[ExI] What surveillance solution is best - Orwellian, David Brin's, or ...? (A mysterious ">" sneaked in!)

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On 26/06/07, TheMan <mabranu at yahoo.com> wrote:

> There is a considerable risk that governments, even in
> the most democratic countries in the world, will abuse
> that kind of omnipresent, automated surveillance
> system when they have it installed, and become
> dictators, using their surveillance system to detect
> any opposition in time to snuff it, and to frighten
> people so that very little opposition even occurs.
> Power corrupts; total power corrupts totally.

Surveillance technology has been available for decades that would
allow governments to spy on anyone at any time. They could just pass a
law mandating that every home is to be bugged, and that anyone caught
interfering with the bugs goes straight to prison. Even if it were not
a technically flawless solution, it would have to be be better than no
bugs at all. Yet even extremely repressive regimes which have probably
fantasised about such a system have refrained from implementing it.
Why?



-- 
Stathis Papaioannou