
Absolute knowledge is absolute power - motter
http://peternixey.com/post/52942971550/absolute-knowledge-is-absolute-power
======
btilly
I do not like the title, but the central point is good.

The real problem with PRISM is not that you, individually, are going to be
targeted. It is that the tools have been put in place to subvert the political
process by personally targeting anyone with views that are inconvenient for
those of influence. These tools may be being used fairly now, but based on
past history, we cannot assume that they will continue to be so.

And the past history to look at is not even that of distant times and places.
Take a look at how the FBI under Hoover tried to affect the political process
in the USA with COINTELPRO.

~~~
alan_cx
Christ, imagine if Hoover had today's tool available to him. Imagine the reach
and power of McCarthyism.

I guess many would suggest that is exactly what we have right now. Just more
subtle, opaque, and deniable.

~~~
rayiner
> I guess many would suggest that is exactly what we have right now. Just more
> subtle, opaque, and deniable.

I can't see how anyone who has studied American history could think that what
we have now even approaches what existed at the time of McCarthyism.
McCarthyism required a level of public acquiescence and homogeneity of thought
that could only exist under the threat of Soviet domination and nuclear
holocaust. The bogeyman of terrorism doesn't have nearly that kind of grip on
the public consciousness.

Heck, just look at the wars that were justified by the two fears: Korea
(36,516 Americans dead) and Vietnam (58,209) versus Afghanistan (2,229) and
Iraq (4,488). Not to minimize the causalities of those wars, but if you can
measure the power of a scary idea by the number of U.S. soldiers that die
before the public puts a stop to the war, then there is no comparison between
the specter of communism versus the specter of terrorism.

~~~
flyinRyan
But communism was a made-up threat, just like terrorism is. They can ramp up
the fear factor any time they want and now they have all that infra in place
to support it.

~~~
rayiner
An aggressive, expansionist power with nuclear weapons pointed at us was not a
"made-up" threat. Neither is international terrorist organizations conspiring
to attack us. Both are factually verifiable threats.

Reasonable people can disagree about the appropriate responses to those
threats, but it's factually incorrect to say they are "made up."

As an aside, for those claiming that terrorism poses no threat because it
kills so few people, I'll offer the example of the Beltway Sniper attacks.
More people probably died in traffic accidents in the D.C. metro area than
were killed by the Beltway Sniper. But the chilling effect on everyday life
was so much greater. It's hard do convey to someone the feeling of putting gas
in your car on a sunny weekend day with the hair on your neck standing up
because even though you know that there is a negligible chance of your being
the victim of a sniper attack, the possibility scares you in a way that the
possibility of death through heart disease, or hell the certainty of death
through old age, cannot.

~~~
flyinRyan
I see the nonsense works pretty well on you.

>expansionist power with nuclear weapons pointed at us was not a "made-up"
threat

At the time of McCarthyism this wasn't really what was going on. What _was_
going on was that capitalists were afraid communism would _work_. They saw
rich and powerful people getting killed or displaced and the "plebs" running
things and they were going to make sure it couldn't happen here.

>Neither is international terrorist organizations conspiring to attack us

International terrorist threat conspiracy theories. Nice. You mean the global
terrorist group with all kinds of secret cells hidden under ever rock? Yea,
that was all made up bullshit. Al Quaeda is a name _we_ made up to be able to
apply our own RICO laws after the first WTC bombing. And you may not realize
it, but terrorist groups tend to hate each other as much as they hate anyone
else. They are religious extremists after all.

>but it's factually incorrect to say they are "made up."

They are either utterly non-existent or so small as to be ignorable.

>putting gas in your car on a sunny weekend day with the hair on your neck
standing up because even though you know that there is a negligible chance of
your being the victim of a sniper attack, the possibility scares you in a way
that the possibility of death through heart disease, or hell the certainty of
death through old age, cannot.

What you are describing is irrational, emotional response. None the less, we
can't make policy decisions about how you _feel_. And the media is largely to
blame about this. The reported news should be proportional to the effect. The
Boston marathon bomb should have been a byline on the local Boston news if it
was mentioned at all.

~~~
btilly
Let me ask you. Do you personally know anyone who lived on the wrong side of
the Iron Curtain during the cold war? Were you living in NYC during 9/11?

