Internet Surveillance Is Tyrannical

While surveillance that results in a speeding ticket may curb our wayward morals, Internet surveillance has no such benefit. Beware the illusion of your public persona, says The Economist. “One technique for the use of secret surveillance to effect social control is to exploit the discrepancies between people’s public and private personas, which exist in all societies. The best way to do this is to first create social pressure to maintain a public code of behaviour that is highly artificial and untenable. This will maximise the gap between the things people say in public, and those they say in private. Then, you can use your surveillance apparatus to access people’s private statements and gain leverage with evidence of hypocrisy or violations of the code.”