Well, I see where you’re coming from on that, but I find the ‘Left vs. Right’ style of looking at it pretty outdated and maybe not too representative of where the problems lie. Any movement that empowers the the proles is gonna meet with resistance from government. (The Soviets, for example, disapproved of anybody being a little too ‘right’ to suit them.)
So, I think of it more as any potential loss of power to those who rule, period. This time, they don’t need control of those who are weakest - they’ve already got that. This time, it’s a far broader target, and the tech in question doesn’t provide us a direct path out of the mess.
For example, let’s say the courts rule against all this NSA snooping. Can you then trust them enough not to go ahead and use strong encryption and such just to make sure? I think not. Can we trust the tech industry to provide us the needed tools? Hard to say - so many players are being outed as partners in this thing. Nice to say we have to fire congress and the Prez and all - but you know and I know that people will point fingers and choose sides based on tradition and emotion, and that still means the major
parties anyway.
(I should probably add that I’'m a techie and a hardcore Constitutionalist. I think like a Libertarian in the sense that the Constitution was designed to provide all with the greatest-possible amount of personal freedoms, but am a member of no political party at all.)
We need a clearer vision of exactly who all is getting targeted. Foreign leaderships, yes - but both supposed allies as well as pronounced enemies. (And an assortment of frenemies as well.) Internally? Who, exactly? Publicly, we’ve seen only the guys who outed the government, not the ultimate targets themselves. Unless you’ve heard something more?
