia.

The general trend is not towards freedom

[liquid_schwartz]

My grandfather was able to do many things that I cannot. My father was able to do less than him but still more than me. I have already gotten to do things that my kids won't be able to. Need examples, try how many places you can go hunting / fishing / hiking / off roading / target shooting / camping. You can't even have campfires at developed sites in some areas. Consider what firework options you have, they have probably gone down. Granted I live in the Peoples Republic of Kalifornia, so many of you will have more options than I do. Even so, the trend that I've observed is that options (another way of looking at Freedom) are going down. I don't see an end in sight either.

Re:The general trend is not towards freedom

[dbIII]

I've got mixed feelings about that.
One of my relatives who played with relatively low powered fireworks once is missing a couple of fingers. Another who played with a lot of stuff up to and including cordite (the nearby army base had poor security) in his early teens had no damage apart from a reputation for being "that kid" who blew things up.
I've probably still got mixed feeling because in Australia it's still the situation where some people found with explosives near a major dam upstream from a major city were charged under illegal fishing laws instead of "omg terrorism!!!" laws. The police got to use their discretion. There are people that want us to go to the cottonwool wrapped extremes but it hasn't happened yet.
An American visitor said one thing he liked about Australia is that he could go to a park and there would be a sign with the name of the park and nothing else - no long list of stuff you can't do in the park. Of course that has started changing. I can no longer legally camp in one of my favourite spots even though it is in publicly owned land around 10km from any road, and there are now increasingly long lists of what you cannot do in many public parks.

But that's wrong, you nitwit.

[VortexCortex]

TFA is disinformation or ignorance, do not believe the message therein.

You are only as free as they let you be. The news is not the news. You are slaves to corporations that farm you. Your wars are fought to privatize economies. Since secrets were allowed in government they have been actively against all activism, because activism the only thing that affects change, your votes do not matter, the political system is rigged. Maintaining the social, economic, and political status quo, even against the will of the people, is what "national security" means. They don't have to fake disasters, they can craft legislation and posture politically so that when one comes along they can turn a blind eye if need be. Each disaster makes the people more powerless, increasing the wealth gap. This is disaster capitalism, and it is working great even in communist nations.

With unemployment up, you are still spending too much time working: One can not truly fulfill their potential as humans without time to relax, enjoy life, create, and explore new opportunities. Your office jobs are pointless, replaceable either by computers or outsourcing to individuals with less cost of living, and we do so increasingly to ensure no job stability -- nearly everyone is a buggy whip maker one step of progress away from being an "unskilled" homeless person. The labor jobs largely have no unions so their working conditions suffer. In both blue and white collar cases people are given no time to seek new avenues of employ, or even manage their finances (you think bankers hours aren't such for a reason? Information disparity is the source of all evil). With inflation out-pacing pay, money in savings is diminished so that people can not safely leave employ -- The better to entrap and farm you with my dear. If you had a little more time you'd have leverage at your disposal to find better work or keep a plan B so that you can bargain for better pay and working conditions. Each disaster allows the system to ratchet your belts a bit tighter, more reliance, less time to be human. This is why banks are not held accountable, and are rather encouraged to destroy markets. How could anyone benefit from economic disaster and the mayhem it brings? Humans will do whatever it takes to survive, and the unscathed upper echelon will capitalize on this.

What is worse than 1984 is having it worse while fools like the article writer think it's not as bad. Classic ignorance. An example of thought control at its finest. When I became an adult I looked upon your world as though an alien from a distant planet -- I managed to forget all the programming about what "the real world" is, and question everything as a scientist would. The most telling and alarming is your willful resistance to application of the scientific method to governance and worklife. It's fucking disgusting. No engineer or scientist would agree to be ruled thus.

The answer is to modularize and decentralize your production of necessary resources, but no one wants to hear that... Moronic NIMBYs, you deserve what you get for your apathetic ignorance and inaction. The government has codified resistance to sustainable coexistence. That's why farmers can't grow excessive crops, even for personal use, and no city can survive on its own. Hell, school kids aren't even taught basic technologies like how to start a cooking fire, swim, sew, butcher, or bake -- Not survival

Not in America

[srichard25]

"Indeed, the average person on Earth is more free today, in 2014, than he or she would have been in the actual year 1984"

Maybe the average person on Earth is more free today, but the average American is most definitely NOT more free today than they were in 1984. Try to buy a large soda in New York. Try to smoke just about anywhere indoors. Try to board a plane with a pocket knife, or even just a soda. 20 year old adults can serve in the Marines, but can't buy a drink.

