Surveillance State Fears

That sounds like a one-way ticket to a police state.

None. It's a burgeoning police state. Stay out of harm's way.

Hasn't an autocratic surveillance state been tried before?

you mean one step closer to realize you are living in a police state...

It's because governments no longer fear their people. And they know the more such laws they get to pass the less they have to fear, too. Just like in China, the moment someone even hints at organizing a protest against the government, they are arrested because the government has access to all conversations, tons of public cameras, etc.The future is scary unless we turn this trend around.

I am waiting for a government that puts together all the tech we are developing right now and creates the perfect surveillance state. Even in the worst governments like Russia under Stalin, the Nazis or North Korea citizens still have/had the possibility to move around and do things without anyone knowing. That soon may be over.

You don't wake up suddenly in a totalitarian state. Total surveillance is one step away and once the infrastructure is in place it will be used. Commitment to basic values of privacy and human rights has been reduced to posturing against others and denial about what is happening at home.Untill there are proper protests and pushback the creep will continue and the useful idiots and the ignorant will continue to muddy the waters and dilute the threat only to slink back into the woodwork on

Disagreeing with him is just one step away from totalitarianism! The government's here and they're installing the 1984-style cameras in my flat right now. Look what you've done!It's articles like this for which I wish there was a downmod button.

This is a gripping account of what these surveillance programs lead to written by someone who saw when they go wrong:I live in a country generally assumed to be a dictatorship. One of the Arab spring countries. I have lived through curfews and have seen the outcomes of the sort of surveillance now being revealed in the US. People here talking about curfews aren't realizing what that actually FEELS like. It isn't about having to go inside, and the practicality of that. It's abou

The authoritarian regimes' secret police would be delighted at something like this. People actually (well, not all of us) give them information themselves, and those who don't, sure do get tracked across the web."Thoughts control" is very much a real problem, as the Google Memo scandal showed us. People dug out the irrelevant donation of Brendan Eich. Think about the power FB has, they know exactly who is the enemy of the state using the word from good old Soviet Union whe