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Comment by ofslidingfeet | Hacker News Reader

Cool, so what kinds of people typically leave and what kinds of people typically stay?

Well, I left for exactly that reason. I imagine those who stayed took an 'ends justify the means' stance that I couldn't abide. The organizations themselves are insatiable - there's no way that, left to their own devices, any three-letter-agency would ever say "Oh, this is beyond our scope, we shouldn't be allowed to access this.", and that combined with rubber stamp 'checks' allowed this surveillance creep.

"Why did you create the panopticon hive-mind when you could've stopped at any point?"

"Oh... I was going for promo."

I think this comment deserves to be read more widely. It always seems all around the world that the three letter agencies are trying very hard to convince people to spy more and I have often wondered where the justification comes from internally and if they have any debate inside.

Self selection would be one example. To be fair, when I once had a beer with someone who worked in that area before coming to academia she basically said you could work out how many intelligence officers a country had, and realise that given the amount of time effort and money it takes to properly surveil someone they were limited to a small multiple of that number of people to spy on "properly". I felt reassured by that. I can also see it being a justification for RoboCop.

if a phone is tied to a govt ID, and the phone is required for interaction with benefits or protections, then the phone is a place where the spy happens, including location basically all the time. "you can turn the phone off" or "you can not take it with you" sounds OK at first, but realize that the critical parts of your life, to sleep, purchase and go to places of social importance, will naturally be included in the location tracking.

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