Before surveillance was a thing, a variation that was ordinary in TV shows was for the heroes to break very important rules/principles they were sworn to uphold. For example, roughing up suspect, or even expressly denying them some procedural right gratuitously, almost as if the show was trying to condition people that those rights aren't actually rights for some other kind of people.

The rules were in the way, and the heroes cared and were tough, and did what needed to be done, to fight the bad thing.

It seems a dangerous idea, in a society based on people buying into admirable rights and responsibilities, but from what I've seen even casually and anecdotally (as a techie, not a humanities researcher or social scientist), the idea seems to have been drip-fed for most/all of our lives. So long, I couldn't guess whether it was an idea that already resonated strongly with people, and media just pandered to that, or it was planted/nurtured by media.

This famous speech starts later in the progression towards a much worse situation, but seems like it might be relevant: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_..."

It always seemed incredibly fanciful and far-fetched - and then Snowden and Trump happened. It turns out the movie was just slightly ahead of its time.

The things that governments are capable of doing are rarely secret. They leak out over time, and you'll see them portrayed in niche culture long before they become undeniable public knowledge. For example, off the top of my head, the satellite photos published amidst the 1998 missile strike of the Al Shifa pharmaceutical factory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Shifa_pharmaceutical_factor...) are the types of evidence that inform the private sector, including authors and screenwriters. I'm sure similar photos and descriptions were publicly available much earlier than that, so the generic ability to track people on rooftops via satellite (notwithstanding all the little gotchas that aren't fit for storytelling) was more than plausible at that point, especially considering that then as now the military doesn't typically release material that discloses their best capabilities.

I used to have a link to a pre-9/11, accidental admission in a magazine interview by a general about the Navy's ability to tap undersea fiber optic cables. Though at that point I think it was already assumed the U.S. performed such missions--certainly by Russia and China, but even among intelligence geeks--which is probably why he didn't think much of the comment. (IIRC, the topic was a submarine designed for tapping undersea cable, though at that time it was only "public knowledge" that it could tap traditional copper cables, not fiber optic. He impliedly--only barely shy of explicitly--admitted that it also tapped fiber optic cables.)

What's fanciful is the degree and extent of corruption assumed in these narratives. People seem to think it's more plausible simply because of the true-to-life character of the technological portrayals. But NEVER forget that the principal aim of movies is to elicit strong emotions by leveraging common fears[1] and desires, suspending disbelief by deftly mixing fiction with non-fiction. And I don't mean to preach; it's definitely a life-long struggle for everyone to differentiate culturally constructed narratives from reality.

[1] E.g. Big Brother, the particularized fear of powerlessness that comes when mixing it with political cynicism.

Intentional or not, very very likely to condition the audience into regarding civil rights and rules of evidence as “mere” anything. Goes back to at least _Hill Street Blues_ and _Baretta,_ probably _Kojak_ too. Likely much farther than that. (Though _Columbo_ didn't display this attitude, at least not as flagrantly, IIRC?)

One salient difference between the characters of Butcher and "King Henry" (this is not specific) is that Henry is a king and Butcher is a somewhat violent homeless dude. One deeply suspects suggestions to see them as somehow the same.

It would be a considerably more "experimental" program if a character like Butcher were the actual protagonist.

As evidence in favor of the latter possibility, note that we have long provided government/military funding and other resources for the production of media that gives the military and "intelligence services" editorial control:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military-entertainment_complex

This has been the reality in China for a while now and the result has been... largely fine. eg: This Reuter's piece from 2018 where you could get a picture of anyone's face for $1USD and a copy of their phone records for 50c: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-dataprivacy/data-du...

Like, if you ask a representative sample of people living in China what they feel the top 10 pros and cons of living in China were, that all of their personal information is for sale for a few bucks would not make it onto many people's lists on either side, it doesn't really affect your day to day life.

There are a lot of theoretical privacy attacks that sound scarily creepy but privacy advocates tend to play up the hypothetical and not look at how empirically impactful such things end up being.

Tragically, given the mass atrocities perpetrated throughout human history, it's inevitable that records of who people are, their race, ethnicity, religion, political affiliation, sexual orientation, and/or other data about them (which is now collected and distributed at a larger scale than at any time in human history) will be used to commit more mass atrocities.

We are living on borrowed time.

Whereas before some people could escape detection or escape being rounded up, the next time the slaughter will be much more effective.

Also, in the past it was much harder to detect people who didn't stand out in some obvious way (through skin color, mode of dress, or obvious behavior), now there are records of people's interests and communications which make them much easier to target.

