Re:The US’s Stance on Surveillance Needs a Hard Reset
by rhizome on Sunday January 22, 2017 @08:23PM
(#13458927)
Your conclusion adopts the myth that an ideology can be extinguished. By what standard will terrorism be judged to have ceased, and is that standard subject to change? If the line can be moved, then it will.[1]
Pretty much anything can be reasoned in hindsight, and we have to have tools to undo the ratcheting effect that crisis responses have historically had on public policy. It's only through the devaluing of the public interest -- some might say freedom itself has been defined down over the years -- that there is no counterbalance to it being seen as "not a great political move." We have to invent a politics that can justify the tradeoff, and that it's not in existence yet (much), is something that authoritarians know. Heck, I guess we all know it, but there still has to be a way back, because what's the alternative?
Pretty much anything can be reasoned in hindsight, and we have to have tools to undo the ratcheting effect that crisis responses have historically had on public policy. It's only through the devaluing of the public interest -- some might say freedom itself has been defined down over the years -- that there is no counterbalance to it being seen as "not a great political move." We have to invent a politics that can justify the tradeoff, and that it's not in existence yet (much), is something that authoritarians know. Heck, I guess we all know it, but there still has to be a way back, because what's the alternative?
Maybe we're about to find out.
1. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_institutions