A surveillance state was always inevitable once wireless networking, GPS, and cameras were ubiquitous. If you say this isn't true, show me anywhere in the world with these technologies that is not headed down this path.

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notfromhere 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

its inevitable if you do nothing to organize politically against it.

	▲	bigbadfeline 4 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Many other reasons to do it too.
	▲	htx80nerd 5 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		>"if you do nothing to organize politically against it" how does one politically organize against a billion dollar industry which is friends with, and donates to, the ruling class? they do whatever they want and we just post about it online and click 'like' or post emojis.

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ch4s3 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It’s inevitable that some country would do it, but not inevitable that any given nation would do so, except maybe the CCP.

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zug_zug 33 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Uh France? It annoys me when people say this stuff is "inevitable." No, many countries have forcibly "reshaped" their government (French revolution, American revolution, etc etc) and nobody has any basis for saying it won't happen again, perhaps many more times.

	▲	bigbadfeline 11 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> It annoys me when people say this stuff is "inevitable." "Resistance is futile" is an old slogan of them Borgs.

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uoaei 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Europe is, compared to the US, doing a lot more for protection of private data. That includes strict guardrails on what data can be collected and how it is used.

Secret courts still exist but the phenomenon of random Flock employees spying on children in locker rooms at gyms is so much harder to get away with in a system with a modicum of decency.

Chat control was actually shot down, and that was the UK not Europe (anymore).

Laws are different in different places. The world is not composed of America and other-Americas.

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xboxnolifes an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Saying something was shot down isnt that strong of an argument. The US government has proposed and shot down surveillance laws hundreds of times, until one finally passes.

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uoaei 19 minutes ago | parent [-]

Ok, sure. You want more words to say the same thing, here you are.

It got vociferous support from the highest levels of government even though the deception ("protect kids!") was so blatant and transparent, and it wasn't until a legion of privacy and in particular tech-literate advocates raised concerns in mass media together with an awareness campaign about the dangers of unchecked surveillance structures that it was finally... shot down.

	▲	borski 14 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I think the parent comment’s point was that unless it is made illegal, as in, a law is passed to make it so, it will come up again, and the “fight” has a shorter lifespan than the government. We have seen the same, or substantially similar, bills come up over and over. Most of the time, they are shot down, in the same manner you describe. But sometimes, there is a 9/11 and the Patriot act gets passed.

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mon_ 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Chat Control was proposed and rejected in the European Union

	▲	uoaei 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		You're right, mixed up the names, in UK they called it Online Safety Act.

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thaumasiotes 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

A scene from the Chinese 1980s period drama "Like a Flowing River 2":

Lei Dongbao, party secretary of a small village, is courting the owner of a restaurant in a nearby city. He persuades her to let him care for her young son over the weekend.

As he's heading back to his village on his motorcycle with the boy seated behind him, he drives by some women resting in the shade by the side of the road. One of them remarks to another, "Why does the secretary have a child?"

By the time he arrives at his office, all of his subordinates - and one of their wives - have turned out to meet him and say hello to the child.

https://www.basicinstructions.net/basic-instructions/2019/9/...

> Citizens, on the other hand, don’t like red light cameras because they don’t want to be fined. They complain that the cameras are an invasion of their privacy. I don’t buy that because I grew up in a small town, and as such I understand that privacy is a myth.