The Value of Government Surveillance of Citizens

It’s amusing to watch U.S. officials protest the Chinese government’s surveillance of its own citizens. After all, isn’t it the U.S. government that secretly and illegally conspired with private telecom companies to record telephone conversations of private American citizens? And isn’t it the U.S. government that secured both civil and criminal immunity for the telecoms’ decision to sell out the privacy of their customers to the feds? One of the aspects of the federal government’s telecom surveillance scheme that is rarely mentioned by the mainstream press goes to the heart of why government surveillance of its citizens is so valuable — to provide a means to keep the citizenry subdued and subservient through an subtle form of blackmail...read more