One Nation Under Surveillance!

[southernhybrid]

I think it's much worse now compared to the distant past when we didn't even have computers, AI or cell phones etc. Technology has made surveillance much easier and much worse!

 

[Patooka]

I am currently reading a book about ASIO.

There are a few laughs in there.

Some people, on reading their files, are both incensed about the invasion of their privacy and also about the lack of attention ASIO gave to some of their activities.

I love that these principled activists from the 70s are often now community leaders and High Court judges and such like.

One woman met a man through her activism, they became close. One day he pulled the car over and parked. It flashed through her mind that a proposal might be in the works.

He said "I can't do this any more. I don't love you. I work for ASIO."

I can't be the only one who saw the thread title and thought it would be about ASIO keeping tabs on Pauline Hanson et al, surely?

Nope, I'm getting The Force Awakens vibes in the sense I've seen this all before. Barnaby Joyce is the new Mark Latham who was the new David Oldfield. Over and over again.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

I think it's much worse now compared to the distant past when we didn't even have computers, AI or cell phones etc. Technology has made surveillance much easier and much worse!

This is my opinion...

Technology is certainly a major factor, but I view it as just one of three dimensions driving this shift.

The first dimension is the inevitable democratization of new technologies. As innovation drives miniaturization and better resolution, surveillance tools become cheaper and more accessible. Just as VCRs eventually became affordable household staples, devices like Ring cameras are everywhere today. Tomorrow, it might be personal deployed drones. The cycle of expensive new tech becoming cheap and ubiquitous ensures continuous expansion of who is doing the watching.

The second crucial dimension is corporate surveillance. We often focus on government intrusion in these threads, yet most data collection starts with private companies—targeted ads, tracking algorithms, data brokering, and systems like Flock safety cameras. While we have constitutional protections against government overreach, we lack similar safeguards against corporations building extensive files on us. Unless a company does something explicitly illegal, harvesting our data is largely treated as their "right."

The third dimension is the eroding boundary between public and private spaces. We’ve always navigated a spectrum of semi-privacy. Sunbathing in a fenced backyard, whispering to a friend in a park, or having a bag of McDonald's happy meals in your car are technically public acts, but they carry a reasonable expectation of privacy because the odds of being observed were historically low. As technology easily pierces these old physical barriers, those semi-private spaces are rapidly disappearing.

We seem to be moving in an inescapable direction. The movement in these three dimensions implies a stripping away of these layers, so that the mind may eventually be our only true safe space for privacy. We can try to slow the momentum and focus on whichever specific issues catch our attention in current events, but the overarching trend feels inevitable.