Post No.: 0970
Fluffystealthkitten says:
Knowing we’re under surveillance will ‘control us’ by making us modify our behaviours if we’re thinking of doing something illegal… but that’s the desired effect!
There’s the ‘panopticon effect’ where, even though we don’t know if we’re being specifically watched or not, it makes us behave in a way that presumes we are, just in case.
Most people think it’s right to be suspicious of others but they themselves should be trusted. But we don’t really know how we’ll behave in contexts we’ve never been in before (e.g. in sheer desperation, high enough incentives or opportunism). We might behave as a fraudster would if we were in their situation? Many people think they’re incapable of committing crimes and/or simply forget about the crimes they’ve committed before (e.g. speeding) simply because they were never caught or these somehow don’t count! Enough people’s concerns aren’t related to doing a crime itself but getting caught doing it. (Even if caught, people don’t wish to freely disclose their crimes to those who don’t already know about them.) Most people also generally think they should be given another chance while others should not for their transgressions. We like to give excuses we wouldn’t accept from others too. We may try to rationalise that our own deceits are defensible (e.g. one was just following orders).
What if one doesn’t consider a crime really a crime though, like homosexual acts or speaking against one’s government, in a country that criminalises these acts?
Well this’d be an issue of changing the legislation of one’s country – not the problem of surveillance per se. If you think a law is unconscionable then you should fight to democratically change it, or migrate to another country where the laws are more the way you prefer if possible.
Some believe mass surveillance to combat terrorism is just ‘security theatre’. Yet if it helps citizens to sleep better at night, it might still be worth it.
If a counter-terrorism agency is perfectly successful, we won’t see any terrorist attacks or cyber attacks against us because they’d all be thwarted before they happen. But in such a place, we’d question the need for mass surveillance powers to prevent attacks that don’t seem to ever exist. Yet if the odd terrorist attack materialises (and every domestic terror attack always makes the headlines whereas every prevention does not), we might question whether mass surveillance works to combat terrorism at all! (It’s like questioning why one is eating healthily when one isn’t ever getting ill, or alternatively getting occasionally ill despite eating healthily and not understanding that one would probably be even worse off if one didn’t eat healthily.) Not all captures or plot thwarts are reported in the news because the game of counter-terrorism is quite strategic – perhaps to hook the bigger fish even though some smaller fish have been nabbed. Meow.
Spying or snooping – whether on other nations (including allies) or one’s own citizens – is simply the done thing in international circles. It’s hardly just authoritarian countries. The National Security Agency (NSA) has PRISM, XKeyscore and a whole host of other surveillance programs that allow the US government to collect stored communications by demanding that companies give it to them, and for analysing real-time global Internet data, for instance. It’s reported that the agency can take secret control of devices and impersonate websites like search engines. They can then impersonate people as a result of getting into their profiles, and manipulate social media posts or inject unauthorised remote-control software onto the computers or Wi-Fi routers of those who visit spoofed sites i.e. they’re not just looking but touching. Project Genetrix was one of USA’s balloon spy programs. Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) has a site in Cornwall where transatlantic data cables enter the UK, where the organisation conducts in classified activities. Five Eyes (FVEY) is a multilateral cooperation in signals intelligence. In the James Bond movie Spectre, a spy discovers that his greatest overarching enemy is an organisation that wishes to spy on others(!)
The authorities can surreptitiously access our smartphones and Internet-connected devices. Cameras and microphones can sometimes be remotely switched on without us knowing. Israel’s Pegasus spyware, which was purchased by the FBI, has been used to spy on the phones of human rights activists, journalists, political opponents and dissidents, not just criminals or terrorists. One of the most significant challenges that this kind of spyware presents is the way the software exploits undiscovered vulnerabilities too – meaning that even the most security-conscious user cannot prevent an attack; unless they don’t use a smartphone at all.
Before Edward Snowden – Thomas Drake, William Binney, Edward Loomis, Kirk Wiebe and a few others who worked for the NSA or one of their contractors tried to raise the issue of indiscriminate mass surveillance, but they were threatened into silence. At least communist countries don’t pretend to be all for freedom!
If governments have nothing to hide then they should have nothing to fear from whistleblowers invading their privacy or secrets(!)
The NSA and GCHQ aren’t technically legally allowed to spy on their own respective citizens, although they do. Countries in the FVEY alliance reportedly get around this by basically allowing each other to spy on each other’s citizens and then trading that intelligence with each other afterwards. Even spying on the citizens of foreign countries is quite undemocratic because these citizens cannot vote on why they’re being spied upon. It’s akin to contesting that there should be ‘no taxation without representation’.
It’s considered ‘fair’ if we’re the masters of others but ‘unfair’ if others try to be the masters of us. It’s okay for our side to spy, misappropriate stuff and meddle in the affairs of others but not if other sides try the identical things on us. Our domestic news outlets largely support this skewed narrative or propaganda too (e.g. reports of spotting (suspected) foreign surveillance aircraft are presented with a grave tone, whereas reports of our own nation having developed a new kind of surveillance aircraft are presented with pride; or hostile states are immediately accused for any cyber attacks affecting us, whereas our cyber attacks against other nations are kept clandestine).
