Notice the frequency of these leaks and the increasing seriousness of the state transgressions. We are going to start to see everything the states have ever done leaked.
Its very simple, they are taking a hard look at us but we as the global population are taking a much harder decisive look at states. This is the acceleration of efforts like OWS and the Scottland succession effort. Remember the mic checks and the crowd telephone effect they created for OWS? Looks like they wont be able to turn the volume down on the public. The public wants the errosion of its rights and quality of life stopped and reversed. It doesnt want budget, economy or accounting excuses. Its done with austerity nonsense and labor market reform idiocy.
Meanwhile the real bad guys are smart enough to use a VPN to a server in a non-extradition country. So basically political dissidents and other normal citizens who donât think that should be necessary and/or donât know how are the ones who will be âcaughtâ. Awesome.
Iâm not sure the public truly want an erosion of their rights (i.e. right to private life and family etc) but itâs the fact that there is widespread apathy towards the government that has frankly delivered a reasonably comfortable and worry-free lifestyle. Iâm not talking about the techy-savvy groups but the ordinary citizen - you know who Iâm talking about. Itâs a crude concept admittedly, but if something as abstract as online surveillance, which doesnât and never would effect their life, was to be more obvious, like mandatory searches in all public places, then the reaction would be stark. Given the fear of random acts of violence from terrorism in general, I feel that the average Joe is content to give away some (more like ignore) the rights that were afforded to them considering they may never have utilised those rights in the first place.
Lastly, I remember watching a youtube video sometime ago of a lawyer giving advice on how to deal with the police in general. I mention this as he asked the audience to view their rights more as permissible privileges instead of innate characteristics of a person. And vis-a-vis the report of the 5 Eyes shows that our rights are treated as layered permissible privileges instead of real human characteristics shared by all.
What you said may be the case but that needs to be reversed, especially in the context of state sponsored terrorism. No Soviet Union and we get all this fear mongering stuff.
Its up to people who are aware to try to push back in as non violent a manner as possible. My local system has bedrock language involving the absolute right of the people to overthrow an unjust government. I am aware that post Hume there are philosophical quibbles about rights but take that right to overthrow a tyrannical government, is that just another permissible privilege that can be revoked at the whim of the tyrant. That languages reads like a command. The point of a right is to place a real limit on state power, if some secret court or law has revoked them or if they are just privileges they have already been weakened to the point impending nonexistence. But as Machiavelli noted Republics die hard, people donât forget liberty easily and they tend to work to smite those who try to take it way. If the worst comes and we survive, I donât think the Nazi walk away or get to escape to South America to live to fight another day.
As far as the lawyerâs advice, my sense is he was saying donât provoke them or get belligerent because they will make up shit after the fact about why they had to beat you half to death or you accidentally died in custody. As for human rights a slights (or like corporate ârightsâ) I donât think so, there is every court of appeal, and the court of public opinion.