Boiling the Frog
From the Economist.com:
A nice analogy for how people have been accustomed to wide spread surveillance:
Ross Anderson, a professor at Cambridge University in Britain, has compared the present situation to a “boiled frog”—which fails to jump out of the saucepan as the water gradually heats. If liberty is eroded slowly, people will get used to it. He added a caveat: it was possible the invasion of privacy would reach a critical mass and prompt a revolt.
If there is not much sign of that in Western democracies, this may be because most people rightly or wrongly trust their own authorities to fight the good fight against terrorism, and avoid abusing the data they possess. The prospect is much scarier in countries like Russia and China, which have embraced capitalist technology and the information revolution without entirely exorcising the ethos of an authoritarian state where dissent, however peaceful, is closely monitored.
I am often asked about the passivity of Americans with regard to widespread surveillance. I usually tell journalists that there hasn’t been a “love canal” type of disaster with surveillance. Until something like that, Americans will keep trusting government. However, while its not bad that we trust government, there is still a need for policies that set limits and accountability for government surveillance. We shouldn’t give government a carte blanche.
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