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Comment by Lagged2Death | Hacker News Reader

ISTR that in the futuristic dystopia depicted in V for Vendetta, there are government spy cameras everywhere, including in people's bedrooms.

And it turns out that's not so futuristic. We're already there. The moment it became technically (Edit: and really, economically) feasible to spy on people's bedrooms, our governments leapt at the chance.

I wonder what Alan Moore would have to say about that. We didn't have to experience a crisis of social, governmental, or financial instability. There was no catalyzing meltdown that lead to this modern embrace of a new "soft" totalitarianism. This is just the latest chapter in a steady progression of increasing surveillance that can be traced back at least to the 1960s.

And it's a cinch that something like 51% of the general public will react just as they have all along: "Well, if it's necessary to keep us safe..."

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>We didn't have to experience a crisis of social, governmental, or financial instability.

September 11th and the London train bombings? No argument against how disturbing this all is, but don't feel it's accurate to say this increased surveillance wasn't caused by a crisis. It's all being done in the name of preventing terrorism, significant acts of which have occurred in the last decade both on US and UK soil.

So if anything, it's exactly like you stated, a traumatic event(s) has resulted in government(s) taking unreasonable measures and expanding powers to embrace a new "soft" totalitarianism.

Hey efuquen we pretty much wrote the same thing at the same time. We should be friends.

In all honesty, we need to ask ourselves what we can practically do within the current framework that can push the government towards what we want. Less surveillance and civilian oversight of the intelligence community.

September 11th and the London train bombings?

I don't think so. I did once, but I don't anymore.

Huge, bloodthirsty, spectacular acts of terrorism were older than those attacks, and those attacks didn't threaten the stability of the societies or governments in question in the slightest.

The tendency of English-speaking governments to use sweeping, untargeted surveillance to curb political activism or otherwise mold public opinion and behavior is older than those attacks, too. They spied on MLK and peace activists during Vietnam, not because they were threats to security but because they were threats to the spies' own political convictions, more or less.

What has really changed in the last 15 years or so is that its now economically feasible to spy on everyone, all the time, partially because the spied-on voluntarily fund the most expensive part of the equipment (their own webcams, cellphones, cars, laptops, ISP connections, etc). So governments are doing it. Something like 9/11 provides a handy excuse, maybe, but I've come to think it's naive to accept that as the real reason. I believe we would find ourselves in this position with or without 9/11.

The component laws behind the crackdown, at least in the US, were written ahead of time. They'd been on executive-agency-wishlists for years. It might have taken a crisis to justify actually passing these laws. But they were not purpose-crafted programs and laws in response to particular events.

The London train bombings were nothing in comparison to the years of IRA terrorism that London suffered.

The argument that "these are strange times and require a new class of countermeasures" is exactly the lie they want to sell you.

The UK was doing weird things with privacy back then too.

Special branch wanted an informer on every street. They infiltrated many political groups and meetings.

Some groups were outlawed - we even prevented news organisations from broadcasting the voices of some people leadingnto their video being dubbed by actors.

That's a poignant observation that we didn't have to experience a crisis of social, governmental, or financial instability, but we did experience 9/11. 9/11 is the catalyst that pushed a lot of this surveillance over the edge.

If you combine this revelation with this one https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipula... then you end up with the exact totalitarianism you speak of. Its the efficacy of the government to target any individual that makes it a totalitarian state even if it doesn't look like that on the outside to most people.

There were and are people in these governments who know that you don't need the worst catastrophes, you simply need "just enough" and people in the right place at that time to suggest these practices be instituted. The rest of these governments gave these agencies the power and permission to do these things.

> ISTR that in the futuristic dystopia depicted in V for Vendetta, there are government spy cameras everywhere, including in people's bedrooms.

and some people will still insist that 1984 was about USSR...

Well there is also 1984 written in 1948 where there were cameras in every room and most outside places too.

> ISTR

"I seem to remember" would have saved a lot of people a lot of time.

Apologies, but this is a BB of TLBD

Except that during the early part of that period both British and American intelligence agencies had free reign untroubled by having to obey that law.

Hoover's FBI did what it want, MI5 famously "burgled their way across London". Oversight came later.

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