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Snowden: 'Governments Can Reduce Our Dignity To That Of Tagged Animals' (theguardian.com) 110

Posted by BeauHD from the local-zoo dept.
An anonymous reader writes: NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden writes a report on The Guardian explaining why leaking information about wrongdoing is a vital act of resistance. "One of the challenges of being a whistleblower is living with the knowledge that people continue to sit, just as you did, at those desks, in that unit, throughout the agency; who see what you saw and comply in silence, without resistance or complaint," Snowden writes. "They learn to live not just with untruths but with unnecessary untruths, dangerous untruths, corrosive untruths. It is a double tragedy: what begins as a survival strategy ends with the compromise of the human being it sought to preserve and the diminishing of the democracy meant to justify the sacrifice." He goes on to explain the importance and significance of leaks, how not all leaks are alike, nor are their makers, and how our connected devices come into play in the post-9/11 period. Snowden writes, "By preying on the modern necessity to stay connected, governments can reduce our dignity to something like that of tagged animals, the primary difference being that we paid for the tags and they are in our pockets."
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Snowden: 'Governments Can Reduce Our Dignity To That Of Tagged Animals' More

Snowden: 'Governments Can Reduce Our Dignity To That Of Tagged Animals'

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  • What? Government abuses the power it is given to control and oppress its own citizens?

    CLEARLY WE NEED TO GIVE THE GOVERNMENT EVEN MORE POWER OVER OUR LIVES! #FeelTheBern

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      If you think that "conservative" means less government, Wake the FUCK up!

      Less *corruption* leads to less government.

      Neither 'liberal' nor 'conservative' as a "side" (what a bullshit concept you've bought into there) are fighting for less corruption.
      Trump is not going to fight for less. He gets his money from more rent-seeking. So, he is gonna screw you and everyone else over if he can.
      Bernie? Seems less corrupt.

  • Irony, coming from a tagged animal.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sims 2 ( 994794 )

      Odd that it says "from the local-zoo dept."
      Zoo animals are observed, fed and cared for in a large cage or enclosure paid for by the proceeds of their observation.
      We however are just observed and we get to pay for it ourselves out of pocket.... Well unless they for some reason don't like you then you get put in a small cage with a bunch of others and then they will pay for your observation, food and care.

      --
      Disable advertising broken. Minimum threshold broken /. Please fix.

  • Sounds familiar (Score:4, Informative)

    by robinsonne ( 952701 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2016 @04:00PM (#52038993)
    By creating a planetary network, mankind on Planet now has the ability to share information at light-speed. But by creating a single such network, each faction has brought themselves closer to discovery as well. At the speed of light, we will catch your information, tag it like an animal in the wild, and release it unharmed-if such should serve our purposes.

    Datajack Sinder Roze, Alpha Centauri
    • Your units have been spotted in my territory. You are to leave and get your own gimmick account immediately.

  • Can Reduce our Dignity? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Trachman ( 3499895 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2016 @04:05PM (#52039039) Journal

    I think it already had reduced beyond dignity. Just visualize airport lines.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sims 2 ( 994794 )

      I don't have to visualise i've been there.

      It's been a few years since i've flown but the worst part of the last trip (involving 6 planes and about 12 hours of flight time each way) was going through security at the airport. One of the people flying with me one was flagged for some type of explosives false positive of course but still.

      Not an experience I care to repeat.

      --
      Disable advertising broken. Minimum threshold broken /. Please fix.

  • With all due respect (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Nothing has changed since Snowden's revelations. Politicians like Diane Feinstein continue to support mass surveillance and The Patriot Act, even making new statements like the government should "censor the Internet" to deal with terrorist communications and recruitment.

    As citizens -- as voters -- we're complicit in our government's actions because we continue to reelect the same people.

  • Now each time he says something, it seems to be less about righting a wrong and more about publicizing himself and the situation he brought himself into. I agree that the NSA should not have been doing what it was doing (even though it likely is still doing it). I agree that his chances at a truly fair trial here aren't real great. However he seemed a bit self-righteous in his actions from the beginning, as if he were doing it as much to bring attention to himself as to see something wrong made right. N

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by sims 2 ( 994794 )

      I thought it was funny when they put up a statue of him and no one knew who he was.

      http://www.businessinsider.com... [businessinsider.com]

    • Now we get these little press releases from him...

