Sci-Fi Stories That Predicted the Surveillance State 213
Daniel_Stuckey writes "Just to address one thing straight away: one of your favorite science fiction stories dealing, whether directly or indirectly, with surveillance is bound to be left off this list. And 1984's a given, so it's not here. At any rate, the following books deal in their own unique way with surveillance. Some address the surveillance head-on, while others speculate on inter-personal intelligence gathering, or consider the subject in more oblique ways. Still others distill surveillance down to its essence: as just one face of a much larger, all-encompassing system of control, that proceeds from the top of the pyramid down to its base."
Re:Nothing to predict (Score:5, Interesting)
Again, the reasoning behind the 2nd amendment here in the US.
If "they" won't be good for the right reasons, then fear is a good motivator.
That said, how about a more recent book or pair of books? Little Brother and Homeland both by Cory Doctorow @ craphound.com
A little off beat, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
I always thought Star Trek had a little bit of surveillance society in it, because the computer was always listening for you to say "Computer" and give it a command. Mind you, the Enterprise *was* as close to a military ship as the ST society had in the original series, so I guess it might be understandable.
Re:Nothing to predict (Score:5, Interesting)
I keep hearing this line... but the US govn't has been rotten to the core for ages, and I still see no uprising.
When is this 'refreshing the tree of liberty' thing going to happen? Never?
They don't seem to be terribly afraid of your pea-shooters, either... letting people have guns is apparently less of a threat to power than losing votes due to further restricting them. They get to run roughshod over all the other rights, as long as folks are satisfied with having their arms.
The imporant qualifier (Score:4, Interesting)
What makes the fictional dystopias featuring surveillance states interesting isn't simply the fact that they conduct surveillance, but rather what they do with the information. In the fictional dystopias is it to engage in various sorts of general repression against the population, sometimes subtly, sometimes in a heavy handed and cruel fashion. How many of them involve actions by the state to genuinely protect the citizenry except in an Orwellian fashion? Moving from fiction to history and current events reveals that the difference between free societies using surveillance to protect themselves is in marked contrast to unfree societies. Nobody went to prison for 10 years at hard labor for simply calling George Bush, "Chimpy McHitler," while he was President, but plenty of people went to the Gulag for 10 years for telling a joke about Stalin, and far from all of the people sent to the Gulag survived. There may need to be refinement and more oversight over the activities of the intelligence services of Western governments, but getting it wrong will ultimately lead to harsh feedback of another sort.
Too true:(Listen for the joke at 1:40) Reagan tells Soviet jokes [youtube.com]
What isn't predicted (Score:1, Interesting)
Stories (fiction) are notorious for worrying about being 'grounded' in some significant way. Reality, on the other hand, has a habit of turning up the most extraordinary events.
Take the NSA designed spy platform, the Xbox One. What writer would predict that millions of people would pay a fortune, of their own free will, to install a vastly inferior piece of hardware (the Sony PS4 has more than twice the gaming power than the Xbone) that in reality was designed to allow the State to have eyes and ears in their homes. What writer would predict that a society convinced their children are at greater risk from predators than at any time previously, would install an always on camera system in the children's bedroom, so NSA perverts who ALREADY boast of recording and sharing sexually-explicit phone calls made by Americans could secretly film their children.
No writer would dare to imagine the horrors inflicted by the NSA in full cooperation with Microsoft and Bill Gates, and expect readers to tolerate the story.
Now nerds should know the famous genre fiction. The one about the State testing kids, and murdering those who are too smart/curious. The one about police accosting a person out late at night taking a walk, and taking him to the loony bin when his explanation was "I like taking late night walks". Or how about the scene in "V for Vendetta" when two police thugs attempt to assault an innocent young woman, which was played out EXACTLY as shown a few months later in London, because the young woman involved dared to be out alone with a camera (the two 'special' police goons that accosted her were exonerated despite video evidence).
