I think the trend is pretty clear: increasingly more surveillance of everything you do, biometric/DNA recognition systems implemented everywhere, and bringing back army troops and military technology (including drones) for "security" inside the country (and of course further militarization of the police, too).
Look what they're doing at the Mexican border. That's only a sample and a "test-run" of what they're planning for the whole country in the next 10 years.
Those sci-fi movies about an awful future where the civilians and the society is highly controlled by the government are becoming reality.
Now it depends whether the people actually want this to happen, or don't even care about what's happening. I think US has maybe one more chance at the next presidential election and next 1-2 Congress elections to turn this around, if it's not already too late to stop this trend.
Once it's entrenched and hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars are spent on this effort, it's going to be very hard to roll it all back. Just look what success Americans have had with rolling back the war on drugs or the military industrial complex (which is to say absolutely none, and that's been going on for decades).
(Opinion from someone north of the border): The good thing about being Canadian is we live mostly American-style lives but don't have to deal with stuff like this lol (or at least it doesn't look like it, but someone can correct me if we have secret PRISM projects too).
The bad thing is we have no say in what happens down there, and we are dependent on many services the US provides (not that I'm complaining, but PRISM stuff isn't comforting heh).
On the basis of secret government directives, Canada’s national security apparatus is conducting mass surveillance of Canadians parallel to, if not directly patterned after, the domestic spying operations of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA).
You realize that 99% of Canadian traffic is routed through the USA right, and that sharing data between US agencies and CSIS is normal? Also we already seem to have our own PRISM that does not have a fancy name and no one is willing to talk about.
I'm at the point where I kind of think the march of technological progress makes it inevitable. If it's trillions of dollars in 2013, how much will it cost in 2023?
Hell, it might not even be government: What happens when someone scrapes all the screenshots from facebook, condenses it into a biometric facial recognition dataset, and posts the resulting 22 TB file to pirate bay, and 22 TB is considered small.
Technology has a way of also bringing balance when needed.
For example, yes, it makes spying on normal people easier, however it also makes it possible to communicate in real-time with virtually unbreakable encryption, something which was not possible to do only 70 years ago. It also makes it possible to keep whatever files you want secret. My laptop's hard-drive is encrypted for example, without too much of a performance penalty. And consider that for anonymity on the Internet, you also have proxies and nascent projects like Tor.
And yes, normal / uneducated people are not using technology to its fullest. But that's only because they aren't aware of imminent threats to their privacy, to their way of life. Educate them and I can assure you a significant percentage will start using encryption whenever possible. Also, make it the default, make it convenient and they'll use it - and yes, we are the ones that should be doing that, because it's our job to make life easier and safer for normal people.
It's not technology you should fear. But rather those in power that can make anything they don't like illegal. And mark my words - projects such as Tor / Bitcoin will be illegal at some point, the only questions being "when?" and "for how long?"
What good is all this balancing technology when you cannot step outside your own front door. You may as well put bars on the windows to save the government from the trouble of putting you in prison.
Meh - having lived as a child in communist Romania, I can tell you that police states don't need technology to spy on people. All they need to do is to give the right incentives to people to spy on their friends and neighbours. With a good distribution of informants, all other methods are shallow, because you see - humans are still much better than machines at filtering out noise and cheaper too if you indoctrinate them that this is for the good of society, not to mention that your acquaintances do tend to know your beliefs and thoughts, which is much more than a street camera will be able to do.
That's why it is my belief that it isn't the technology you should fear, but rather people and mentalities. Because if society wants to put bars on your windows, you're fucked, with or without technology.
Suggestion: let's identify any elected officials who support this database, and then offer support / donations to their opponents who vocally oppose it.
I don't think shorter terms would work. Obama backpedaling on all his initial campaign promises didn't prevent him from getting re-elected. Representatives in the House only have 2 year terms but the highest incumbency rates. I think the main issue is the two-party system. It puts people into this "lesser of two evils" mentality which, surprise, results in some form of evil always persisting.
Look what they're doing at the Mexican border. That's only a sample and a "test-run" of what they're planning for the whole country in the next 10 years.
Those sci-fi movies about an awful future where the civilians and the society is highly controlled by the government are becoming reality.
Now it depends whether the people actually want this to happen, or don't even care about what's happening. I think US has maybe one more chance at the next presidential election and next 1-2 Congress elections to turn this around, if it's not already too late to stop this trend.
Once it's entrenched and hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars are spent on this effort, it's going to be very hard to roll it all back. Just look what success Americans have had with rolling back the war on drugs or the military industrial complex (which is to say absolutely none, and that's been going on for decades).