On Wednesday, March 29, 2000 10:11 AM Zero Powers zero_powers@hotmail.com
wrote:
> > > So ubiquitous surveilance promotes despotism; since despotism is
nasty,
> >to
> > > the extent that we can prevent ubiquitous surveilance, we should.
> >
> >I agree. This has historically been the case too. Look at any
> >dictatorship
> >that has survived longer than a few weeks, and one typically sees huge
> >secret police organizations and neighbors turning in neighbors a la
> >Orwell's
> >_Nineteen Eighty-Four_. Granted, this is not ubiquitous surveillance,
but,
> >it appears, the close one gets to it, the worse life looks.
>
> Exactly! What you're talking about is certainly not ubiquitous
> transparency, in fact it is not even close. As you point out,
totalitarian
> governments thrive on *secrecy*. Mutual, power proportional transparency
> effectively brings and *end* to secrecy. Ergo...
Huh? Despite my typo -- "close" should be "closer" -- how could Zero come
to that conclusion? My point was, as others pointed out, that the more
totalitarian a government is the more it moves toward ubiquitous
surveillance! This is true of the examples I gave -- modern dictatorships
and parts of Puritan New England. The problem is that these forms of
government are extremely brittle without constant vigilance over their
subjects. (That is, without intensive surveillance they would soon fall to
plots, mass emigrations, or just mass disobedience, since their power mostly
depends on a) people being ignorant of their options and b) raw violence.)
So, let me state again clearly, the closer a society gets to ubiquitous
surveillance, the more totalitarian it becomes. This is true whether it is
a one person dictatorship, an oligarchy, or an absolutist democracy (i.e.,
dictatorship of the majority). At least, this is my humble belief.
Cheers!
Daniel Ust
http://mars.superlink.net/neptune/
"There is no answer. We do here what we will
And there is no answer. This our liberty
No one has known before, nor could have borne,
For it is rooted in this deepening silence
That is our work and has become our kingdom.
If there were an answer, how could we be free?"
-- from Edwin Muir's 1949 poem "The Usurpers"
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