Agree denotationally, but disagree connotationally. Yes, some of these predictions are accurate, but they aren’t used nearly to the extent that would be required for this to be an Orwellian dictatorship.
There is still a huge difference between “corrupt Machiavellian democracy” and “1984″. Or even between corrupt Machiavellian democracy and Nazi Germany/Stalinist Russia/whatever. We’re not even close to China.
Yes, some of these predictions are accurate, but they aren’t used nearly to the extent that would be required for this to be an Orwellian dictatorship.
It’s not an Orwellian dictorship. On the other hand it isn’t the democracy it used to be either. In the UK there might be some hope that there are social forces who fight against further degradation of civil liberties.
In the US I see very little evidence. It’s probably that the situation in ten year in the US is a lot worse than today. Extrapolating political change in the US is really scary.
I would also remind that secrecy is a major issue when you want to know whether your own government is democratic. The US citizens have just learned that their government has access to records of all their phone conversations.
Did you know about it before Tim Clemente revealed it.
Which odds would you have put a year ago on the US government having that capability? If you would have put very low odds, you should update in a direction that there are a lot of invasive things your government does without you having a clue about it.
The US citizens have just learned that their government has access to records of all their phone conversations. Did you know about it before Tim Clemente revealed it. Which odds would you have put a year ago on the US government having that capability?
That’s been somewhere between a persistent rumor and an open secret for a while, at least among those that follow security or privacy issues at all; Clemente’s announcement slightly increased my estimate of its probability, but it’s still hovering somewhere in the “plausible but not certain” range depending on how cynical I feel and some uncertainties about the technical side of things. I haven’t done the math on the kind of storage and computing power it would take, and it’s not unheard of for security insiders to announce capabilities that they can’t actually cash out in practice (Bruce Schneier for one is skeptical). A year ago I would have said much the same, adjusted a bit for more expensive hardware per unit capability.
I would have put the probability of the government having recordings of all phone calls at about 75%. I’m slightly more surprised at emails and online chat messages, but not overly so. The U.S. government has gained a lot of power in their surveillance ability, there was even a time where the government interpreted the PATRIOT act as allowing them to put a wire tap without a warrant, though that was overturned by the Supreme Court.
I know there are a ton of things the government does that I am completely unaware of, and that I wouldn’t approve of a lot of it. But I don’t think it’s much worse now than it was in the past. Random example I found with 5 minutes of googling: http://www.aclu.org/aclu-history
Thousands of people were arrested and treated badly by the police without a warrant. This sounds far worse in terms of violated rights than anything they do today.
Incidentally, this link describes the ACLU, a group dedicated to protecting civil liberties.
I misread your first comment as arguing that society was becoming like an Orwellian dictatorship, I apologize for that.
I would have put the probability of the government having recordings of all phone calls at about 75%. I’m slightly more surprised at emails and online chat messages, but not overly so.
Why? The former takes much more storage, so all other things being equal I’d expect it to be less likely.
My thought process was that wiretapping is a well-known tool used by the government, and I wasn’t surprised that they would have created a mechanism by which they could wiretap everyone.
As for why I expected phones more than online communication, that’s was availability bias on my part. I’m used to hearing about wiretaps, while similar news with emails either a government employee, who I would expect them to monitor, or a private individual hacking into an email account.
Agree denotationally, but disagree connotationally. Yes, some of these predictions are accurate, but they aren’t used nearly to the extent that would be required for this to be an Orwellian dictatorship.
Try getting held without charges for years and see if you change your tune.
Yeah, but it’s still not Orwellian because we’re talking about it right now. No thought police are swooping in and stopping me from --
I wonder if it’s possible to get Candle Jack and the Thought Police to fi--
We were discussing the British situation. How did we suddenly jump to Guantanamo?
Because there were British detainees at Guantanamo Bay.
There is still a huge difference between “corrupt Machiavellian democracy” and “1984″. Or even between corrupt Machiavellian democracy and Nazi Germany/Stalinist Russia/whatever. We’re not even close to China.
It’s not an Orwellian dictorship. On the other hand it isn’t the democracy it used to be either. In the UK there might be some hope that there are social forces who fight against further degradation of civil liberties.
In the US I see very little evidence. It’s probably that the situation in ten year in the US is a lot worse than today. Extrapolating political change in the US is really scary.
I would also remind that secrecy is a major issue when you want to know whether your own government is democratic. The US citizens have just learned that their government has access to records of all their phone conversations.
Did you know about it before Tim Clemente revealed it. Which odds would you have put a year ago on the US government having that capability? If you would have put very low odds, you should update in a direction that there are a lot of invasive things your government does without you having a clue about it.
That’s been somewhere between a persistent rumor and an open secret for a while, at least among those that follow security or privacy issues at all; Clemente’s announcement slightly increased my estimate of its probability, but it’s still hovering somewhere in the “plausible but not certain” range depending on how cynical I feel and some uncertainties about the technical side of things. I haven’t done the math on the kind of storage and computing power it would take, and it’s not unheard of for security insiders to announce capabilities that they can’t actually cash out in practice (Bruce Schneier for one is skeptical). A year ago I would have said much the same, adjusted a bit for more expensive hardware per unit capability.
I’d believe automatically generated transcripts of audio. That compression ratio is pretty steep, and it’s far more searchable.
Full audio? I don’t have a good handle on how much phone-caling is going on at any given time. It might be trivial.
I would have put the probability of the government having recordings of all phone calls at about 75%. I’m slightly more surprised at emails and online chat messages, but not overly so. The U.S. government has gained a lot of power in their surveillance ability, there was even a time where the government interpreted the PATRIOT act as allowing them to put a wire tap without a warrant, though that was overturned by the Supreme Court.
I know there are a ton of things the government does that I am completely unaware of, and that I wouldn’t approve of a lot of it. But I don’t think it’s much worse now than it was in the past. Random example I found with 5 minutes of googling: http://www.aclu.org/aclu-history
Thousands of people were arrested and treated badly by the police without a warrant. This sounds far worse in terms of violated rights than anything they do today.
Incidentally, this link describes the ACLU, a group dedicated to protecting civil liberties.
I misread your first comment as arguing that society was becoming like an Orwellian dictatorship, I apologize for that.
Why? The former takes much more storage, so all other things being equal I’d expect it to be less likely.
And text (email, chat) is also much easier to parse and search with computers than voice recordings.
That was miscalibration on my part.
My thought process was that wiretapping is a well-known tool used by the government, and I wasn’t surprised that they would have created a mechanism by which they could wiretap everyone.
As for why I expected phones more than online communication, that’s was availability bias on my part. I’m used to hearing about wiretaps, while similar news with emails either a government employee, who I would expect them to monitor, or a private individual hacking into an email account.