Go ahead, no one’s looking.
by Colin Dodd
Via Threat Level – Wired Blogs
Maybe surveillance is bad, after all
By John Borland
Now imagine a society where everyone knows they are or may be watched as they walk through the streets, or while surfing online. That – as in societies like Hitler’s Germany or Soviet Russia – will have tangible and widespread psychological consequences, reinforcing conformity, and literally crippling the ability to make autonomous and ethical decisions, he argued.
An analogy might be the well-studied population of children with overprotective mothers, the philosopher said. Studies show that such children tend to be indecisive, dependent on others, have little “ethical competence,” and often live suppressed and unhappy lives.
As or more disturbing may be the political implications of having a surveillance infrastructure in place.
Many philosophers reject the notion that given technologies are inherently politically neutral, Gaycken said. Surveillance, for example, can be used to support democratic values of freedom, equality, and state neutrality – but its tendency to create a watched and a watching class lends itself better to totalitarianism. In a country such as Germany, which has seen democracy slide into the Nazi state, such a warning resonates strongly.
August 23rd, 2007 at 4:16 am
Before nodding in “Soviet Russia”’s direction, please do consider that a few quite mature and competent friends of mine described what currently is “United States” as a later-period Soviet Union, otherwise known as “sovok”.
Folks, you’re pushing DRM and your ugly broken “democracy”, or voting to empower those who do, or at least ignoring the fact that you *can* do something not to support them.
Do you realize that there were better centuries in better countries than what you have “developed up to” and strive to plant elsewhere? That people would largely live in honesty and there would be more happiness than poverty, and all in all people would *know* what are they living for?