But the actions of the depraved psychopath Bill Gates would break the credibility of fiction. Gates has created a database system (in conjunction with Rupert "Goebbels" Murdoch and various organisations in the US with long histories of involvement in eugenics) to track and monitor every child in West controlled nations. Gates' system is currently being rolled out in schools all across the USA, with New York being the current major test-bed. Gates actually has willing teachers paid fees for spying on children and their families and entering EXTRA information gained this way into his database. What is completely amazing is that Gates has ensured the data he gathers is of special interest to would-be child-abusers, enabling the 'best' victims to be located- victims with all the 'ideal' characteristics (Gates even monitors a child's sexual development and mental maturity) cross referenced with those parts of the USA where police action against abusers is least effective.
What action have the sheeple parents carried out against Bill Gates' despicable evil? None whatsoever- I'll bet the vast majority of you sheeple here have never heard of this project. This despite the fact that Gates is one of the planet's most outspoken eugenicists, with a long history of promoting pro-war propaganda.
From the Washington Post- QUOTE
Privacy concerns are growing among parents, educators and some state officials about a Gates Foundation-funded project that is storing an unprecedented amount of personal information about millions of students in a $100 million database that cannot guarantee complete security.
END QUOTE
Ever see the owners of Slashdot promoting awareness of this project? Hahahahahahaha- yeah, right. By the way, that part about security? The database is actually designed to give access to third parties (like would-be child rapists) who pay a small fee. Can you imagine a database created to give people access to knowledge about banks and their security systems, including times of major cash movements? You would immediately say "isn't such a database simply a resource for bank-robbers" and you would be correct.
Gates can extract and store the most personnel data about YOUR kids, and you are supposed to sit back and take it, listening to the filthy shills who reassure you that "obviously no bad guy will ever exploit the system". Are you REALLY that stu
Re:A little off beat, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
the premise is unsubstantiated (Score:4, Interesting)
all-encompassing system of control, that proceeds from the top of the pyramid down to its base
I feel this statement unduly absolves us as a society from blame for our own surveillance state -- as if we hadn't clamored for safety, as if we hadn't spouted off about having nothing to hide, as if we hadn't secretly distrusted anyone using encryption, anonymous account, or trying to live "off the grid", as if we hadn't openly derided the boys who cried wolf about the coming panopticon. Do you think something of this magnitude is simply ordered from "the top"? We asked for this. The only thing you can complain about is that the people we elected (and those they appointed or hired) to do our bidding, in an effort to more completely obey us, didn't tell us what they were doing. It's like hiring a hitman and having him tell you it's better that you not know the details of the hit you've paid for.
I don't think this is a pyramid. This is an hourglass, or a pinched torus -- we all sit on top of the government, down to a single point of control; which then sits on top of an expanding mass of surveillance state that sits in/on/around all of us. Unless of course you buy into the idea that our elections are rigged, that it's all been run by a cabal for decades/centuries/millenia, etc.
But I think it's much simpler to accept that we did this to ourselves. It doesn't take a roomful of geniuses working secretly, it just takes a nation of average Joe's being themselves. Design by committee, of millions.
Re:Not 1984 (Score:5, Interesting)
The book you want is Huxley's Brave New World. Instead of overlords controlling people through power and domination, people allow themselves to be controlled in exchange for the pleasantries of modern life - sex, entertainment, and other trivialities. As long as they get as much of those as they want, they don't give a damn what else is going on in society or who is controlling it. As the saying goes, you attract more flies with honey...
There was much more to it than that. The Savage (whose name escapes me) rejected all those supposedly pleasant things while the citizens, having been conditioned since before they were born, accepted them. Take the epsilons, for example: they weren't afforded much at all in the way of luxury, yet still served the state and might have fought to preserve the status quo if their development hadn't been retarded to the point where they couldn't even grasp the concept.
When people talk about Ninteen Eighty-Four, they often focus on the telescreen, to the exclusion of the mass surveillance of citizens by their peers. Similarly, with Brave New World the state essentially breeding people to be satisfied with what little they have takes second place to soma and free love that is (perversely) mandatory.
