Very nice screed, indeed. And I'll infer the questions are rhetorical and, then, infer the rhetoric. You're saying that we've based our identity on contrasts with this monster and have been fighting this same monster, perhaps in slightly different guises, for decades. But, for some reason, now, even when it's placed right in front of the public, roughly 1/2 the population is at least blase', if not comfortable, with the NSA collecting metadata on us. Your position seems to split into 2:
1) How has our government changed so as to cause (most important), motivate, and justify the metadata collection? 2) How has our populace changed so that we (1/2 of us, anyway) accept that our government collects this data? My answer to (1) follows from a naive requirements analysis of the problem with which they're faced. The simplest way to discover socio political trends is to index communications. That's what they're doing and it's what I'd do if I wanted to solve that problem. The ethical question: "Is it ethical to index communications?" isn't asked within the rank and file because these people think of their work as _jobs_ or careers. Ethical choice doesn't flow down through the ranks. You either do your _job_ or quit. My answer to (2) is population density and the speed of information flow. As long as the wealthy (including anyone not facing starvation on a daily basis) can exercise the freedoms they're aware of, the majority will be satisfied to donate their energy to unevaluated ends. They'll continue to work their jobs, complain about their boss, yell at the other commuters from the isolation of their cars, etc. ... just as long as they can buy their iphones, "choose" between all the flavors provided by Unilever and Proctor & Gamble, and be passively entertained by dancing rabbits selling toilet paper. [*] On Fri, 2013-06-14 at 10:12 -0600, Grant Holland wrote: > 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? -- ⇒⇐ glen e. p. ropella I have gazed beyond today -- ⇒⇐ glen e. p. ropella Brainstorm, here I go, Brainstorm, here I go, ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
