Hacker News Reader

Comment by autoexec | Hacker News Reader

> The reason is that the surveillance state has gotten extremely good at presenting scary scenarios and examples of supposed "disaster averted because we could spy on everyone", or the alternative, "bad thing happened because we couldn't spy on everyone" to politicians in non-public briefings.

Those politicians who are vocal against mass surveillance tend to change their tune the moment they're in office and I doubt they were all intending to go back on their campaign promises from the start or that they were really convinced by horror stories of terrorists told over powerpoint in closed door briefings.

I wouldn't doubt if they were also giving politicians examples of the kind of dirt they already have on them and their families. This is one of the biggest risks of the surveillance state. Endless blackmail material made up of actual skeletons, as well as the resources to install new ones into anyone's closets whenever needed.

View on HN

I don't think it's blackmailing. Total surveillance by itself is just a great tool (when you have it in your hands). Why give it up?

Do what we say or we might get a warrant and find that stash of CP that we installed on your hard drive. How do you even defend against planted digital evidence? It would be easy to fake and very difficult to disprove.

But when it comes to politicians and people with power, I think it's even worse than all of that. It's kind of obvious what Mr Epstein was getting up to with regard to blackmail.

> How do you even defend against planted digital evidence?

With your good name. In the end, it is not important what the politician had or did not have on the disk, but who the public will believe more, the secret services, who claim that there was something there, or the politician, who claims that he is being set up and groundlessly persecuted for the purpose of political pressure.

And as long as public opinion about the special services is what it is, politicians can safely stash CP on their disks without fear that they will be charged with anything even if they are found.

You’re dismissing something way more complicated. Many people with good names have supposedly had CP hoards. How would you even go about checking out confirming that it even is CP? You can’t, and would you even want to look into that? No, of course not.

Frankly, it could even just be made up. How would you know? I’m sure in most cases it is true and correct, but with as much corruption in every and all aspects of policing and justice, there is absolutely zero chance that when it involves something with such huge and hidden levers as CP, that there would be zero corruption. Cops still plant drugs on people even though they know they are on body cam and they still shoot people to death for no reason and are simply absolved by the system that protects itself; you don’t think that the black box of CP accusation that no one wants to or can look into is not used for corrupt reasons?

The whole system is rotten and corrupt, why wouldn’t it be corrupt in this case where there is a huge lever and no one dares look into it?

I bet you have never witnessed someone being accused of even a much less severe social taboo. They won't even be given the chance to defend themselves.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com