Techdirt Podcast Episode 166: How The Courts Created The Surveillance State

from the panopticon dept

The US has been something of a surveillance state since long before the Snowden revelations that showed the full extent of some of the NSA’s activities. A lot of this is made possible — often unintentionally — by decades-old court decisions regarding technology. It’s a problem. This week, reporter Cyrus Farivar — whose new book Habeas Data digs into this judicial history — joins us to discuss how courts created the surveillance state.

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Comments on “Techdirt Podcast Episode 166: How The Courts Created The Surveillance State”

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8 Comments
Anonymous Coward says:

SHEESH. Capitalists / fascists / communists created the

surveillance state.

IT’S NOT NEW, for start. Spying on populace is ancient, ALWAYS done, and up to “panopticon” level was proposed a couple hundred years ago.

But everything is new to Masnick — and he OMITS key part of the Surveillance State: its corporate front: GOOGLE.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: SHEESH. Capitalists / fascists / communists created the

There are no historical precedents that even vaguely approach what we have present day in terms of mass surveillance.

Governments conducting large-scale surveillance on citizenry in the past has very often been met with disastrous results for the public. There is absolutely no reason to believe present-day mass surveillance will be any different.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: SHEESH. Capitalists / fascists / communists created the

Governments conducting large-scale surveillance on citizenry in the past has very often been met with disastrous results for the public.

Nice truism that adds nothing, because "present-day mass surveillance" is CORPORATIZED. The organization that surveils you the most, every day, nearly every web-site, even right on Techdirt, tracks you all over the net, and now collates with your credit cards, is GOOGLE. Period.

Anonymous Coward says:

lies and broken promises, the indispensable tool that neverfails

In 2008 we elected a president who not only promised to end domestic spying, but made the issue a central theme of his campaign. Yet amazingly he was forgiven by his supporters for basically stabbing them all in the back when he got caught doing the exact opposite of what he had promised so adamantly and repeatedly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAQlsS9diBs

Anonymous Coward says:

No reasonable expectation of privacy vs stalking

Listening on the analogies used for license plate readers, I kinda wonder:

If license plate reader equals to a police officer or even citizen seeing your car on the street and thus should not carry any reasonable expectation of privacy,

Then one party following you around town, keeping track of your sightings…. doesn’t this amount to stalking?

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