So when exactly are we going to wake up to the fact that governments in the "free" West have over the past two decades implemented measures with respect to freedom of information, communication and privacy that in the decades before that we've consistently denounced as totalitarian police state tactics when it came to communist nations?
The problem is not that the police made this mistake. The problem is that they actually have the authority to do this in the first place.
As odd as this sounds, I tend to believe everything works itself out naturally over time. IOW, if you ran a simulation of the earth over and over again, the timelines might be skewed, but we would eventually end up in the same place. Every advancement, whether it be inventions or discoveries about the physical universe, push the human race forward. But it always has to happen in such a way that it's two steps forward, one step back. If there's a hole or weakness in a system there is an opportunity to exploit it and you better believe it will be done. That's a good thing as it makes the system stronger; the sooner the better.
As was mentioned before on HN the wonderful BBC documentary "The Century of The Self" delves into how the 20th century US democracy began controlling by pandering to consumerism/irrationalism (ie. the tie between big business/media and government), while our communist adversaries began governing by increasingly abject force. They're like two sides of the same coin. Is it bad/evil or did this need to happen? Think about what's happened in that timeframe... the automobile, airplane, radio, the depression, nuclear energy/weapons, two world wars, the computer, television, the personal computer, the internet, and everything the internet is beginning to mobilize. The change to the world in one century is absolutely mesmerizing.
I believe through globalisation these two sides are both merging and dissolving at the same time - that's not necessarily a bad thing, it's the world trying to work out inefficiencies in these respective systems; inefficiencies which could be seen as bugs in a system that invite corruption. When bugs are exposed and fixes begin to emerge, the pockets of corruption are going to fight back - as they should, because that's their livelihood at stake.
Information is more free than ever, and that is what truly sets us free. So they made this mistake. And it's been exposed, quickly. Think about all the nefarious things that happened in the cold war that took decades to come to light. Think about what happened in the Middle East last year; governments toppled, quickly. They tried to sneak SOPA under the public radar and look what happened.
Since it happened slowly, over decades, with real help from external forces like terrorists, and we did not "wake up" then, we certainly are not going to suddenly wake up now.
The world is slowly sliding towards a semi-free market/totalitarian government like Singapore has.
Totalitarian states like China are moving towards a bit more free markets. Formerly free states like the US and western Europe are moving towards more totalitarian state powers.
The key seems to be as long as the economy is OK people don't revolt. Look at the Arab spring vs. how prosperous and peaceful Singapore is.
Wasn't freedom nice while while it lasted? I wonder what our grandkids' reaction will be when we try to tell them how things used to be.
Please don't use the words "wake up" or put quotes around the word 'free.' It's bad writing.
Government is a constant tension between maintaining order/safety and allowing people to do as they like. It is a good thing that we have rules, and it's a good thing that somebody can enforce them; it's also a good thing to have as few rules as possible. Those two realities have to coexist, and it will never be a satisfactory "one or the other."
We're all aware when the balance swings a bit. That doesn't mean we need to... I don't know what you're suggesting; revolutionize? It means we need to push back politically, which we did with SOPA/PIPA, and find ways to maintain our own power, like circumventing the DNS weakness. We're not exactly lost in the wilderness here.
Actually the balance between private life and public interference has swung back and forth many times in the US. Figures like Joseph Mccarthy and Anthony comstock still loom large in American history, and people were still being prosecuted for transporting obscenity across state lines through the 1970s and 1980s, even as we were winning the cold war.
Take a look at this paper examining obscenity law and computer networks, from 1997: http://michaelguth.com/jurimetrics.htm Note, for example, the case of Louis Gugliemi, who received a 25 year sentence for interstate transport of obscene materials in 1985. I don't know whether he made parole or not, but he was unable to get a court to reduce his sentence; chances are that he has been in federal prison from the late 1980s (after his appeals were rejected) until quite recently. In fact, it's just about possible that he's still in prison. It's unlikely he would be convicted today. Likewise, consider this 1985 submission to Attorney-General Meese's commission on pornography: http://obu-investigators.com/xuk/porn/meese/302-pornography-... which proposed vast prosecution powers for governments to stamp out pornography.
So while it's certainly appropriate to challenge governments' efforts to police the private sphere, those efforts need to be considered in a realistic context, not one that views the past through rose-colored spectacles. Overall I'm inclined to think that people enjoy considerably more freedom nowadays than they did a few decades ago.
But they tell us they are against totalatarian governments, so they must not be totalatarian, right? </sarcasm>
There are lots of people who have realized it, but they get derided for being extremists (and, many times, they are). Meanwhile, something that might be awesome has just come on TV, so I have to go...
I think the right take-away is that, while, yes, there are mechanisms that give authorities the power to do this sort of thing the whole thing is self correcting.
While technically possible, the Internet is much bigger than any one government. It'd be nearly impossible for any one organization to take it away without massive consequences that would naturally lead to a reversal and a substantial loss of power.
I would imagine that the next step in Denmark is to put into place a means to prevent that from happening ever again. Therefore, the police (or whatever agengy) just lost power due to the (unintended) action they took.
In the long run a dictator doesn't gain respect and power for abusing his people and authority, he actually looses most of it.
The problem is not that the police made this mistake. The problem is that they actually have the authority to do this in the first place.