[achughes]

Yes, but to be Orwellian the self-censorship must be borne out of government intimidation. In this case the government hasn't intimidated anyone, we were just leaked information.

Unless you want to argue that Snowden intentionally leaked the PRISM slides so that society would be intimidated by the governments reach, thus giving way to society censoring itself without them having to publicly punish people that were guilty of thought crimes. But that's getting into Alex Jones territory.

[monkeynotes]

>In this case the government hasn't intimidated anyone...

I disagree, with the government having the 'you're with us or against us' polarizing attitude since 9/11 along with Gitmo and an official kill list I think the U.S. gov't is pretty intimidating for anyone who doesn't fall into line.

Just look at what happened in Boston. A whole city shut down, house to house searches, an unprecedented reaction in the west for a bombing. No where else has that kind of reaction been seen, even in the UK when the IRA was blowing shit up, at no time was a curfew imposed and houses illegally searched by a militarised police.

The US is an incredibly intimidating place at times.

[achughes]

Sorry, instead of anyone, I should have said "average citizens".

Yes after 9/11 the government has a "your with us or your against us" attitude, promoted by Bush. However, your examples of Gitmo and kill lists are not evidence that this has continued. Those two examples only pertain to the ongoing war effort, not an intimidation campaign aimed at the average citizen, and the Americans that were involved were in the current warzone, not shipped off to Gitmo from the US.

I would address the Boston situation, but I don't think it is relevant. Sure shutting down the city is intimidating, but so is any other active shooter situation like a school shooting. You might feel intimidated by the police presence but ultimately the police are not focused on you.

But more to the point, of course the US is an intimidating place at times, everywhere is, but the key is that the intimidation is not focused on citizen self-censorship, which I think is the key to saying that we live in an Orwellian society.

Whether or not the US is an intimidating place, or debates about the validity of the Boston searches and curfew is a different discussion. They are not forms of intimidation aimed at self-censorship, and thus not valid reasons that we should assume that we live in an Orwellian surveillance state.

If you would like to have a debate about the role, or non-role of self-censorship in an Orwellian society, and you believe that some other form of intimidation is a valid criteria then I am all ears, but the discussion isn't about intimidation in general, only intimidation whose ultimate goal is self-censorship.

[monkeynotes]

> not an intimidation campaign aimed at the average citizen... > but ultimately the police are not focused on you.

This is exactly what is wrong. As long as these massive injustices don't affect the 'average' middle class unit it's all ok. As long as the military police thrashing through your house on their latest manhunt aren't actually after you, that's ok. It all seems pretty Orwellian to me, right down to the citizens actually justifying it all.

Anyway to be more on point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UC_Davis_pepper-spray_incident

This seems pretty intimidating to me. It would certainly make me think twice about attending even the most peaceful of protests. Pepper spray and tazing is a common response to people objecting to the status quo. Hell, if you want to protest a political rally you have to actually go to a 'free speech zone', if that isn't Orwellian enough for you I don't know what is. Than again, the 'average' citizen probably is ok with a two party 'choice' and so doesn't need free speech.

And then you have Obama's HR347 'anti protest' bill which could potentially be used to lock people up for many years for protesting in an area which the Secret Service/DHS etc. has secretly declared a heightened area of security.

It's really frightening how much potential leeway there currently is for arbitrarily locking U.S. citizens up. All these loosely defined laws are sitting around just waiting for someone to come in and abuse them. While things are quiet and everyone is behaving it all seems ok, but as soon as there is a bit of trouble, another Occupy protest for example it will be a different story.

Watch how you see your right to due process being eroded away next, it's already not needed when hunting down suspects on foreign soil. You watch as language is changed, terms subtly augmented to make it ok to execute US citizens with a drone - you know, for your protection. Maybe you, the average citizen, aren't intimidated yet, but perhaps tomorrow you might be.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-08/obama-s-drone-attac... http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/19/us-usa-security-dr...

[achughes]

Again... the key thing that makes it an Orwellian society is self-censorship, not just intimidation.

[monkeynotes]

Ok, here's a real life example then. My parents were on Skype to me today, and my Dad was talking about some controversial topic or another - a couple of times my mum said "you can't say that over the internet, people are listening".

Furthermore I actually disagree that self censorship is the key component of an Orwellian society. I think surveillance itself is the key component. Reading the interpretation below I challenge you to deny that the US and many other governments aren't well on their way to the dystopia described by Orwell.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orwellian#Meanings

Police charging through your house without permission whist you sit back and say 'they are just doing their job' is the epitome of an Orwellian society.

[jeena]

I'm not quite sure about that, people feel quite intimidated when they see how this government treats people like Snowden and Manning. I would argue that the self-censorship is one way to avoid being treated like them.

[achughes]

While I agree that the government is trying to intimidate people with their treatment of Snowden and Manning, I think the goals of the intimidating are very different. In these cases the people they are trying to intimidate are potential leakers, not average citizens. The goal is not to promote self-censorship, but keep existing government employees from leaking classified information.