That did not exist before except through a relatively primitive network of informants, or unless the people outed themselves through publishing their writing.

Not to mention how much more advanced tracking technology is these days, and how much harder it is to hide.

All of this put together makes the current surveillance aparatus infinitely more sophisticated and powerful than it was throughout almost all of the 20th Century.

It really is just a matter of time until it gets used by people with an agenda and/or a grudge against some victim group(s). Saying it hasn't happened yet so it won't is just wishful thinking.

When the have the cooperation and participation of the military, the secret police, and the general population (as has often been the case in many atrocities, genocides, and pogroms in the past) it's even worse, and by the time the video evidence gets out (if it ever does) it's too late to save the victims, assuming there's even anyone in the position to do so.

"Mass atrocities" are difficult to carry out, and conceal, for very long.

It doesn't help one bit that privacy is gone.

So you are not responsbile for your actions because you're not at the top? So many great tragedies throughout history where this was the justification and we're still stuck with this mentality...

What is 'morally right' is just not the issue there. Russia will need to go through some major development steps before moral issues can even be meaningfully talked about.

:D sorry, could not resist.

There were still thousands of nazis everywhere in government institutions like courts and police. The German term "Altnazi" (old nazi) describes nazis that were able to fly under the radar and still do their jobs until retirement.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canary_trap

The only way you can get to high position in police or special agency hierarchy is by corruption: either by family connections or just paying a lot of money.

> A glimpse of the future for those supporting these kinds of laws because they have nothing to hide.

I don't think that's necessarily true, because pervasive and tolerated corruption is required to get an end state like that. If a country has "[those] kinds of laws," but unlawful access is investigated and prosecuted, then the data will remain (more or less) restricted to police and government investigators.

So, even though you still have to worry about the police and government abusing the data, as well as certain powerful or connected people, you won't have to worry so much about stuff like your SO buying your phone records for $10.

Furthermore the conclusions are always the ones they'd want (e.g. "Russia shot down an airliner").

If Bellingcat did the exact same thing in reverse and exclusively and regularly blew the lid on secretive NATO operations using morsels of information pieced together online the idea that it would be FSB backed would barely even be considered controversial. It would be assumed because... well, because Occam's razor.

Julian Assange leaked from everyone including Russia and he was designated a Russian spy because he didn't leak "enough" on Russia ffs.

Russia seems to shamelessly go around assassinating people so they make easy pickings for him.

One of his latest investigations and podcasts was some random African country (Cameroon) based on video evidence online.

A better question to ask is why hasn’t Russia or China freaked out at NSA hacks? Like the west just did with SolarWinds (I’m sure the western media would eat it up and so would we here). We had to wait for a western (Snowden) to find our rights are being violated domestically. The answer is Russia and China are on their own spree and keep any of the failed NSA ops quiet (assuming they exist). So there’s not much to go on for some random open intelligence blog. Russia et al don’t care about defending rights or exposing evil.

But Russia and the other mafia states provide plenty of open source evil to sort through.

I also don’t see the US shooting down a plane with a hundred people and denying it or openly assassinating their enemies in ‘enemy’ territory.

There’s so many answers here.

That's pretty much exactly what Christo Grozev said in one of the recent interviews. They investigate government wrongdoing, and russia has been doing a lot of shady things in the last few years. Plus he lived in Russia and speaks russian, so that coupled with the corruption and tons of available data makes Russia a good target for his investigations.

We are moving into a multipolar world and interesting times.

> This millennium? Probably Syria.

How did you come to that conclusion? Though the question is far to ambiguous (what does "killed by" mean, exactly?), I'd assume Germany would be ahead of Syria, given that any reasonable count would include those killed in the Holocaust plus allied casualties from WWI and WWII (where all cases where there's clearly established intent to kill by the regime). The Syrian civil was was bad, but not that bad. I'm not aware of anything of similar magnitude there after 1900, and the numbers of anything before would be lessened by lower populations and less effective military technology.

I mean, it's pretty hard to dispute such a conclusion when you have social media posts tracking the movement from Russia of a Russian-made anti-aircraft missile launcher with identification markings to an area near where MH17 crashed, posts of rocket contrails at the time of the crash, then more posts tracing the same launcher leaving the area and traveling back to Russian territory, sans a missile.

In a 1977 Rolling Stone magazine article, "The CIA and the Media," reporter Carl Bernstein expanded upon the Church Committee's report and said that around 400 press members were considered assets by the CIA.

Undoubtedly this continues to this day.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee