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Government officials often use “security” as an excuse to take your rights. They’ll increasingly say they need to surveil and control your communications and payments to keep people secure. How about starting with the streets and trains and such? If they were actually serious about security more-so than control, they’d make sure that basic stuff is sorted out first.

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*Their security They are worried about their security.
Lyn Alden's avatar Lyn Alden
Government officials often use “security” as an excuse to take your rights. They’ll increasingly say they need to surveil and control your communications and payments to keep people secure. How about starting with the streets and trains and such? If they were actually serious about security more-so than control, they’d make sure that basic stuff is sorted out first.
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Honestly, I stopped believing that governments care that much about security. They mostly want to keep people in fear so that they can be somewhat under control. Especially now that communication bandwitldth is free and quasi infinite. It doesn't matter what the fear is and if it is actually real or not or even purposely made up. Viruses, Russians, robbers, migrants, terrorists, it's all good. Also, fighting those fears allows to legally funnel public money to the friends of those in power. 1984, Covid, once you see the constant psyops, you can't unsee it.
@Lyn Alden is right, of course. But what if we turn this argument on its head? What if we use the cause of security to inject privacy back into the system? The fact is that security REQUIRES privacy. And the system itself has real security problems. If we, by some sly means, gave the system an irresistible way to secure itself... and enabled privacy for all in the process... wouldn't that be the greatest reverse trojan horse of all? View quoted note →