![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Writer's Block: Miss Manners
Mar. 6th, 2009 12:36 pm[Error: unknown template qotd]
DRM.
CCTVs.
The DNA database.
None of these technologies are in the hands of the public, and yet their presence is an ever-increasing intrusion into the lives of the innocent. By maintaining that the government is using these tools to protect society, they are in fact seeking to control and dominate is, by using propaganda such as the mantra "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" (yes, but what have you in the government got to hide and why do you fear us wanting to look at your dark secrets?) and the promulgation of the hardline attitude that opponents of these privacy-busting technologies must by definition be criminals who don't want to get caught (not true, unless you decide that all crime is committed by the living, and therefore life itself is a crime).
These technologies' malign and deleterious influence upon society stems from the misperception that (a) the technologies themselves are infallible, and that (b) those who wield them are infallible beings who have nothing but the well being of society in mind.
(a) The technologies are far from infallible, because most are still being prototyped;
(b) those who use them are a long way from being infallible. The levels of corruption in the police may no longer be at the height of the corruption once found in the Metropolitan Police, the West Yorkshire Constabulary, the Northern Ireland police force and the North Wales coppers who all but openly boasted about their Masonic connections - but nonetheless, corruption is still there.
And even in those few places in the UK where we can trust the police, we can certainly place no trust in the politicians whom they serve - or in the bankers and moguls whom our politicians seem to serve in turn.
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" is a question nobody understands these days, even in the English translation "Who watches the movie adaptation of that Alan Moore graphic novel?"
One last thing, a cure for the ills of this obsession with surveillance: an old anarchist saying, which states "When surveillance becomes universal, do everything out in the open."
A lesson everyone ought to take to their hearts, alongside "People should not be afraid of their governments; governments should be afraid of their people." - V
And they are, my friends. They truly are.
DRM.
CCTVs.
The DNA database.
None of these technologies are in the hands of the public, and yet their presence is an ever-increasing intrusion into the lives of the innocent. By maintaining that the government is using these tools to protect society, they are in fact seeking to control and dominate is, by using propaganda such as the mantra "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" (yes, but what have you in the government got to hide and why do you fear us wanting to look at your dark secrets?) and the promulgation of the hardline attitude that opponents of these privacy-busting technologies must by definition be criminals who don't want to get caught (not true, unless you decide that all crime is committed by the living, and therefore life itself is a crime).
These technologies' malign and deleterious influence upon society stems from the misperception that (a) the technologies themselves are infallible, and that (b) those who wield them are infallible beings who have nothing but the well being of society in mind.
(a) The technologies are far from infallible, because most are still being prototyped;
(b) those who use them are a long way from being infallible. The levels of corruption in the police may no longer be at the height of the corruption once found in the Metropolitan Police, the West Yorkshire Constabulary, the Northern Ireland police force and the North Wales coppers who all but openly boasted about their Masonic connections - but nonetheless, corruption is still there.
And even in those few places in the UK where we can trust the police, we can certainly place no trust in the politicians whom they serve - or in the bankers and moguls whom our politicians seem to serve in turn.
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" is a question nobody understands these days, even in the English translation "Who watches the movie adaptation of that Alan Moore graphic novel?"
One last thing, a cure for the ills of this obsession with surveillance: an old anarchist saying, which states "When surveillance becomes universal, do everything out in the open."
A lesson everyone ought to take to their hearts, alongside "People should not be afraid of their governments; governments should be afraid of their people." - V
And they are, my friends. They truly are.
