This is why ALL liberals *should* oppose dragnet surveillance
Last edited Sun Jun 9, 2013, 11:06 AM - Edit history (2)
Nashville_Brook note:
This is for those of us who are horrified at the "so what" response to the PRISM/Boundless Informant revelations.
We know that when people say "I assume my email is read," or that "my every move is logged," they're admitting tolerance and complicity to a form of totalitarianism that has a long and predictable history.
We also know it's not going to be different because of who holds office at this point in time. Indeed, these intelligence programs might even be beyond the control of an executive who is beholden to the most rarified ranks of the elite. Obama admitted as much when he passed the buck back to Congress during his remarkable comments on the subject Friday.
As this article points out, there's a LOGIC to state spying, and it's not what they're telling you. It's not about terror. Not exclusively. It's about keeping all of us pliant.
The very existence of such state spying apparatus is enough for MOST people to forgo any serious involvement in organizing against it. People fear losing their jobs, of having their secrets revealed, and of having their lives upended. People in this state of insecurity are not going to mount a serious campaign for Congress or the president to do anything...let alone give up the crown jewel of power: total surveillance.
The Logic of the Surveillance State
Liberalism, in its classic form, is, among other things, the proposition that you get more out of people if you treat them well. Conservatism is the proposition that you get more out of people if you treat them badly.
http://www.ianwelsh.net/the-logic-of-the-surveillance-state/
(snip)
The problem with surveillance states, and with oppression in general, is the cost. This cost is both direct, in the resources that are required, and indirect in the lost productivity and creativity caused by constant surveillance. Surveillance states, oppressive states, are not creative places, they are not fecund economically. They can be efficient and productive, for as long as they last, which is until the system of control is subverted, as it was in the USSR. We forget, in light of the late USSR’s problems, that it did create an economic miracle in the early years, and tremendously boost production. Mancur Olson’s “Power and Prosperity” gives a good account of why it worked, and why it stopped working.
(snip)
If you want despotism, as elites, if you want to treat everyone badly, so you personally become more powerful and rich, then, you’ve got two problems: an internal one (revolt) and an external one: war and being outcompeted by other nations elites, who will come and take away your power, one way or the other (this isn’t always violently, though it can be.) The solution is a transnational elite, in broad agreement on the issues, who do not believe in nationalism, and who play by the same rules and ideology. If you’re all the same, if nations are just flags, if you feel more kinship for your fellow oligarchs, well then, you’re safe. There’s still competition, to be sure, but as a class, you’re secure.
That leaves the internal problem, of revolt. The worse you treat people, the more you’re scared of them. The more you clamp down. This is really, really expensive and it breaks down over generations, causing internal rot, till you can’t get the system to do anything, no matter how many levers you push.
What is being run right now is a vast experiment to see if modern technology has fixed these problems with surveillance and opporessive states. Is it cheap enough to go full Stasi, and with that level of surveillance can you keep control over the economy, keep the levers working, make people do what you want, and not all slack off and resist passively, by only going through the motions? The oligarchs are betting that the technology has made that change... with the creation of a transnational ruling class, and with the ability to scale surveillance, it may be possible to take and keep control indefinitely, and bypass the well understood problems of oligarchy and police and surveillance states.
= new reply since forum marked as read
I searched, and I all can find is this poster calling everyone he disagrees with a FUDr / Freeper for the last year and a half, at least.
I guess it's as secret as the administration's legal standard for spying on Americans' e-mail and phone records.
But yes, and Zuckerberg looks like such a nice kid. I clocked the price of FB at around $23 Friday, lets see if there is any change in these coming weeks due to the news. 
Warm colors are more data collected -- cool colors (such as green) is less. They collect more data on the US than Russia.
Boundless Informant: the NSA's secret tool to track global surveillance data
Revealed: The NSA's powerful tool for cataloguing global surveillance data – including figures on US collection
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/08/nsa-boundless-informant-global-datamining
(snip)
The Guardian has acquired top-secret documents about the NSA datamining tool, called Boundless Informant, that details and even maps by country the voluminous amount of information it collects from computer and telephone networks.
The focus of the internal NSA tool is on counting and categorizing the records of communications, known as metadata, rather than the content of an email or instant message.
(snip)
The heatmap gives each nation a color code based on how extensively it is subjected to NSA surveillance. The color scheme ranges from green (least subjected to surveillance) through yellow and orange to red (most surveillance).
The disclosure of the internal Boundless Informant system comes amid a struggle between the NSA and its overseers in the Senate over whether it can track the intelligence it collects on American communications. The NSA's position is that it is not technologically feasible to do so.
i think i'll be too angry to be very frightened for quite a while. but that's just how i manifest fear.
kept us safe from.
I think it's fair, if we're going to dismantle the constitution to go after dangerous drug users under the guise of "fighting terror", to find out just how our taxpayer dollars are being spent, when special powers granted the government to go after 'terrorists' are rightly and justly used to haul little old ladies off to prison cells for smoking a relatively benign plant.
[URL=
.html][IMG]
[/IMG][/URL]
