> What I don't see many talk about is how much harm the belief that they harvest everything is, on top of just the actual deed itself.
Snowden, Assange? They've both talk(ed) at great length about the perils of a Society that will self-censor due to the fear of retribution that follows when everything one has said be it in text/phone/online is constantly held in bulk collection.
Moreover, if anyone has followed what has occurred in China where dissenters are forced into re-education black op sites and are forced into public apologies, or in other cases they're disappeared altogether, you have what then appears like a very forceful form of cohesive group think.
This occurred in HK prior to the passing of the NSL, people were essentially trying to scrub their online presence for fear of retroactive punishment from the CCP [1], who only hours after forcefully passing the bill to great local and international condemnation, started to arrest 'violators.'
Which gives the CCP the appearance of a forceful enforcer of its policy writ large, at least on the surface with low hanging fruit like journalists and physicians speaking out about COVID on the mainland, but in reality China is wrought with seemingly permissible corruption provided you have any connection to the CCP.
In this respect this isn't a East Vs West issue, but rather one of the oppressed and the oppressors, if Government is to exist at all, I think a mandate of constant surveillance and absolute financial transparency should be in order.
I fear Humanity refuses to accept we must create alternatives to the Nation State model, which this pandemic and economic crises has clearly demonstrated to have failed in every conceivable metric. There are outliers, but they tend to be more city-states, which I'm not entirely averse to but can also have the very same entrenched power traps that the nation state model has.
If anyone has the time I highly recommend Snowden
s recent talk with Naomi Kilne on Vice [2] discussing the path forward to circumvent the Surveillance State/Economy that has been created by the Tech Industry that has only been incredibly sped up in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic and the protest against police violence/crime.
At the end the people talent, many of whom hang out here, are the one's that build this tech not the corrupt politician(s), nor the VC big wig. Having them re-evaluate their positions is critical moving forward, as both conclude that this much needed detour will simply not occur from the Leadership.
1: https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Hong-Kongers-erase-digital-...
2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUnbhXtXixc