Is US Surveillance Technology Propping Up Authoritarian Regimes? (washingtonpost.com)

A senior policy analyst from a non-partisan national security think tank -- and one of their cybersecurity policy fellows -- sound a dire warning in an op-ed shared by Slashdot reader schwit1: From facial recognition software to GPS trackers to computer hacking tools to systems that monitor and redirect flows of Internet traffic, contemporary surveillance technologies enable "high levels of social control at a reasonable cost," as Nicholas Wright puts it in Foreign Affairs. But these technologies don't just aid and enable what Wright and other policy analysts have called "digital authoritarianism." They also promote a sovereign and controlled model of the Internet, one characterized by frequent censorship, pervasive surveillance and tight control by the state. The United States could be a world leader in preventing the spread of this Internet model, but to do so, we must reevaluate the role U.S. companies play in contributing to it....

On one hand, the United States cares deeply about protecting a global and open Internet... On the other hand, American companies are selling surveillance technology that undermines this mission -- contributing to the broader spread of digital authoritarianism that the United States claims to fight. (This also implicates allies such as Britain, whose companies have also sold surveillance technology to oppressive regimes.) We won't be able to allay this situation until the United States updates its approach to exporting surveillance technology. Of course, this must be done carefully. But digital authoritarianism is spreading, and U.S. companies need to stop helping it.-

Comments

Yes

[rsilvergun]

and our Military. And our CIA. And our ruling class. This has been going on that I know of since the early 1900s with a big push in the 80s under Reagan. Even Obama looked the other way while we did it terrible thing around the globe to secure cheap oil and general corporate interests. Meanwhile we all look the other way.

What pisses me off the most is we go down south, destabilize the region, a bunch of actual refugees fleeing violence come up here not "seeking a better life" but seeking to escape the violence we caused and then they're used as a political prop by the same folks who caused the violence in the first place.

This shouldn't work. It shouldn't be this easy to cow an entire population. We should be pissed at what our ruling class is doing and we should be at the polls stopping them. But in all my life we haven't done jack shit.

Hahaha, is this a joke?

[DoktorMidnight]

No, of course not. Just like the US didn't provide arms and aid to the Shah of Iran or help create SAVAK. Or that time the US didn't provide arms and assistance to a young, up and coming ruler in a neighboring country after all that stuff the US didn't do in Iran went a little pear-shaped. Or like that time the US didn't help a plucky band of freedom fighters in Afghanistan stop their country from pursuing terrible evils (like female education and suffrage). Nope, there definitely never was a time during the latter half of the twentieth century that the United States ever aided and abetted some of the worst, most monstrous assholes and governments across the globe. And I'm definitely sure that since these new technologies are being offered by military defense contractors (or their owned subsidiaries) that there will be no similar patterns of sales and transfers that we definitely did not see in the twentieth century. The United States is nothing but Freedom, Apple Pie, and valiant protection of Human Rights both at home and abroad. The only things we export are Truth, Justice, the American Way, and Coca-Cola.