I still remember the Boston underground, back in 2011 (so before the bombing), where the voice of a friendly firefighter came on the speakers, encouraging the travelers to be vigilant and to say something if they see something. I gave up on the idea of taking out the camera and taking some photos.
The parallel world of not allowing any divergent thought or expression is so clear.
Weird thing, though, I love East Berlin (massively prefer it to the sterile shopping malls of West Berlin). Covered in graffiti, with all sorts of bizarre creative communities and flea markets, it's an awesome place. Is this a result of oppressive thought police, or despite it?
I'm not entirely sure (I was only born in 1989 and thus haven't had a chance to visit the DDR) but I'm fairly certain there weren't a lot of graffiti back then.
The communist states I have seen were very gray. Almost no colors.
There's no East Berlin in the Cold War sense since 1989. There's only the eastern part of Berlin (and also poorest and more neglected). So this might explain that.
Are you honestly suggesting that raising an alert about a strange bag without an owner is the same thing as telling authorities that your neighbors are telling jokes about politburo?
What the fuck is wrong with you people? It's one thing to be privacy advocate. It's another thing to bring this thing up to this level of idiocy.
This comment breaks the HN guidelines. Please comment civilly and substantively, even when another comment is provocative.
Please don't do this. It poisons the conversation, and your point would be more persuasive without the personal attack.
Now that you mention it, I don't think I ever flagged somebody on HN. Could it be because I was born and raised in communist Romania?
If you welcome and tolerate every single conversation that someone tries to engage you in, more power to you.
"the United States Code at 18 U.S.C. § 2381 states "whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and ..." " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treason#United_States
Most people are not idiots. If you find yourself thinking that, it's a good clue that you may be judging them according to your own culture and preconceptions even though theirs may be different.
Everything is bad when it's driven to the point of absurd. But this description:
> if it was allowed to spread freely, might collapse an entire country and kill thousands or more in the ensuing chaos
is something that the former can become much easier than the latter.
I've seen how a country goes from a western democracy to a quasi-totalitarian state myself. When you describe US and european surveillance programs as something that leads you towards totalitarian dystopia, it's a little like a boy who likes to cry "wolf". These dangers are real indeed, but they don't come where you think they come from, and they are not the only dangers in the universe you have to be afraid of.
It's not easy to compare. Pakistan and others have terrorism but Syria, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and others have overthrown governments which might have been prevented with more Stasi-ism. The US is more stable than them so it can allow people more freedom to communicate - but still not complete freedom - see state secrets and the existence of wiretapping at all even on known criminals.
In other words, there were at least several instances in history where appearance of militant groups that violated state's monopoly on violence led, in the end, to these groups gaining power, and being much more violent and "bad" exactly because of their violent history.
On the other hand, I don't believe I know a single instance where a democratic regimes turned into totalitarian or authoritarian government _because_of_ technological advances that allowed it more control.
Not sure why you'd say that. The government in many dystopias ("1984" etc) had way less surveillance capabilities than the governments have today.
Reality is different.
Of course reality is different. That doesn't mean it's also not worse than 1984 in some aspects. The kind of torture and killings people that got in the hands of the government suffered in Pinochet's Chile, for example, make 1984 look very tame.
And in the US too, government surveillance programs have hurt real people for decades -- way beyond McCarthy, Hoover and/or the Watergate.
It's mostly/only people who haven't suffered from something like this, and can't possible fathom they could be targets themselves, that dismiss concerns about state surveillance and abuses with a cavalier attitude that it's just "crying wolf".
People who have seen their politicians doing all these things and more in their countries (and getting away with it a lot, with the occasional trial), are much more savvy to this kind of abuse than people who think state agencies are mostly good guys plus/minus a few "rotten apples", and that their government killing/blackmailing/spying etc on people on their soil can't (and hasn't) happened.
If you find all this normal, there's something wrong with you. You got used to living in fear. Got used to needing to blend in even if you're doing nothing wrong.
I bet you also got used to those neighborhood watch signs warning you that loitering and cruising will be reported to the police, even if they are not illegal.
You already live in East Germany, you just don't know it yet.