I wasn’t sure if I was gonna post on this issue and then I saw this:

Justice Department charges five Chinese with cyber-espionage

Makes one wonder if pretty much every citizen of the world can charge the US and NSA with a crime against us all.

Check this out:

Cisco CEO lashes out at NSA, tells Obama to stop bugging IT hardware

Cisco Systems Inc’s chief executive officer has written a letter to U.S. President Barack Obama urging him to curtail government surveillance after evidence circulated showing the U.S. National Security Agency had intercepted Cisco equipment, a company spokesman said on Sunday.?

In a letter dated May 15, John Chambers, chief executive officer and chairman of the networking equipment giant, warned of an erosion of confidence in the U.S. technology industry and called for new “standards of conduct” in how the NSA conducts its surveillance.

The facts are actually much worse than this. The people who make equipment that handles data on the internet are pretty much forced to put in back doors for the US spy agency so they can intercept who they want when they want with virtually no obstacles. This is a power that we have already seen will not be limited to what is in the obvious public interest. The IRS scandal alone should tell us why we cannot allow government to have this much power. And there isn’t much we can do. Technology has allowed for a kind of ‘hide-the-bruises’ form of totalitarian rule where the machinery and effects of government absolutism is complex, abstract and difficult to oppose and has names like, ‘net-neutrality’ which still is a mystery to me in part. Is it a good thing for individual empowerment or not?

It is already known that the USA has a massive spying program against, well everyone. So the Chinese may want to chuckle a bit at these arrests. Still, spying on other nations is what governments are supposed to do in the interest of keeping us all safe. It is genuine and expected national security activity. Industrial spying is IP theft and a crime and needs to be stopped. But so is spying on your own nationals.

It is however the logical consequence of opening up your borders and abandoning all rational criteria for who should be allowed to live amongst you and enjoy the benefits of your centuries of cooperative and self-sacrificing-for-the greater-good, culture. Once you decide to let all ideologies and cultures hold equal sway, you are going to have to watch everyone and make elaborate judgment calls like the UK does and arrest anyone who’s speech, ideas and actions are deemed to be against the interests of ‘preserving intercultural community harmony’ etc.

The crimes will have more and more nebulous names and the people arrested won’t be able to know if they have broken a law till they have. Much like sexual harassment for that matter where asking for a date gets you a wonderful evening or an arraignment and an entry into a sex offenders register, depending on how attractive you are to the victim.

This helps to explain the immigration policies, to a degree at least,  of the current crop of despots. When your nation is infested with people who despise the builders of our culture and country, then the government has that one more excuse to monitor everyone and make up what is criminal or in the interests of national security as it goes along. We all like it when they arrest certain people, but that same machinery will be turned on the law abiding as we see in the US today. In Canada, while it seems that our government has a clear moral compass, the next one may not and will have access to the same machinery.

Constitutions that matter are written to limit gov’t. power. Technology and the kind of dystopian thinking you see in the 80s movie, Brazil has given states a total end run around those limits.

Eeyore

H/T Don L