Surveillance erodes democracy. Anonymous speech is one of several necessary precursors to functional democratic institutions; which surveillance technology threatens. Ergo, even if survelliance is necessary, we should limit it as much as practical.
It's taken me some time, but I'm realizing that a lot of citizens in the US aren't actually interested in democracy, despite their claims to the contrary. A lot of what we've been seeing that seems insanely unAmerican makes a lot more sense when you drop the pretense.
Thinking of surveillance as necessary is treating a symptom. If a country feels it needs surveillance to stop criminals it needs to investigate what problem crime is a viable solution for. If it is to thwart terrorism, then what is motivating the terrorists. The problems here are crime and terrorism, not privacy. However, if you want to say privacy is bad then how could putting surveillance in the "private" sector fix the problem? This attitude feels like it's coming from a place where problems are quantitative (about making or saving money) and not about reducing suffering or otherwise solving qualitative problems that affect larger parts of the population. That said Industry isn't going to save America (Silicon Valley or otherwise). Corporate interest has been pretending to take the place of the new deal for 80 years all while digging a hole the country will never climb out of. Dreamers gonna dream, I guess.
kmeisthax|1 year ago
beej71|1 year ago
gibbitz|1 year ago
talldayo|1 year ago
dang|1 year ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
tcoff91|1 year ago
Palantir needs to be abolished.
austinwade|1 year ago