Re:It IS NOT a dystopia

[SpankiMonki]

No one complains about those.

That's because in those days there weren't laws like the Patriot Act subverting the 4th Amendment.

There are irrational paranoid fears of a 1984 style future or a Soviet Union future...

It hasn't been that long since someone would be labelled "paranoid" and "irrational" for suggesting that the US government was surveilling *all* phone calls and electronic communications of US citizens. Yet here we are.

Re:It will be a riot

[TapeCutter]

Great idea for a movie, Jim Carey would be excellent in the lead role.

Seriously, I was born in 1959, in my lifetime blacks freed themselves from the company store and won the right to vote, women unchained themselves from the kitchen sink and took control of their reproduction, young men are no longer conscripted to kill other young men, homosexuals can hold hands in public without risking jail and/or chemical castration, teenage mothers are no longer forced to give up their children at birth, men and women can cohabitate without the approval of the local preacher.

Those are just a few of the ways individual freedom has increased in the last half century. We may have taken a small step backward with overzealous mass surveillance but it has done little to reverse the great strides forward that occurred in the 60's and 70's.

Re:Economics is the most backwards 'science" ever

[JohnNemesh]

Sure, and the Polar Vortex that put the entire US in a deep freeze this winter was all a conspiracy! So is the record drought in the Southwest! FOOL! WAKE UP!

Re:Gee...

[Immerman]

Yeah, that *would* be nice.

Unfortunately due to extensive lobbying and the well-understood weaknesses of first-past-the-post voting, in the US we're pretty much limited to picking between Sock Puppet A and Sock Puppet B every couple of years, with potentially independent 3rd-party candidates being unable to compete. They may work for slightly different subsets of powerful special interests, but the evidence is pretty clear that they don't actually listen to their constituency much - just look at the voting records of your representatives as compared to the recommendations of their campaign contributors.

time delay

[duckintheface]

The internet is an inherently chaotic system with most of the computing power on the edges and very weak central controls. This is by design because it creates a stable, robust network. Individuals (first from universities) swarmed the internet in an explosion of creativity. They were followed by corporations as the net was opened to commercial activity. Government was late to the game and is only now coming to grips with how to use the internet for monitoring citizens.

As individuals moved online, there was certainly an increase in freedom to communicate. But now that "total information awareness " is upon us, we are less free. And in a way that's more dangerous than it was in 1984 because, at least until very recently, we did not know how limited our freedom was.

Information is power

[EmperorOfCanada]

The simple problem is that information is power. The typical psychopath who runs for political office or backstabs their way into top civil servant positions know this in their very cores. They want this power and they don't want us to have this power. This is why freedom of information requests can be the end of governments and many civil servants jobs and this is why they do their damnedest to fight them or exempt data from them.

A great example of this would be when the receipts for UK ministers got leaked that it instantly resulted in political career loss, criminal charges, and probably helped with a change in government. Obviously this was powerful data that when leaked resulted in a massive positive for society. Yet the government claims that this data is dangerous to have public; yet they can't show any damage that came from the one time it was made public. Plus the only claim with any real basis (account numbers and potentially credit card info) is nonsense as those could be blacked out with little loss to the public. But there has been no move to make this data public and an investigation into who leaked the data. If they did catch the person I suspect that they would end up facing penalties greater than those who were caught stealing from the government.

My personal view is that nothing that government does should be kept secret with the single exception of personal medical records. That basically if you work for or interact with the government that it should be 100% open. Some records could be sealed for a year or so such as undercover operations but that should require a special judge to approve and even then should have a time limit.

I see this as no different than if I owned a company and one of my employees told me that I couldn't see a contract they were negotiating for my company. If any employee said no to any information request I made then I would say, "No problem sorry to bother you." And then with security I would have them thrown out of the office while IT changed every password they might know and a forensic investigator would be pouring over their records before the day was over. Plus I would criminally charge them with the slightest wrong doing found. Whereas if an employee came to me saying they screwed up I would be quite forgiving and work with them through the problem.

