6 Insidious Ways Surveillance Changes the Way We Think and Act

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/surveillance-thinking-and-behavior



***SNIP

1. Shifting power dynamics: When an NSA agent sorts through our personal data, he makes judgments about us—what category to place us in, how to interpret and predict our behavior. He can manipulate, manage and influence us in ways we don’t even notice. He gains opportunities for discrimination, coercion and selective enforcement of laws. Because the analysis of megadata results in a high number of false positives, he may target us even if our activities are perfectly blameless from his perspective.

***SNIP

2. Criminal activity: Every apologist for the surveillance state will make the claim that spying on citizens protects us from things like terrorism, crime and violence. That may indeed be true. What is also true is that surveillance can be used just as easily to commit a crime as to prevent it. History shows us ample cases of governments, including our own, using surveillance to turn upon their own people in unlawful ways, in some cases launching attacks that are just as devastating as those feared from outsiders

***SNIP

3. Diminished citizenship: In his article, “The Dangers of Surveillance,” Neil M. Richards warns that state scrutiny can chill the exercise of our civil liberties and inhibit us from experimenting with “new, controversial, or deviant ideas.” Intellectual privacy, he argues, is key to a free society. Surveillance protects the status quo and serves as a brake on change.

***SNIP

4. Suspicious minds: Surveillance makes everyone seem suspicous. The watched become instilled with an air of criminality, and eventually begin to feel culpable. Psychological researchers have found that surveillance tends to create perceptions and expectations of dishonesty.

[Thinkingabout]

1. This seems to be a paranoia some people can not sensibly justify.

[Demit]

2. Excellent article, with real-world examples.

This in particular struck me:

“As Michel Foucault and other social theorists have realized, the watcher/watched scenario is chiefly about power. It amplifies and exaggerates the sense of power in the person doing the watching, and on the flip side, enhances the sense of powerlessness in the watched. “

I think this is part of the reason some people are pooh-poohing the government surveillance revelations. They sense the potential import of mass surveillance, what it could lead to. They know it has happened in other countries. It would be so profoundly a betrayal of what our country is supposed to stand for, that the instinctive reaction is to deny it is true. Or if it’s true, to insist that it is somehow different, that it is benign. Or if it isn’t benign, it is somehow necessary for America’s survival. Of course, these are the steps that lead to final acceptance.

The acceptance of the governed tacitly acknowledges their powerlessness, and thus solidifies the absolute power of the government. Any country’s government. Yes, it can happen here. As the article shows, it is happening here.

[WinkyDink]

3. Take a gander at the latest characters in animated movies for children. "MONSTERS," indeed.

DON'T FORGET THE TOYS!