
Today Is the Day We Got Rid of the Surveillance State GDR - serengeti
https://tutanota.com/blog/posts/german-unity-day
======
vezzy-fnord
Voltaire never made his famous non-statement. It was a paraphrasing of his
general philosophy written by Evelyn Beatrice Hall in _The Friends of
Voltaire_ (1906).

I generally do not side with this article's overblown credit towards
democracy, and particularly representative democracy. A common crippling meme
among democratic societies is to absolve representatives of responsibility and
instead keep insisting everything is the fault of citizens for not going to
the ballot box, voting incorrectly at the ballot, and to keep trying again and
again until they get it "right", even if there are obvious inefficiencies in
the democratic process that must be corrected. Where even the most ardent,
statistically aware rationalist will succumb to their emotions and begin
spouting feel-good drivel about voting. None of this is to be admired. It is
to be condemned as insanity and self-hatred.

~~~
nickpsecurity
I don't think there's an overblown credit at all. An active democracy can get
a lot done. U.S. history class shows us that successes, failures, wars,
schemes, rebellions, etc. go way back on all kinds of issues. The U.S.
democracy, for day to day issues, was a constant battle between all kinds of
stakeholders. I'd argue it's been a plutocracy far as economic system going
back around 100 years. Nonetheless, the basic freedoms (esp
press/protest/speech) and occasional willingness of the people led to
resolving many, many problems over time. Even intelligence community got a
nice shake-up back in Church committee days with various FOIA extensions
letting us dig lots of dirt on them.

I agree that neither direct nor representational democracy solve anything by
themselves. The people's ability and willingness to take action (and wisely)
is the important part. However, the democratic systems provide extra assurance
that this can happen. Speech, press, privacy, etc protections ensure a
situation can be assessed, information can get out, people can organize, and
so on. A much stronger foundation than the alternatives. Much easier than
regimes where they have to sneak around with thumb drives and Tor hoping
there's not enough infiltrators to get them all busted.

So, democracy is a good foundation to build on what author describes. The
other stuff allows arbitrary actions by rulers to counter anything supporting
personal empowerment. In a democracy, that might be countered in a new
election cycle or court ruling. I prefer a democracy. However, I'd love to
live in one where the people put their effort into what mattered and held
their government accountable. They stopped doing that in mine quite a while
ago. That's why it's screwed up.

~~~
vezzy-fnord
Again, speech, press and privacy protections are orthogonal to a democratic
process.

People forget, but the United States had strict censorship codes for all of
the television, film and comic book industries (respectively - Code of
Practices for Television Broadcasters, Hays Code and Comics Code Authority)
entrenched for decades, by lobbyists and powerful trade associations. Then the
Fairness Doctrine for radio broadcasts, without the repeal of which talk radio
would have never flourished (I'll admit a mixed blessing, but important for
free speech).

Our freedom of speech is actually _greater_ now than it ever was, but to
little avail.

~~~
nickpsecurity
"Our freedom of speech is actually greater now than it ever was, but to little
avail."

It is but it's orthogonal to avail. ;) The freedoms are necessary, the press
part has to be solid, and the people have to take action. The press and action
are the problems. Freedoms are doing their job of producing opportunities,
which I act on regularly.

"People forget, but the United States had strict censorship codes for all of
the television, film and comic book industries"

And through the democratic process these were fought and freedoms expanded.
This is less likely to work in a monarchy, communist state, theocracy, or
dictatorship. That the people's input matters and with bloodless avenues of it
creating change is a pre-requisite to major reforms benefiting the people
without full-on revolt. So, what systems and countries are you talking about
where people did similar stuff within their system while dissident speech,
publishing, and organizations were all illegal?

Note: Let's add voting integrity to the list of pre-requisites. The ability to
speak about or publish the problems would be a pre-requisite to
accountability. If you didn't have that, then privacy in property or
communications would help you get word out discretely. Without any of the
three, situation starts to sound like like certain South American and Asian
countries.

~~~
vezzy-fnord
Monarchy is not opposed to democracy, even if it's not a
constitutional/ceremonial monarchy. Liechtenstein and Monaco are two countries
with politically active monarchs, which are nevertheless democratic.

Theocracies in practice are dictatorial, but nominally it just means your
"constitution" would be a religious text. I agree those are undesirable.

"Communist state" is an oxymoron, surely you mean Marxist-Leninist state.
Dictatorship is too vague.

I'm not really objecting to the democratic process being a vehicle for change,
so much as contemporary implementations of it being riddled with
inefficiencies and fallacies, as well as the fact that most people completely
overlook the crucially important meta-theory of how democracy operates and
assume it's all good because the word "democracy" gives them warm, fuzzy
feelings.

~~~
nickpsecurity
Well, since you clarified, I think we're mostly in agreement now. :) I'm pro-
democracy while recognizing it has to operate correctly and that's far from
how it's happening.

------
PythonicAlpha
The (once) "free world" that boasted to have the Stasi put to an end, are
making things much worse now.

The Stasi had paper files and maybe kilobytes of data, that had to be
processed by hand of some people -- our today's surveillance systems collect
megabytes or gigabytes of data of everybody and can process it in
milliseconds.

We Germans should know, what surveillance is all about and how an oppressive
system starts out small but grows bigger and bigger. But with all our luxuries
and the distractions we get, we forget, what our fathers had to learn the hard
way.

We also will have to learn the hard way.