There was a pause; then the voice began again.
"Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm really awfully glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They're too stupid to be able "
The Director pushed back the switch. The voice was silent. Only its thin ghost continued to mutter from beneath the eighty pillows. "They'll have that repeated forty or fifty times more before they wake; then again on Thursday, and again on Saturday. A hundred and twenty times three times a week for thirty months. After which they go on to a more advanced lesson." ... "Till at last the child's mind is these suggestions, and the sum of the suggestions is the child's mind. And not the child's mind only. The adult's mind too—all his life long. The mind that judges and desires and decides—made up of these suggestions. But all these suggestions are our suggestions!
As for 1984, literary analysis was never my strong suit, but if asked I'd say that Orwell was afraid that an oppressive state would turn men against their fellows; I can only imagine what he would say about a world where people surrender their privacy willingly.
Re:Nothing to predict (Score:2, Interesting)
You're the one who's being "cute", by assuming that war is a simple question of "who's got the biggest gun".
You could learn the facts, but you will always actively avoid doing so, because that would require you to reconsider the comforting lie that the world is a simple place that you have all figured out.
Also, you should be aware that trying to bolster an argument with "haha, you're so funny and cute" is a universally understood signal that you lack confidence in your own position. This is unsurprising since said position is far too childishly simplistic to survive extended contact with reality. You're breaking, and your ineptly affected amusement is the sound of that breakage.
Much more shocked (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Nothing to predict (Score:5, Interesting)
They don't seem to be terribly afraid of your pea-shooters, either... letting people have guns is apparently less of a threat to power than losing votes due to further restricting them.
Why would they be afraid of guns, when their side has drones, tanks, ICBMs, sonic weapons (these have already been deployed against peaceful protests), smart bombs, a state-of-the-art spying network, sophisticated propaganda systems, etc?
Besides, if you really wanted to hurt the people that control this country, you'd:
A. Organize massive labor strikes. I'm talking "Nobody is working in California this week" kind of massive.
B. Stop shopping as much as possible.
The reason is that the money they use to control everything has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is from the pockets of the rest of us.
Re:Nothing to predict (Score:5, Interesting)
The second amendment was because the Founding Fathers feared a standing army.
That reason is only one of multiple reasons for the 2A. Read some of the letters and other writings of Washington, Jefferson, etc. Read the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers and Common Sense.
"Firearms stand next in importance to the constitution itself. They are the American people's liberty teeth and keystone under independence ⦠from the hour the Pilgrims landed to the present day, events, occurences and tendencies prove that to ensure peace security and happiness, the rifle and pistol are equally indispensable ⦠the very atmosphere of firearms anywhere restrains evil interference â" they deserve a place of honor with all that's good." - George Washington
"The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand arms, like laws, discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as property. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside ⦠Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them." - Thomas Paine
"I ask, Sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them." - George Mason - Co-author of the Second Amendment
during Virginia's Convention to Ratify the Constitution, 1788
It's impossible to eliminate guns in the US short of turning it into N. Korea.on steroids and locking pretty much everyone up in camps. As long as the US Government has guns and large, ridiculously-porous borders, the criminals will be armed and they will be the only civilians with guns.
If a civil war broke out in the US, it's guaranteed the military will fracture. Not only is the US military all-volunteer, but much of it is currently made up of National Guard. They ain't all gonna snap a salute and frag grandma and the babies, regardless of being labeled "domestic terrorists/rebels/insurgents", or whatever lame dissociative label the government attaches to them. They're not all dumb enough to believe obvious BS, or to all go along with it.
More than you think will instead reply to such orders with something like; "I'm sorry Sir, that's an illegal order. Under the UCMJ and standing/general orders, I and those under my command are forced to disobey your illegal order and obligated to immediately inform your superiors in the command chain of the details of this incident." (Not sure of the exact wording and language. Probably varies by the branch of service. Didn't feel like doing the search.)
Strat