It's hard to generate that kind of willpower in most people when you have groups like JTRIG spreading the "anybody that mentions the NSA doing something bad must be a tinfoil-hat-wearing crazy" meme and other methods[1] of breaking up "unrest".
This is why we have freedom of assembly. It is hard to get people to stand up alone in defense of an idea, but when they can see firsthand that there are other people that also want to stand up in defense a lot more people will join in.
I suspect that the primary threat we face is not about arresting unpopular groups or even information based blackmail; the threat we face is one where organization any opposition is next to impossible. You can try and conduct things offline and remind everybody that "loose lips sink ships!", but the predictive power we have discovered in data mining could make any organized opposition fall at the first tiny mistake
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It's hard to generate that kind of willpower in most people when you have groups like JTRIG spreading the "anybody that mentions the NSA doing something bad must be a tinfoil-hat-wearing crazy" meme and other methods[1] of breaking up "unrest".
This is why we have freedom of assembly. It is hard to get people to stand up alone in defense of an idea, but when they can see firsthand that there are other people that also want to stand up in defense a lot more people will join in.
I suspect that the primary threat we face is not about arresting unpopular groups or even information based blackmail; the threat we face is one where organization any opposition is next to impossible. You can try and conduct things offline and remind everybody that "loose lips sink ships!", but the predictive power we have discovered in data mining could make any organized opposition fall at the first tiny mistake
[1] https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipula...