Get Used To It.
The stories that have broken about absolute surveillance of everyone, everywhere, at the whim of the government, abetted by corporations who handed over customers' private information, is causing quite a stir, and rightly so.
But we have all suspected it all along, anyway.
In the end, what this exercise in media-moderated-debate will do is simply this: it will legitimize the ubiquity of government surveillance in the public mind. It will be the watershed that society has experienced which makes acceptance of an absolute police state not merely possible, but inevitable.
When all the promises have been made, all the outrage has been vented, committees convened and bills proposed, the net effect will be this: The Digital State -- the Government/Corporate Complex -- with all its perils for individual liberty, will have arrived. This new reality will shape all social institutions going forward, in an official way.
Make no mistake: the Digital State is the enemy of the individual. How we adapt will be the topic du jour.
Having said this, I'm not so sure that idealistic, post-adolescent males betraying their security pledges because they get the idea that they can save the world is really a good thing.
Sounds like the boy has watched a few too many "Bourne" movies.
And after all, we all knew that communications were subject to surveillance 10 years ago.
The only thing different now is, of course, that Obama sees political opponents as "terrorists."
But we have all suspected it all along, anyway.
In the end, what this exercise in media-moderated-debate will do is simply this: it will legitimize the ubiquity of government surveillance in the public mind. It will be the watershed that society has experienced which makes acceptance of an absolute police state not merely possible, but inevitable.
When all the promises have been made, all the outrage has been vented, committees convened and bills proposed, the net effect will be this: The Digital State -- the Government/Corporate Complex -- with all its perils for individual liberty, will have arrived. This new reality will shape all social institutions going forward, in an official way.
Make no mistake: the Digital State is the enemy of the individual. How we adapt will be the topic du jour.
Having said this, I'm not so sure that idealistic, post-adolescent males betraying their security pledges because they get the idea that they can save the world is really a good thing.
Sounds like the boy has watched a few too many "Bourne" movies.
And after all, we all knew that communications were subject to surveillance 10 years ago.
The only thing different now is, of course, that Obama sees political opponents as "terrorists."
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