[bigiain]

Alternatively: "We're safe because most people aren't jerks."

Ascribing general personal safety to surveillance doesn't ring true to me. (It's _possible_ that surveillance mitigates extremely rare but extremely serious dangers to safety, but evidence of that seems scarce...)

[erikpukinskis]

Not all surveillance is state surveillance. I pay attention when I walk around, and I talk to my neighbors.

If you think surveillance isn't necessary, my guess is you are actually living in a "safe" area and leaning heavily on state surveillance and military/police violence to provide border control so that the general public can't enter your community.

Perhaps you don't consider the person standing at the border and looking to see who's trying to come in as "surveillance".

[bigiain]

"If you think surveillance isn't necessary, my guess is you are actually living in a "safe" area and leaning heavily on state surveillance and military/police violence to provide border control so that the general public can't enter your community."

My initial indignant reaction to that was "No way!", but realistically, my country (Australia) treats refugees worse than (assumption ahead) yours... While my neighbourhood is "safe" and pretty much abhors police violence, you're right about my country... :-/

"Perhaps you don't consider the person standing at the border and looking to see who's trying to come in as "surveillance"."

Like I said, I'm not from the US, but even some of us on the opposite side of the planet have seen all the stats proving toddlers with guns kill more people than "the people standing at your borders". From someone with no real dog in your immigration policy fight, but perhaps with a bit of outside perspective - this seems like institutionalised every day racism, rather than any real attempt to make the public safer... (Not intending to accuse you personally of racism here, but there's a deep undercurrent of it in your country's policies, government, institutions of power, and public discourse. And my country is no better either...)

[erikpukinskis]

For what it's worth I'm against both borders and state surveillance. I am just questioning your suggestion that somehow surveillance itself is inherently evil.