Re:China using big data to detain people before crime is com...
by forapurpose on Wednesday February 28, 2018 @05:49PM
(#16487962)
> The government is not a wall between you and what scares you
While I'm sympathetic to your point, it can be taken too far. Government does provide security to its citizens, and it does that partly by gaining prior intelligence about suspicious activities. Some things should be investigated - if someone posted online about committing murder, in detail and with clear plans, I'd hope law enforcement would check it out.
This is all very fine to want, but it's an entirely different conception of government than the one described in the constitution. It's a government much closer to the one in Russia, or China, or Turkey, or North Korea. While it may be used to, in part, fight crime, the line item that justifies the surveillance state is the ability to invest in a guarantee of power.
Trying to turn the US into this state is just going to lead to abuse of power, abuse of people without voices, and a much more wasteful budget: infrastructure spending by investment in paranoia, with a return of more power by fear. Literally government by terrorism.