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A comment on GCHQ can monitor MPs' communications, court rules. Parent comment

Re:GCHQ can monitor MPs' communications, court rules by agd on Thursday October 15, 2015 @06:25AM (#10392322)
It's not quite as simple as that. Mass surveillance alone harms free speech because it affects people's behaviour. If you know everything you say and do is recorded, you tend to say and do a lot less than you would otherwise.
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Re:GCHQ can monitor MPs' communications, court rules by superuser2 on Thursday October 15, 2015 @10:39AM (#10393393)
>If you know everything you say and do is recorded

Intelligence agencies didn't want us to know that, we learned it from whistleblowers.

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Re:GCHQ can monitor MPs' communications, court rules by agd on Thursday October 15, 2015 @11:21AM (#10393664)
Intelligence agencies are full of smart people. They know that secrets this big can't be kept indefinitely. Once the cat's out of the bag, then the panopticon comes into effect. They have factored in the effect on free speech into their decisions.
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Re:GCHQ can monitor MPs' communications, court rules by TeMPOraL on Thursday October 15, 2015 @11:06AM (#10393567)
And it's not even that bad in principle. In a more perfect world you want to have is freedom of speech and an organization like S.H.I.E.L.D. which secretly scoops all communication to protect the public from greater threats. Unfortunately, what we got instead is a kind of Hydra that lacks ambition for world domination.
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