Secret intelligence services and secret services commit questionable acts under cloak-and-dagger, like black-ops assassinations and kidnappings, taking down the Internet, physical infrastructures or financial sectors of foreign countries via planted malware or cyber attacks during peacetime (e.g. the Stuxnet computer worm), secretly phone-tapping the heads of government of allies during trade negotiations, framing innocent parties, blackmails, and bribing and recruiting foreign moles to betray their country by revealing their country’s sensitive economic secrets i.e. things not always done in the name of defence but purely for economic advantages or even foreign political interference. It’s like behaving like a dictatorship on the world to ensure one’s country remains a superpower. Patriotism isn’t always justifiable.
Russia’s Internet Research Agency (Glavset) engages in online propaganda and influence operations on behalf of Russian interests. But then GCHQ’s Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG) unit utilises ‘dirty tricks’ in the name of information warfare too.
Some point claws at the private security and defence sector for being too close to governments via their lobbying efforts or for having politicians who’ve been or are connected to the industry. They profit from wars and security fears hence are rationally self-interestedly incentivised to promote and exaggerate the narrative of threats being everywhere and everyone being a potential enemy so that their surveillance and military hardware and services (e.g. facial recognition software) stay highly demanded. Peace and harmony is bad for their business model. And governments would rather play safe than be caught with their pants down. That’s why I generally disagree with privatisation in the defence sector – no one should financially profit from war or the threat of war. There’s a problem regarding any sector of private industry being too close to the centre of government really.
US military expenditure is vast – in a league of its own globally – and is supplied by private contractors like Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. Some insinuate that the US constantly seeks new enemies and conflicts to justify its huge military expenditure to US taxpayers – taxes that could otherwise be spent on, say, providing universal healthcare?
Private corporations are really the ones trying to develop top surveillance and even ‘mind control’ technologies (e.g. Neuralink).
Arms deals with those who commit human rights violations are problematic. A military contractor might directly or indirectly supply military equipment to several different countries that could one day end up being on opposite alliances to each other. The only winner will then be the military contractors, at the expense of a world constantly poised for war where countries spread mutual fear by virtue of their technologically-advancing arsenals. No country wants to be caught unprepared when others are arming themselves well, so they want to be well-armed too (e.g. they might want nuclear weapons too).
Most people surveyed prioritise security over privacy however. Some argue that without security and safety, there’s no chance to express our freedoms. Some internal/national, and external/international, threats are real.
Others believe that their privacy is too inalienable to violate for any reason whatsoever. Post No.: 0955 weighed up privacy versus security. Some assert that mass surveillance will control every moment of our lives and turn us into fearful, disconnected and lonely beings.
But one logical sign that the government isn’t mind-controlling us is the fact that we’re able to question whether they are and to criticise them. I’m still free to roar **** you government if I want! (Umm, why was that censored? Puppy?) But of course we’re wary that one day they might.
Populations aren’t blindly following their governments – we do have lines that mustn’t be crossed otherwise we will seek to overthrow them, even in non-democracies (e.g. the Arab Spring uprisings). Surveillance, wiretapping and hacking might even catch the authorities doing something improper.
It’s hardly just politicians that spread lies and garbage – social media reveals that ordinary citizens do it regularly too. So much harassment and death threats are hurled at politicians too.
…The fictional dystopian worlds of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World haven’t transpired. We shouldn’t fall for ‘slippery slope fallacies’ of mind-control programmes or being punished for nothing. Fear-mongering anti-government sentiments don’t even get censored here. Some states will hunt down and punish anyone who speaks against their government but the UK isn’t one of them. Fulfilment centre workers are more afraid of speaking against Amazon!
Evidently, despite a world of increased surveillance – more and more people express their own quirks and individuality online and offline than ever before. They don’t feel oppressed. Many people are even freely willing to enter reality TV shows like Big Brother(!)
Yet being mindful of and talking about these dangers and potential ‘thought police’ scenarios helps us to prevent such scenarios from happening in reality. We don’t want the ‘boiling frog syndrome’ of sleepwalking into problems caused by ever-increasing surveillance powers.
So we must continue having these conversations on this issue of government bulk and indiscriminate metadata collection – by constantly highlighting these issues, it’ll hopefully keep them in check. It’s like if we don’t complain then we tacitly accept. In democracies, these things should be openly discussed, not unilaterally decided by a small handful of individuals like in autocracies. (Parliaments have an odious habit though of passing unpopular laws during otherwise heavy news days so that their own story gets buried under other news. Or new legislation is sometimes pushed through parliament just before recess so that parliamentary scrutiny is rushed.)
We should watch the authorities as much as they watch us. We need to continually debate whether their powers are too excessive, or too toothless at times, and whether our taxes are being well spent. The human right to privacy isn’t absolute – but anything that affects it does require transparency, justification and independent review.
Meow.
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