I'd love to share the optimism that the genie can be put back in the bottle, but I don't.
When we talk about surveillance on western forums, we mostly refer to the work by the five eyes community, but they're not the only community interested in or doing this sort of thing. Russia's SORM-2, expanded for the Sochi Olympics is a prime example, the Chinese have something similar too.
The fact is that even if western governments turn round to their intelligence agencies and tell them to stop all of this, other countries will still fill the gap.
If Germany tells America to stop spying on German citizens in Germany, do you think America will stop spying on them? No, of course not. Do you think the German intelligence community will give up benefiting from such information if it helps them bypass any new privacy laws put in place? No, of course not.
It's here. The difference between the Stasi and the NSA when it comes to surveillance is not intent, simply capability. Any intelligence agency that would've had this level of capability would've pushed it as far as they can, it's what they do and they're not going to change.
Of course there will always be bad guys out there trying to subvert freedom. I think it's reasonable for those of us in the "free world" to expect our governments to help defend us from these bad actors, not use our taxes to fund them!
“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago: 1918-1956
Cute quote. Now explain how it relates to my point. Here it is again, for your convenience: Evil may be inevitable, but that doesn't mean it must be government funded.
When we talk about surveillance on western forums, we mostly refer to the work by the five eyes community, but they're not the only community interested in or doing this sort of thing. Russia's SORM-2, expanded for the Sochi Olympics is a prime example, the Chinese have something similar too.
The fact is that even if western governments turn round to their intelligence agencies and tell them to stop all of this, other countries will still fill the gap.
If Germany tells America to stop spying on German citizens in Germany, do you think America will stop spying on them? No, of course not. Do you think the German intelligence community will give up benefiting from such information if it helps them bypass any new privacy laws put in place? No, of course not.
It's here. The difference between the Stasi and the NSA when it comes to surveillance is not intent, simply capability. Any intelligence agency that would've had this level of capability would've pushed it as far as they can, it's what they do and they're not going to change.