[noir_lord]

Thanks for the interesting post, as I mentioned in the first post I have a fascination for 19th and 20th century history and the parallels to some of it are horribly stark (so stark in fact I can't believe that the people in power haven't spotted them which leaves me with "this is what they want").

Secret courts, no right to due process, no right to face your accuser, the presumption of guilt on political grounds, secret warrants, an out of control security apparatus, extra judicial killings, curtailing on the right to free protest, right to free speech...

Thanks to our reliance on modern communications and technology the state apparatus can assemble data warehouses that the most optimistic of STASI operatives wouldn't have even dreamed possible and we seem to be sleep walking into a police state more pervasive and insidious than anything we've ever seen.

"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever."

[throwawaykf05]

But if you delve into that history even more, you'll note that it was accompanied by a pervasive sense of dread and fear even amongst those who were not being persecuted. In Nazi Germany, for instance, it was not just the Jews who lived in terror of the Stasi (edit: mixed up my history, not Stasi, but the "death squads" -- the Stasi came after the war, but even more feared), but all German citizens in general. The reason was probably that the Stasi made no attempts to hide their activities, just as the various Islamic groups and Mexican drug gangs don't today. Publicity of their acts to spread terror is the very tool these folks rely on to exert their control.

People who draw parallels between the actions of today's intelligence agencies and the agencies of oppression of yesteryear uniformly miss out on this key difference.

[polymatter]

The time to stop a totalitarian police state is _before_ it becomes a totalitarian police state. It gets a lot harder to stop afterwards.

[gaius]

As Bruce Schneieir says, it is poor civic hygiene to even let the systems be built in the first place. Unfortunately we are well past that point.

[noir_lord]

> People who draw parallels between the actions of today's intelligence agencies and the agencies of oppression of yesteryear uniformly miss out on this key difference.

Except that sense of dread doesn't come into place instantly it will lag behind the apparatus that causes the dread.