Everything written on this website is written 100% by me - no AI. But everything written here is also 100% my opinion, and does not reflect that of my employer or friends or whatever. This is a controversial and somewhat more "political" blogpost than my previous ones, though I am of the opinion that Open Source is inherently political, and as such my line of work and hobbies are political in nature.
In recent years, everything has moved digital, and surveillance is at an all-time high. I'm talking about Big-Brother-esque monitoring to build digital profiles on people and the invasive surveillance online in order to better sell you crap you probably don't want or need. Now, governments with all this data want to use it to arrest criminals.
And of course, arresting criminals is good, right?
Everyone can agree that arresting criminals is good. My concern is what a criminal is. If you are allowed unrestricted surveillance into the life of a suspect, then all you need to do to monitor a person of interest is declare them a criminal or suspect. Just like if you want to intimidate someone and throw them in jail, you plant drugs in their house, then do a drug raid. And that also goes for sentences. Death penalty for pedophiles: everyone cheers until it's expanded to sex offenders and then to people who are "sexual" in nature - as is happening to queer rights in the USA.
And when you create a panic large enough to warrant surveillance, you can be the Big Brother to everyone.
Global Desk
The above is one of the most recent cases of this phenomenon in the [admittedly, increasingly unstable] USA. Here's another one. While you might be against abortion and say "good, we got that filthy criminal scum" the means by which it was achieved set a dangerous precedent. Do you think that there's no way this could be weaponised against less "controversial" "crimes" - such as criticising the government?
A lot of people say "but without this surveillance, criminals will get away". And that's a compromise I am willing to make to not have freedom and privacy decimated by the authoritarianism of certain governments which think they are the center of the world. Instead of funding mass surveillance, it would be better to fund mental health services and focus on prevention and rehabilitation over punishment; to prevent the crime rather than go through my socials, my texts, and my behaviour to classify me as a "threat".