~~~
pvg
The Stasi had a lot more than kilobytes of data. It also managed to be far
more effective at oppressing people than institutions we know of with
petabytes of data.

~~~
PythonicAlpha
I said kilobytes per Person (it is clear, when you read in context). One page
in a paper file normally has 2-4 kB.

Everything starts out small. Some institutions in the "free west" are already
quite good in oppressing people.

Today, you already must be very carefully which books you read in the public
library or buy at Amazon.

Because you, yourself don't feel it, does not mean, that it does not exist.

~~~
pvg
It's very difficult to argue about something that exists but only in the eyes
of its proponents. Carl Sagan wrote this up nicely once:

[http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/Dragon.htm](http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/Dragon.htm)

~~~
PythonicAlpha
Nice stories will not bring freedom back! (do you also have arguments, instead
of ignoring them?)

Do you want to say, that Snowden, Manning and other Whistle blowers are not
oppressed? Have you no eyes?? I guess not!!

(and this is only one small example of oppression, that everybody knows but
most just ignore -- to live without disturbance -- very much like the people
in former Nazi Germany).

To be clear about it: What happened to Manning alone, is a shame to any
civilized society -- if he is guilty or not.

When the so called "Aluhuttraeger" where saying, that the US where spying on
us, 10 or 20 years ago, everybody was laughing.

Some of those laughs have already stopped.

~~~
pvg
I have, indeed, no eyes although I'm less sure about the laughs.

~~~
PythonicAlpha
Laugh or not laugh, you can even ignore truth -- but when they some day stand
at your door, it is to late.

It is amazing, that humans can not learn from history and even not understand,
what is obvious.

Making fun and telling nice stories -- how paltry.

------
chx
I find comparing the current state of affairs compared to the Stasi simply
revolting. I have yet to see (surely I am ignorant) anyone actually living
through _that_ state the current situation is worse or even equal.

I didn't live under the Stasi but I was born and raised behind the Iron
Curtain and I had a taste of what's going on. It's the fear and suspicion of
the next person. You can easily get used to your phone being bugged (ours were
and we knew, that's a story for another time) but say you are in a band.
Perhaps the drummer writes a report every time over a beer you make a critique
of the system. You have no way of knowing. It's hard to describe the feeling
and the result on the whole society.

At least the current mass surveillance is only technology and not humans.

~~~
joesmo
No one's claiming the current situation is equal or worse, just that it's
heading in the same direction. And that, is hard to deny. I have heard many
people who lived under communism say that, including myself.

~~~
nickpsecurity
Exactly. Aside from my larger post, I'll add that I hear it from people that
moved away from China, Cuba, etc. A recent one was a Cuban guy I know whose
family immigrated here to get away from propaganda, abusive state, etc. I
asked him what they thought and he said his mother totally agreed U.S. was
transforming into something similar. He said she calls him up every so often
after seeing something on the news, freaking out. She commonly says
(paraphrased), "They were promoting (police state-style stuff here) on the
news. They said it's for (benefit here). That's what Castro said! They did the
same thing in Cuba! It's happening all over again!"

My friend just nods his head and calms her down as he knows it's true. They
figure they still have it better in a hybrid, quasi-police state rather than a
full one. Russians and Chinese usually just tell me of the media and
surveillance actions that it's the same crap as they saw/heard over there.
It's just way safer here as enforcement is weaker, our protections are
stronger, and private parties are more independent. So, they all encourage us
to keep it that way and push back against the advances. Sounds good to me. :)

------
calibraxis
> We simply can't imagine what it is like to live in an oppressive system
> without freedom of speech.

Nice try. Humanity is not so spectacularly unobservant. Most of us are stuck
in an "oppressive system without freedom of speech" half the weekday. (With
exceptions, like college.) School where we're constantly told to STFU and move
from room to room. Great training for corporations in later life. And the US
has the biggest prisons; if you're the wrong color or poor, school trains for
that with patdowns and metal detectors.

I have to agree with Marc Andreessen who tweeted: "Wouldn't we be shocked and
dismayed if the NSA wasn't doing this? What did people think all those
billions of dollars of funding were for?"

No, sentences like this are common in propaganda. Not to convince you of
untruths, but to convince you that everyone else believes these untruths and
that you're weird. In this case, it flatters anyone who knows better.

~~~
bmmayer1
Why do you assume freedom of speech exists on college campuses?

~~~
jsprogrammer
It may exist to a greater extent on some college campuses than some corporate
campuses.

At college you can choose to work on whichever topic you'd like and discuss it
with whomever you would like.

At a corporation, many people are simply told what to do and if they deviate
from doing what they were told, are fired and/or treated poorly.

~~~
blumkvist
Do you really believe this is the same as soviet repression of freedom of
speech?

~~~
jsprogrammer
Sorry, but did I or anyone else here claim to believe that?

I was only trying to explain what the original poster might have meant with
their parenthetical.

------
StephenFalken

      One must acknowledge with cryptography no amount of (state) violence will
      ever solve a (hard) math problem.
    
      -- Jacob Appelbaum

