and which changed EVERYTHING is... that technology has enabled the total personal surveillance of everyone on earth which was never possible before.
The convergence of these crazy laws, and technological advances, is what has made this a game changer. It took the size and scope of the Surveillance State to a whole new dimension. This has happened largely after the Security State's Patriot Act powers, which allowed it to create a national security blackout of information on the fact that this explosion of capability has happened and is already in place.
The things NSA is doing now were never possible before. And all the whistleblowers and journaliists who have tried to tell us what is going on, have been shut up. You see how some people react to even this stroke of luck, that Snowden managed to break through the blackout with a first glimmer of what's going on. They don't care, they want to hang the guy.
The problem is that this population has been well and truly propagandized. A chunk of it no longer cares about their rights. And the sad fact is, that they will enable the rest of us losing our rights too. But they don't care about that either.
One thing the Security State knows, is how to make advantages for themselves out of the worst impulses in human naturre. They cultivate the worst in human beings and capitalize on it. We now have several generations of strikingly amoral and ruthless people on this planet. It is ugly, and it is extremely dangerous.
The good news is, that a machine will always be vulnerable to a renegade. (I had an occasion to debate that in a long conversation with one of the WW2 era's major Spook-elite, and it was very interesting. He admitted losing the point.) And that is precisely why the State goes after those people. And that is precisely why those of us who value our rights must support them any way we can.
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