I come from a country where we had the secret police(Poland) and everyone knew that there was an archive somewhere where most citizens had a folder with whatever the police gathered on them. Any telephone conversation always started with the operator announcing "this conversation is monitored, this conversation is monitored". Letters would be opened randomly and read.
And you know what - vast majority of people didn't care. They accepted this as reality they lived in and that was it.
Well, almost 30 years on after fall of communism, these folders are still coming back and haunting people. People find facts about themselves or about others, that shouldn't have been collected in the first place.
Not to mention the old story of completely innocent data that actually lead to people dying(governments before WW2 collected census information about religion, and that very information was used by the nazis to hunt and kill jews).
My point is - even if right now it seems like collecting this data is harmless, you never know how it's going to be used in the future. Governments fall all the time, wars happen, people look where they shouldn't. The less data the government collects the better.
To be honest - 30 years after fall of communism, the vast majority of people still doesn't care, because why should they? Those folders are only a talking point for the media, and something our asinine politicians use against other asinine politicians. Pigs fighting in mud, nothing you want to be close to.
My biggest gripe is with those from general population who care that other people have some entries in their folders. It's their attention that weaponizes this information. If that minority didn't give a shit either, those folders wouldn't be an issue nowadays.
It's also a general point about surveillance state, I think - a lot of its power to hurt people comes from the personal immaturity of citizens, who get aroused by the knowledge that someone else has commited some indecency in the past. I know this is a collective problem so it's hard to change, but again - if people minded their own morals instead of those around them, data collection would be much less of an issue.
And you know what - vast majority of people didn't care. They accepted this as reality they lived in and that was it.
Well, almost 30 years on after fall of communism, these folders are still coming back and haunting people. People find facts about themselves or about others, that shouldn't have been collected in the first place.
Not to mention the old story of completely innocent data that actually lead to people dying(governments before WW2 collected census information about religion, and that very information was used by the nazis to hunt and kill jews).
My point is - even if right now it seems like collecting this data is harmless, you never know how it's going to be used in the future. Governments fall all the time, wars happen, people look where they shouldn't. The less data the government collects the better.