Folks are often surprised that politicians on the (nominal) left don’t oppose mass surveillance. It seems like such a clear-cut case of authoritarianism vs. human rights, it’s hard to imagine how Democrats could fail to oppose it at least in principle.
But from what I can see, politicians on the left have always supported mass surveillance at least as much as those on the right, if not more so.
- pinkos naturally tend to prefer strong intelligence services to military force
- and many of them fear being painted as terrorist-lovers
- pinkos essentially believe in the state as a vehicle for good; like, when the UK’s Blair government was pushing for a system of ID cards linking together every government database, any suggestion that this amounted to an uncontrollable hyperweapon of state surveillance was met with “baroo?” and a quizzical head tilt
- since the public doesn’t care, the only politicians willing to expend capital on this are libertarians, and they’re only a problem for right-wing parties
I’m sorry to say that I don’t think there’s any way to improve this situation by voting. If it were the only thing you cared about, you could vote for your local Rand Paul (or David Davis), but if you care about anything else then you should vote for your local left-wing candidate, and expect to be disappointed on this particular front.
