[javajosh]

Wow, you managed to pack so much wrong in such a small space, I'm a little impressed! First, at worst I've induldged in a slippery slope fallacy, not a strawman. However, I'm not making an argument, really. I'm asking a hypothetical question.

As for the absurdity of placing monitors in every room, I'm surprised someone on HN would raise that objection. IoT devices are dirt cheap, and whats more, many people voluntarily install them. The government could easily choose to subsidize Nest/Amazon/Google devices - for the low low price of free access for your protection. Maybe you would get insurance premium discounts. Many would jump on that deal.

Then you use a straw-man yourself, implying that this system would require constant human monitoring to be effective. It wouldn't. The data would be used in the same way security camera footage is used now, to be used as evidence after-the-fact, and so, as a deterrent.

So, rather than reflexively attack me, how about engaging with the thought behind it?

[close04]

Politicians are responsible for some of the most critical decisions affecting a whole country, and they are also accountable in front of the people. So to improve on your idea, I'd say they should be the first to wear such an always on camera/microphone and wiretapping of every device they use. This way any attempt to corrupt or extort them would be mitigated. Why should we only think of the children when politicians are constantly the target of attacks and tempted by corruption?

Yes, it would be a massive privacy violation but given the kind of power they wield the checks in place must be equally massive. Trying to bypass these measures in any way could even be treated as a national security threat.

[mrandish]

Yes, it's a serious problem but even onerous approach you describe has a fundamental weakness. Since even prisoners in jail are able to obtain and use drugs, we should expect such a system to have failures and due to the nature of aggregated political power. Even a small number of such failures can have outsized negative consequences.

There is an alternative approach to mitigating this problem which is easier, cheaper and more effective. We need to reduce the concentration of political power by making politicians and beaurocrats less powerful. Since the benefits of political power tend to amplify over time, we should limit all such positions of power to single terms. Once elected to any state-wide or national public office, you can never be elected to another. One and done. If there are no 30-year career politicians, the value of influencing them is greatly diminished.

The next step is to reduce the amount of power centralized within government. Much as bank robbers target banks "because that's where the money is", crony capitalists and lobbyists seeking regulatory capture target politicians because we've allowed too much power to pool in one place.