There’s a difference between government mandated surveillance (i.e. CCP / NSA) versus tech corp surveillance (i.e. Palantir), as one is “official” meaning it’s regulated at a federal level by a nation’s government enforced by police and the judiciary who have legal power to detain and charge while the other (“unofficial”) is in the hands of a private company specialized in data collection but have no legal authority to detain people as Palantir isn’t the police.
The “official” level is enacted by federal governments or those in charge such as the president or prime minister (i.e. using “-16 social media ban” as a facade) by enforcing age verification (via facial scans and digital ID) on websites towards the average person (they use a VPN anyway for circumvention) or speaking about the NSA doing that covertly (Snowden put a light on it) and digital ID’s are regulated by a nation’s government.
The “unofficial” level is by a private tech giant who at their own discretion can harvest data of an individual, but they do not have legislative powers to detain that person since they are not law enforcement as mentioned. They can only spy on the subject but can’t intervene from a legal standpoint even if they sense or spot something criminal or they are covertly harvesting data from that person which is prone to being stolen by hackers.
I don’t think you can separate the two since the tech companies are selling the data to the government. We are be surveilled by both at rhe same time.
Both. Especially when they cooperate.
Yes
They are the same thing now.
“Yes” is the obviously correct answer.
Though I kind of invite everyone to watch the dark dystopian sci-fi movies from a few decades ago. It’s almost always some nasty private company.
And downside of them is: They have not been elected by the people. There’s also no separation of powers, accountability etc. And we have that to some degree in somewhat working democracies. Even the half broken (as of today)'s democracies come with more accountability and checks than any private company. And we got companies who are richer and more influential than several smaller countries. So there’s that as well.
But they’re both very scary.
TL;DR: Both; but it depends on your threat model who and what you want to protect against.
There’s a third. The streets. It’s all the same game from the bottom to the top, mainstream or street. It’s all connected and utilized for the spirit of the game.
I think the real question is more along the lines of “is western culture prodominantly evil” and how do we deal with the denial and surrealism of the honest answer.
I think the real question is more along the lines of “is western culture prodominantly evil”
Over surveillance? Western culture?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_China
Mass surveillance in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is the network of monitoring systems used by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and government to monitor its citizens. China maintains the largest and most sophisticated mass surveillance system in the world.[2][3] Surveillance is primarily conducted through government entities, although corporate surveillance in connection with the CCP and Chinese government is also prevalent. China monitors its citizens through Internet surveillance, camera surveillance, and through other digital technologies.[4][5] As of 2023, the country had over 700 million surveillance cameras. The surveillance has become increasingly widespread and grown in sophistication under Xi Jinping’s administration.[6][7][8][9] In the 2020s, China started integrating artificial intelligence into its surveillance systems.
The interconnection of both, where state surveillance finds in private data collection the info they aren’t legally allowed to obtain, or where state actors sub-contracts the private sector to provide data.
Yes.
In a perfect world, the corporation is worse because the government is regulated by the constitution and represents the will of the people.
In the world we live in, it’s a distinction without a difference. Snowden showed us all how the US government spies on us. Currently, tech companies do the spying because 1) they’re better at it and 2) it’s technically not illegal because the 4th ammendment only binds the government, not citizens.
Tech has been far worse, at least in my experience.
Until recently, government surveillance was at least predictable and consistent. Obviously I was against it, but seemed to have at least some voice and didn’t expect any personal harm. Of course with the recent sharp turn right, we can see how naive that is, how “the slippery slope” is not a fallacy
Meanwhile tech has formed entire businesses out of extracting and exploiting private information, including collecting it for the government to workaround due process, scaling out surveillance networks that government has no budget for, and generally going around limits desired by voters . They have actively pursued whatever avenue they can get away with, causing direct harm to us all
When the biggest abuses of privacy are committed by tech, but bought by government, which do you blame?
They’re the same.
I agree that government at least could be in a well functioning democracy and respect individual rights and such while copro just means your a commodity.
Both is an option.
There is no difference between the tech oligarchs and the goverment.
