[justanotheranon]

you don't know that there won't be repercussions. perhaps when i say "America is already at dystopian North Korean levels of mass propaganda", my IP address is stored in XKEYSCORE and my cell phone billing info is cross referenced and my name is put on a Watchlist.

perhaps when i try to apply to a FedGov job, some automated sytem for scoring Inside Threats uses that Watchlist, and determines i am a security threat, and i am denied the job.

perhaps that automated scoring system is sold to the private sector, and then i am also denied jobs and bank loans and housing and travel when the system rejects me for unspecified reasons, since the existence of the secret Watchlist will never be known outside of FedGov.

through the existence of numerous forms of mass surveillance exposed by Wikileaks, we know the machinery of an automated social credit system has already been built. it's operational. the only question is how far along are they in putting it to use to truly turn us into a superficially happier nation sized prison camp like North Korea.

[jariel]

"you don't know that there won't be repercussions. perhaps when i say "America is already at dystopian North Korean levels of mass propaganda", my IP address is stored in XKEYSCORE and my cell phone billing info is cross referenced and my name is put on a Watchlist."

It's really sad how deep down the rabbit hole of delusional moral equivalence so much of the anti American bigotry on HN amounts to, and of course so ironic that this is all American-based.

If you want to work for US government spy apparatus, yes, there will be a loyalty test. And that is fine and normal, and it's the same everywhere.

Otherwise, you are free to say pretty much as you please, whenever you want, unless you're making bombs or calling for violence - even in the later case you can get away with it.

Thankfully, there are forces in the world that remain vigilant towards ensuring that you can do that. You can look on a map and it's fairly evident to see which places are fairly open and safe, and which are not.

[exolymph]

The fact that you are able to post whatever you feel like typing is radically more freedom than we can presume is available to the average North Korean. Pull the other one, man.

[crest]

And still US forces murder civilians in the Middle East without repercussions by drone and airstrike. Please explain to me why it would be wrong to carpet bomb the Rammstein airbase to take out the drone operations.

[smeeth]

The fact that you have to say “perhaps... perhaps... perhaps...” when you describe your authoritarian fantasy is all anyone needs to know. One does not need to similarly caveat North Korean or Chinese authoritarianism, you can see the gulags on Google maps. Have there been human rights and privacy abuses by the US government? Yes. Is our government a bad parody of a dystopian sci-fi movie? Please, let’s keep ourselves grounded in facts.