

State surveillance of personal data: what is the society we wish to protect? - 001sky
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/10/state-surveillance-data-tom-stoppard

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iamwithnail
The main problem with this question, and the article generally, is that it
assumes the State acts with a single intent, as a single (bad) actor. It
doesn't.

There are too many competing interests - political, bureacratic, targets,
self-interest - at play for us to consider it as 'masters in a delusionary
nightmare'. If you want to start unpicking the state assemblages of
surveillance - those competing, overlapping conglomerations of self-interest
and preservation - then you need to look at how we allowed them to come to be
in the first place, and acknowledge that the reasons don't just apply in
surveillance: state assemblages of surveillance are emanations of capital, and
they serve (mainly) to protect capital, not people, so we should do away with
any pretence of 'optimal security'.