      Not necessarily from him, but from the story writers milking the crowd.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by PCM2 ( 4486 )

      To be fair, he wasn't asked to right any wrongs this time. He was asked to write the forward to a book about drone warfare, which he did, probably for money. This "press release," as you call it, is just a reprint of that essay.

  • 'Governments Can Reduce Our Dignity To That Of Tagged Animals'

    Of course, they can! And in some countries, they don't even bother with tagging [wikipedia.org]. But try to call for reduction of government and empowering the individuals [slashdot.org], and you'll be shouted and modded down in no time...

    • He said 'Governments Can Reduce Our Dignity To That Of Tagged Animals'.
      Lets try what IT managers get away with, yes where I work HR is just the enforcer.
      '(Public Sector) Companies Reduce Our Dignity To That Of Tagged Animals'.
      But I'm not bitter.
      Just doomed.

  • Maybe it's Snowden who's been posting "you are all cows" on /. all this time.

  • Seen any young adult lately that wasn't covered in ink? All the government needs to do is implement software to recognize tatoos, everybody is already wearing a unique identifier. That and facial recognition software already in used, it looks like we've already been tagged.
  • Sadly I think the quality of discussion on Slashdot regarding the intelligence community and abuse of government power has been steadily declining since the original Snowden revelations two and a half years ago. I'm not sure why that is, but the impression I get is that many of us both inside and outside the North American information technology community are just sitting and watching/waiting for 1984.

  • If Mr. Snowden had studied history in addition to studying technologies, he should have known that governments who wanted to "reduce our dignity to something like that of tagged animals" is not something new. In fact, in the country where he is staying now, namely Russia, the government of Joseph Stalin was one of the most oppressive government who worked hard to reduce the dignity of its people. Joseph Stalin did all these things before the invention of telecommunication technologies. Perhaps if Mr. Snowde

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      If Mr. Snowden had studied history in addition to studying technologies, he should have known that governments who wanted to "reduce our dignity to something like that of tagged animals" is not something new. In fact, in the country where he is staying now, namely Russia, the government of Joseph Stalin was one of the most oppressive government who worked hard to reduce the dignity of its people.

      Correct. But it's the U.S. that is currently indulging in Stalinism (with internation camps without due process, "Espionage Act" laws without defense, secret rubberstamp courts without oversight, arbitrary confiscation of people's property by the police and so on and so on). And Trump is a big fan of Hitler.

      Yes, Stalin was bad news and Russian, and Hitler was bad news and German (well, Austrian, but the Germans swallowed his bait), but the blame is on the U.S. for resuscitating the two and their history a

  • TFS: [...]people continue to sit, just as you did, at those desks, in that unit, throughout the agency; who see what you saw and comply in silence, without resistance or complaint [...] They learn to live not just with untruths but with unnecessary untruths, dangerous untruths, corrosive untruths.

    1984: And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed – if all records told the same tale – then the lie passed into history and became truth. "Who controls the past," ran the Party slogan, "

  • In such a world that Mr Snowden envisions.. there would still be horrible violent incidents like we've seen of late. How would that government, under his perfecter rules handle the iPhone issue? Would it better for the people if the state was unable to check the miscreants email history to ferret out other weasels, or to leave the terrorists free to roam all over the US with impunity? I am not saying I have all the answers, but any time you chase Utopia to such an extreme, you find yourself in DysTopia. I
  • So why bother, have fun.

  • Dignity: "the state or quality of being worthy of honor or respect."

    The only way you can lose your dignity is if you believe you are not worthy of honor or respect. That's why shame and stigma are such effective weapons. But if you refuse to be shamed without cause on your part and treat attempts to stigmatize you with the contempt they deserve, you are still just as worthy of honor and respect as before.

    Only a MOO or a sheeple would act otherwise.

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