Glen,
Your arguments are very considered, deliberate - even careful - and
polite. However, let me pile on with this screed:
I thought that the kind of general governmental overreach that we are
talking about here was the reason we took on the USSR as an enemy during
the 1950s+ (not to mention Viet Nam +). Didn't we unconditionally
denounce "the commies" because of it? Wasn't "that kind of government"
the reason we were supposed not to like "the commies"? Didn't we
(humans) almost bombed ourselves out of existence - and take the planet
with us - ultimately because we didn't like it? Wasn't our national
identity arrayed against that kind of "totalitarian" behavior? Didn't we
scribe a range of artworks (e.g. Orwell) against it in our culture? When
Rand Paul and the ACLU agree on a topic, something is up. What was that
famous quote about security vs liberty issued by Thomas Jefferson?
Ok, back to your civilized discussion now.
Grant
On 6/14/13 6:02 AM, glen wrote:
On Thu, 2013-06-13 at 09:37 +0200, Jochen Fromm wrote:
Is the problem of surveillance to find the right tradeoff between
privacy and security, as president Obama says? What do you think?
No. That's a false dichotomy. I think what's really happening is the
ongoing negotiation between distributed versus centralized control.
e.g. In my city, most of the citizens are in favor of the photo radar
van. I am not. Despite my objections, however, I have to admit that I
know the Chief of Police, personally. I know the Sheriff. I know some
of the city councilors and sporadically meet the mayor for pints. This
access gives me a sense of "locality" to the surveillance. It feels
much less like a passel of morlocks spying on us eloi and more like me
spying on myself, or us spying on ourselves.
The problem of the surveillance state (or any accusations against "the
state") lies in the otherness of the state. If you trust the
representative democracy to be what it claims to be, then that mitigates
against the feeling that _they_ are spying on _us_. It makes it feel
more like _we_ are spying on _us_ ...
And proprioception is a healthy part of any organism.
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