[HN Gopher] We can have democracy or a surveillance society, but...
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       We can have democracy or a surveillance society, but we cannot have
       both
        
       Author : yew
       Score  : 6 points
       Date   : 2021-01-30 22:22 UTC (40 minutes ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
        
       | owl_troupe wrote:
       | >In the years that followed, a surveillance society flourished in
       | those rooms, a social vision born in the distinct but reciprocal
       | needs of public intelligence agencies and private internet
       | companies, both spellbound by a dream of total information
       | awareness.
       | 
       | She sums up two decades of modern history in one sentence.
       | 
       | Also, her take on why antitrust approaches won't work is brand-
       | new to me and it raises a critical point. Antitrust efforts
       | against Standard Oil did not prevent the downstream effects of
       | the business model, i.e., ecological disaster. They may be a
       | necessary, albeit, temporary fix to the issue of competition in
       | the marketplace, not the real harm inherent in surveillance for
       | profit.
       | 
       | >Another thought experiment: Imagine that the America of 1911
       | understood the science of climate change. The court's breakup
       | decision would have addressed Standard Oil's anticompetitive
       | practices while ignoring the far more consequential case -- that
       | the extraction, refining, sale and use of fossil fuels would
       | destroy the planet.
        
       | yew wrote:
       | > No society can police everything all the time, least of all a
       | democratic society. A healthy society rests on a consensus about
       | what is a deviation and what is normal. We venture out from the
       | norm, but we know the difference between the outfield and home,
       | the reality of everyday life. Without that, as we have now
       | experienced, things fall apart.
       | 
       | > [...]
       | 
       | > Society renews itself as common sense evolves. This requires
       | trustworthy, transparent, respectful institutions of social
       | discourse, especially when we disagree. Instead we are saddled
       | with the opposite, nearly 20 years into a world dominated by a
       | political-economic institution that operates as a chaos machine
       | for hire, in which norm violation is key to revenue.
       | 
       | > Social media's no-longer-young men defend their chaos machines
       | with a twisted rendition of First Amendment rights. Social media
       | is not a public square but a private one governed by machine
       | operations and their economic imperatives, incapable of, and
       | uninterested in, distinguishing truth from lies or renewal from
       | destruction.
        
       | cyberlurker wrote:
       | The use of 9/11 to further surveillance policies is really
       | unfortunate because the existing intelligence agencies mostly got
       | it right before hand. The administration was briefed that a
       | threat was imminent. I am curious if anyone could build a
       | legitimate argument that internet surveillance would have made
       | the intelligence accurate enough to stop the attack.
        
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       (page generated 2021-01-30 23:02 UTC)