Keeping things in the light is always the best policy. But too many government officials seem to think that we can't handle the truth. The reality is that the violent reaction they get when leaks do happen is that we are usually more annoyed with the coverup than the actual events. Benghazi would be perfect: it was layers of lying that brought about those events, events in a violent country where violence should be expected, and then the cover-up after. Few people would have been surprised that strange things happened in Libya, so covering them up was just stupid.

So no, this whole government getting more information is a terrible terrible thing. These people have long proven themselves to be 100% untrustworthy and quite hostile to our wellbeing. What has kept them from doing their worst was a combination of their having bad information combined with leaks that gave us great information. But now they can look at any "dissident" who by definition will be anyone questioning their behavior including normal political opposition, and not only figure out their entire network of supporters but as any mathematician will tell you with a network is that there are a few key nodes. Thus they will be able to effectively destroy any opposition not through routing out every little dissident but by highly selective targeting of very few people causing the network to disintegrate. To use the American revolution as an example I suspect that the British would have loved to find the few financially key supporters and throw them into the Boston harbor. If they had the lists of supporters that we now know as founding fathers the revolution could have been ended with one afternoon of hangings. And I am talking pre-teaparty; by reading their correspondence they could have seen trouble brewing, and with a few trumped up charges kept the ink off the declaration of independence.

Re:It will be a riot

[Kjella]

Those are just a few of the ways individual freedom has increased in the last half century. We may have taken a small step backward with overzealous mass surveillance but it has done little to reverse the great strides forward that occurred in the 60's and 70's.

I'm not sure surveillance and tolerance belongs on the same axis. We've moved from a fairly low-tolerance, low-surveillance state where many people did "unapproved" things in private to a high tolerance, high surveillance state where the government knows but it doesn't care. Graciously supported by "if you got nothing to fear, you got nothing to hide", "think of the children" and "either you're with us or the terrorists win" crowd, panopticon believers and other useful idiots privacy is rapidly shredded.

It doesn't get bad until the government gets repressive and you realize that the curtains you've opened can't be pulled shut again without going on all sorts of watch lists and shitlists for covert activity. Look at the countries that don't exactly have a stellar record for freedom, is it getting better there? Not really, through more surveillance the people in power have gained even more control. Crushing any form of resistance is often about catching it in its infancy, making people believe it's hopeless to gather enough to make a change. It's a lopsided fight leaning more and more heavily against the incumbent.

Re:It IS NOT a dystopia

[TrollstonButterbeans]

Cops and government officials get busted every single day from surveillance. Government employees get fired every day for their behavior caught on camera.

Cameras bring truth. Truth brings freedom.

You are for a more open and transparent government right? Hopefully you are for open source?

Openness rewards good people.

Re care

[AHuxley]

The facial recognition systems track your face, your passengers face, another camera for you license plate number and then details get shared with a few gov and possibly private sector databases.
The main issue will be that your "home and work and shopping" driving options might be past a protest without a protest permit or parade permit and outside a free speech zone.
You would then be of interest. Is your state getting federal funds for national crime issues? Expect more tracking equipment.
ACLU: 2/3 of US population lives in “Constitution-free” zone
http://arstechnica.com/securit...
Expect more random Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response teams too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V... too :)

Re record which books you have borrowed

[AHuxley]

The US did have a case on tracking patron records from a library. The National Security Letter aspect was taken to court and then dropped once in open court.
Some details at:
Librarians' NSL Challenge
https://www.aclu.org/national-...
Federal Judge Finds National Security Letters Unconstitutional, Bans Them (03.15.13)
http://www.wired.com/threatlev...

Re:Fuck yeah I can!

[Immerman]

Politicians want to be on TV, but if we all agree they sell out then who, exactly, do you suppose they are selling out *to*? The corporations? Okay, but those are ultimately controlled by the stockholders, a few hundred of which collectively have controlling interest in every major corporation on Earth. Could you name those people?

Easy to tell

[SuperKendall]

There is good regulation and there is bad regulation. Learn to recognize the difference.

It's quite easy to tell - anything that can pass congress and the house is bad regulation.

Say...

[fyngyrz]

We Can Avoid a Surveillance State Dystopia

Avoid it? We're in it. The question is can we get out of it.

Re:wait...

[cold fjord]

Perspective matters for some things, but not everything if words actually have meaning.

Bullshit

[cshark]

This is an outright, prima-face lie, based on nothing.
Why is this even on the Slashdot home page? Are we dedicated to spreading liberal and progressive propaganda now?