Coming back to th main topic of this thread, which I found quite interesting, I believe that information is power. The more you know about somebody the more you can predict his actions and decisions and this puts him/her at an obvious disadvantage. Governments claiming to do this in the best interest of their citizens are actually consolidating their power and extending their reach. And the best argument to convince the masses of such draconian measures is FEAR. Fear of terrorism, crime, abuse...etc. So logically, a government that wants to consolidate its power must propogate such fear through the media and then provide the "ANSWER" by offering more safety through more surveillance, cameras..etc. Taking the threat of terror as an example, how many people have died in the attacks attributed to OBL? 10,000? Now compare that to the number of people who die every year of Malaria (2,000,000). Car accidents in the USA alone (50,000/year). And now which is the greater tragedy? But which gets more media coverage and attention? This makes it obvious that terrorism and fear of it is much more exaggerated for the purpose mentioned above and that measures to curb it are ridiculously enormous in comparison to measures to curb much more death caused by other reasons as previously mentioned. The point is that governments srtificially create fear, magnify it through the media in order to pursue their own interests and not the interests of their citizens. QED.
Coming back to th main topic of this thread, which I found quite interesting, I believe that information is power. The more you know about somebody the more you can predict his actions and decisions and this puts him/her at an obvious disadvantage. Governments claiming to do this in the best interest of their citizens are actually consolidating their power and extending their reach. And the best argument to convince the masses of such draconian measures is FEAR. Fear of terrorism, crime, abuse...etc. So logically, a government that wants to consolidate its power must propogate such fear through the media and then provide the "ANSWER" by offering more safety through more surveillance, cameras..etc. Taking the threat of terror as an example, how many people have died in the attacks attributed to OBL? 10,000? Now compare that to the number of people who die every year of Malaria (2,000,000). Car accidents in the USA alone (50,000/year). And now which is the greater tragedy? But which gets more media coverage and attention? This makes it obvious that terrorism and fear of it is much more exaggerated for the purpose mentioned above and that measures to curb it are ridiculously enormous in comparison to measures to curb much more death caused by other reasons as previously mentioned. The point is that governments srtificially create fear, magnify it through the media in order to pursue their own interests and not the interests of their citizens. QED.