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wat10000 4 days ago

Mass surveillance doesn’t seem very difficult to build if you have power. If you don’t build it, it seems like step 4 hit becomes “they build it and use it against you.” That’s not to say it’s a good idea to build such a thing, but the “your enemies will use it against you” argument doesn’t make much sense to me. The only real solution to bad guys gaining power is to either prevent them from gaining power or remove them if they already have.

numpy-thagoras 4 days ago | parent [-]

But that is astonishingly idealistic in the best case.

What happens is generational shifts over longer periods of time mean that draconian law or feature has more and more chances to be used by someone with bad intentions. It's the law of large numbers or murphy's law in full effect, it's not just 1 or 2 people.

wat10000 4 days ago | parent [-]

I think we should distinguish between someone with bad intentions in a position of power, and the entire power of the state being taken over by people with bad intentions. The possibility of the former does indeed seem like a good argument for not building total surveillance systems. But I read the comment as talking about the latter.