For me the answer is yes to both. Communism was not a made up threat. Nor did
it just impact a few rich people. The Soviets took control of hundreds of
millions of people, and maintained control with tanks and guns. For instance
ask any Czech who was around in 1968 how fun that was.

As for 9/11, someone flew those planes. (If you're one of the morons who
thinks that missiles were used, then go talk to one of the millions of
eyewitnesses who watched the second plane fly low and slow over Manhattan -
half my workplace at the time was on a balcony and watched it.) Osama bin
Laden took public credit. Al Qaeda was both real, and had appeared in lots of
stuff before that. After 9/11 they had great branding.

This is not to say that the threats were considered realistically. The domino
theory under which we fought in Vietnam was invalid. Supporting every anti-
communist power we could just because they were anti-communist lead to our
supporting everything from genocide in Cambodia to military coups in Chile.

Likewise this time around, Al Qaeda was not a force in Iraq. (Well, not until
we invaded, and then people who wanted to freak us out began calling
themselves Al Qaeda.) I do not believe that our response has been
proportionate to the threat.

But do try to keep facts in mind. In the Cold War we did face communist
countries. We do face terrorist organizations today. Those are not made up.

------
molbioguy
I think a key feature of privacy is empowerment or control. People generally
want to feel that they are in control of their lives. By being selective about
what information you make available to others or even generally available to
all, is a very important way to express your sense of control over your own
life. Even if you like to broadcast as many of your thoughts, photographs,
likes, and geolocations as possible, you do that with a sense of control. You
decided what to release. When the NSA sifts through your data, they decide
what to collect, what to use, who to share it with. And they never tell you
any of it. I think that loss of control is one of the factors that makes
people uncomfortable with loss of privacy.

------
giardini
And now we find that the gummint is gathering information from all sorts of
corporations. It's as if the ACLU's nightmare overview surveillance system was
used as a blueprint by the government to design PRISM et al.

So your credit card, supermarket, gas card, library card, debit card, pharmacy
card, prescriptions, public records (home and auto ownership, license tags,
taxes, school records, etc.) are all Hoovered (as in "J. Edgar Hoover") up and
ready for analysis. This is tied into your state's automobile licensing
system: police cars have scanners that incessantly search for all license
plates in the visible roadway and, for each, perform an automated search for
outstanding warrants and criminal history in the state's database.

And if the driver is good-looking and has a clean record, the officer can
_still_ force a search of state records to retrieve addresses, phone numbers,
etc. so he can stop her, talk to her and then optionally, hit on her later at
his convenience ("What a small world, what are the odds of us meeting again!
Must be fate.").

~~~
btilly
You remind me of a true story from the 1990s. Woman, on her way back from
Canada, is pulled over in NY for speeding. She's got a plate of home-made
cookies in the seat next to her and offers the officer one.

About 200 miles later, not speeding, she's pulled over again. As the officer
approaches she says, "What did I do wrong?" He replies, "Nothing, but I heard
that you've got the most amazing cookies!"

------
woah
Site broken on nexus 7

------
tezza
"Absolute knowledge is absolute power and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

This is simply not true, rather a cobbled together bit of psychobabble.

Okay... I have absolute knowledge a freight train is coming towards me and I'm
tied to the rail. I clearly do not therefore have absolute power to change the
outcome.

The government could likewise know everything and not be able to stop a bad
outcome ( say their overthrow ).

\---

Nicolae Ceaușescu had an impressive surveillance state... it didn't stop him
being shot ( in the street? ) along with his wife

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolae_Ceau%C8%99escu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolae_Ceau%C8%99escu)

~~~
mathattack
I think the context here is different than the strength of the quote. The
context is about the government knowing everyone's petty mistakes in life, or
Achilles heal. If they know this for everyone, then they can push or
manipulate people as they see fit.

~~~
tezza
I don't agree with the context either.

1) If the Government has a problem with you, then a few IM chat records and
your pr0n site subscription history will be the least of your problems.

Previously 'undesirables' would be tailed by agents or a private eye.

2) They can simply frame you. Child pr0n planted on your computer somehow,
hell even your best friends / wife would disown you.

3) Is "recording more" either "finding needles" or just "making the haystack
bigger" ?

