Imagine mass surveillance as a line from 0 to 100. Zero is total anarchy and no control at all. One hundred is total control and surveillance of all the people, in all places, all the time.
So, where are we today? At 45? 60? 75?
Second, in which direction are we moving? Right you are, towards 100.
At which point will this become dangerous, for real? Should we say stop? Can we say stop? Is it too late to say stop? Discuss.
To nobody’s surprise also the London Bridge assassins were known to the authorities. One of them has been in a tv-documentary about jihadism. And he was reported trying to convert children he met in a park to Islam. According to himself, he would be prepared to kill his own mother in the name of Allah.
Responsible for the authorities that are supposed to handle things like this was – between 2010 and 2016 – now Prime Minister Theresa May.
Today her only comment is that she would like to censor the Internet.
There is life and then there is government. The whole thing seems decades out of date. Literally, 30 years. It is almost untouched by the digital revolution and completely unchanged by the new service ethic that is sweeping the world. I don’t believe this can continue. Government has become the great anomaly. It’s outrageously conspicuous. The pressure to change will not go away. The change will surely come in time.
Dear all,
Please take notice that the G7 meeting just decided to beef up censorship and control of the Internet.
If you make censorship possible at all – sooner or later it will be used by sinister minds.
Please – do not limit the freedom of speech. We cannot silence or put people in prison, simply because we do not agree with whatever they are saying. (Unless they are a direct threat to other people’s immediate security. And if so, only after a fair trial respecting fundamental human rights.)
The point is that if you over-prioritize loyalty, other essential goods get de-prioritized. And those other goods are far more important to sound public decision-making.
UK Prime Minister and noted authoritarian Theresa May has promised that if she wins the upcoming general election, her party will abolish internet access in the UK, replacing it with a government-monitored internet where privacy tools are banned and online services will be required to vet all user-supplied content for compliance with rules about pornography, political speech, copyright compliance and so on — and search engines will have to employ special British rules to exclude banned material from their search results.
Big companies have learned that they can get in bed with big government in order to obtain unearned wealth with bailouts, subsidies, and other examples of cronyism. Just as crime is good for criminals but bad for society, cronyism is good for cronies but bad for the economy.
There is a lot of buzz about »fake news«. But there is very little discussion about what it is that is supposed to be fake.
Maybe, there isn’t that much real fake news. (Dissent doesn’t qualify as fake.) Maybe it’s about stuff we don’t really want to know about. Or are not supposed to.
»Fake news« seems to be a mirage that will vanish if you try to pin it down.
It might also be that we are already so entangled in lies that we can no longer recognize the truth, even in its presence.
/ HAX
Everyone familiar with Star Wars knows that the Empire is bad, and the Rebellion is good. But, why? Seriously. What makes life under Emperor Palpatine so unbearable, and what would make life under the New Republic so much better, for the ordinary citizens of the galaxy?
The marijuana legalization movement is growing stronger but states that are “liberalizing” their marijuana laws are not actually repealing the laws that make cannabis illegal. Instead, they are creating a complex regime of control.
