[AnimalMuppet]

We don't actually need to worry about your obvious question, because it doesn't work. Yours is hypothetical. (And hypothetical questions can be interesting. Also, it can be good to have answers while they're still hypothetical, because sometimes they quit being hypothetical, sometimes very abruptly. But for the current discussion, we can reject mass surveillance on pragmatic grounds without worrying about the theoretical.)

[slibhb]

It's not obvious that mass surveillance doesn't work. It seems to work pretty well for the Chinese.

Anyway, we have a mass surveillance program because people thought it would work. Perhaps we could have avoided the program if we had more people in that room who had effectively argued that, even if it worked, it was not to be pursued for reasons that have nothing to do with its efficacy. Sometimes principles come in handy.

[pintxo]

Not sure the efficacy of mass surveillance can be determined within timespans of less than several decades. As there seem to be two major effects at play, one is the direct usage of information learned from mass surveillance which can be used by the surveyors. I can only assume this is the "works pretty well" you refer to. On the other hand, there are the (indirect) effects of mass surveillance on the surveyed population. Maybe the best example here is the GDR, which had a massive surveillance operations run by the Stasi (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit). They might have well delayed the ultimate dissolution of the GDR, but ultimately they could not stop it.

[dTal]

While you're not wrong, it seems very clear that these measures are not being pushed for their stated purpose. The fact that they are ineffective at that purpose is powerful and important supporting evidence that we should not ignore.

Here's an example: Article 20 of The French Military Programming Law, which entered into force on 1 January 2015 against heavy criticism from civil liberties groups, gave the state full access to all unencrypted telecommunications, including SMS.

11 months later, Paris was attacked by a wave of terrorism, coordinated by... unencrypted SMS.

In response, the government... pushed through even more intrusive surveillance legislation, and coordinated a public relations push to implicate encrypted messaging providers as "complicit".

[owl_troupe]

By "work[ing] well", what is the metric you see as success?

A broad society that has rendered itself completely nonthreatening to its ruling class?

A place where certain forms free expression can result in imprisonment, torture, or execution? [1]

Mass surveillance serving as the infrastructure of religious, ethnic, and political persecution, including genocide? [2]

[1] https://organharvestinvestigation.net/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide#Use_of_biometr...

[AnimalMuppet]

Both your points are fair.