jhalbright wrote:
deejayway wrote:
Look at how we are under surveillance 24/7.

But how much of that is self-surveillance?
The younger generation is growing up in a world in which they've not only always had home computers and cell phones, but they'll always have had laptops with built-in webcams and camera phones.  Any event happens anywhere, and you'll see a dozen people holding their cameras filming it.

So it's indifference and ignorance. The young generation has no notion of privacy and sees little harm in letting every aspect of their lives be open to scrutiny.
But it's not self-surveillance I'm worried about, it's government and big business surveillance; collating, tabulating, exhanging, extrapolating information. It all seems pretty innocuous but in the hands of unscrupulous dictators, internet is a powerful tool of control and oppression.

My girlfriend is a press-officer for a liberal politician in the European Union, whose field of expertise is internet freedom, social media and human rights.
And whereas both are powerful change agents - witness the revolutions in the Arab world, partiallly fuelled by internet and social media - she is continually confronted with cases of human rights activists being monitored and traced through internet. People being picked up and tortured for their facebook passwords so that their network can be rolled up.

Just as much propaganda and incendiary information is spread via internet as reliable information and how are people to judge what is true and false?
Especially as critical thought is discouraged through a steady diet of mind-numbing entertainment.