{"id":33864,"date":"2018-04-30T07:15:54","date_gmt":"2018-04-30T12:15:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=33864"},"modified":"2018-04-30T07:15:54","modified_gmt":"2018-04-30T12:15:54","slug":"why-we-have-a-surveillance-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=33864","title":{"rendered":"Why We Have a Surveillance State"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Why We Have a Surveillance State<\/a><\/h3>\n

It is the inevitable consequence of our prevailing governing philosophy.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u201cGentlemen do not read each other\u2019s mail.\u201d Henry Stimson, Secretary of State, 1929<\/em><\/p>\n

I was upbraided recently by a dear friend for my frequent praise of outcast investor Peter Thiel over Thiel\u2019s involvement with big data company Palantir. He forwarded me a Bloomberg article titled \u201cPeter Thiel\u2019s data-mining company is using War on Terror tools to track American citizens<\/a>\u201d adding: \u201cReally scary. Not good for democracy; a better version of the Stasi\u2019s filing system and way cheaper and more efficient.\u201d<\/p>\n

Increasingly, we live under the kind of comprehensive surveillance predicted by science fiction writers<\/a>. But Palantir is just an arms merchant, not the architect of our brave new world. Like gun manufacturers, its products can be used for good or evil. \u00a0I have always believed that moral responsibility lies with the wielder of weapons, not the manufacturers. (This is often expressed as \u201cGuns don\u2019t kill people, people kill people.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Peter Thiel\u2019s choice to become an arms merchant rather than invest his considerable talents and fortune elsewhere is a fair question given his libertarian leanings. I have no insight into the answer. I would guess that he founded Palantir as an act of patriotism after 9\/11, and it metastasized following the money, cash being the mother\u2019s milk of the state, something the celebrated Alexander Hamilton deeply understood.<\/p>\n

Surveillance Is Not the Problem, but It Is a Symptom<\/strong><\/p>\n

The real threat to the republic, however, lies not in the weapons available but in the unlimited and unaccountable bureaucracy in Washington that deploys them, both at home and abroad. Having broken free of constitutional constraints, America\u2019s political class now directs an all-powerful state that naturally adopts every tool technology has to offer.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why We Have a Surveillance State It is the inevitable consequence of our prevailing governing philosophy. \u201cGentlemen do not read each other\u2019s mail.\u201d Henry Stimson, Secretary of State, 1929 I was upbraided recently by a dear friend for my frequent praise of outcast investor Peter Thiel over Thiel\u2019s involvement with big data company Palantir. He […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[19988,204,19708,14991,972,765,4622],"class_list":["post-33864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-bill-frezza","tag-democracy","tag-fee","tag-foundation-for-economic-education","tag-statism","tag-surveillance","tag-surveillance-state"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33864"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33864\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33865,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33864\/revisions\/33865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}