Venezuela: My experience in the surveillance state

Has Iceland officially offered?

Are we already throwing U.S. citizens into secret trials now?

If so that would be a far graver threat to liberty than mere surveillance. Where's the outrage over that then?

I never said I think it is more likely. I mentioned it as an aside in response to a comment about futuristic dystopia.

In the context of discussing futuristic dystopia (which I think is unlikely in general given historical trends), surveillance doesn't worry me but robots do. That's because I believe it's entirely possible for whatever negative impact arises from surveillance to be contained through the majoritarian processes. It's been worse before and it's gotten better so we have historical evidence that it's something that can be overcome. We don't know what happens when you don't need to recruit hundreds of thousands of ordinary people, people with families and friends and ties in their communities, as soldiers in order to control the population of a country. That's uncharted territory.

I have a deep and abiding faith in the masses of ordinary people. I don't think you can control large-scale public opposition with surveillance. It certainly didn't do Egypt's previous regime any good. I think even China, with its far more massive surveillance state, will be unable to oppose majoritarian opposition when its time comes. That's why surveillance doesn't worry me, even if it exists today.

It should be noted that even if the NSA is collecting every bit of plain-text data that flows over the internet, minority groups have far more ability to communicate securely today than they did in say the time of MLK. I don't think the NSA can break strong encryption today, but I'd bet they were reading MLK's mail back then. The NSA certainly has a lot more information than the FBI did back then, but it's all low-grade crap that's almost entirely useless for population control.

Exactly.

And, you know, there's also something very oddly circular about the parent's claims of being comforted by a "deep and abiding faith" in the masses of ordinary people.

For one, on other posts, he has been really adamant about declaring that the masses don't care about NSA-surveillance. So, why does he have such a deep abiding faith? I mean, at what point does he think the masses will be moved to action? In a sense, he's saying that because they haven't yet been moved to action, the offenses don't rise to a level of real concern. But, that's completely circular. It could just as well be taken as evidence that there is no reason to have such faith.

The other thing is that all of this is done in secret. So, how on earth will the masses even know that we've reached the point at which it's time to exercise their power? We caught a break with the Snowden leak. But, there's certainly no guarantee of such in the future, not to mention that even now we have no idea what else is going on beyond what Snowden revealed.

In total, it seems an extremely disingenuous argument to respond to the NSA scandal with a nonchalant, "oh, none of what is feared will likely come to pass. We'll just magically discover other secrets and at just the right time, the masses will spring into action and save the day. So, let's all ignore it for now."

"Killer robot-wielding billionaires on the other hand..."

Sorry. Had to throw that last bit in there.

While I understand that the authority that you're appealing to is considered canonical, it's still an appeal to authority. Ellsberg has no more actual insight into the treatment one should expect to receive in the civilian justice system than any other 2013 hacktivist. After all we have the existing example of the NSA whistleblowers who did stay, and while they were not treated kindly by the judicial system, they were not treated anywhere close to as badly as Pfc. Manning.

Besides which, if it's true what Ellsberg and Snowden claim about how there is apparently a class of civilian crime that is liable to having you receive Quantico-brig suicide-watch treatment without due process then that would already be a much larger problem than the NSA.

Instead it looks awfully convenient that Snowden was the world's biggest fan of U.S. judicial oversight right up until it became possible he might himself have to answer to that same judicial system, whereupon it suddenly turned into banana republic justice...