Total surveillance society

Article 158 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation defines the notion of "theft" - it is an infringement of any form of property, which is alien to the kidnapper.
Apparently, such definitions exist in the codes of other countries, this concept is universal and supranational.
This I mean that 500 writers in the world, including 5 Nobel laureates, appealed to the United Nations, an open appeal.
They believe that wiretapping or interception of private e-mails - is theft. Surveillance is theft, they say.
This week, "The Guardian" published an article famous British playwright Tom Stoppard. Stoppard was born in Czechoslovakia in 1937, in 1939 the family fled from the Nazis to England, that is, the idea of ​​the persecution he is familiar.

"That, in principle, could justify the scale of surveillance disclosed in materials Snowden? - He writes - It would, for example, it is sufficient if indisputably showed that it was possible to prevent the specific case of terrorism, and that it was done only because the security forces have used the powers given to them to the fullest?

I would not jump to conclusions. The idea that the public safety, the protection of the innocent - is the Absolute, which towers over all other considerations, is not reflected in our lives.

Roads would not be the victims of accidents and collisions, if the speed of vehicles is limited to 15 kilometers per hour.

Air flight would be safer if each passenger stripped and searched for each item carefully checked baggage.

We have and so, without much discussion, resigned to the idea that urban residents are constantly in the frame CCTV cameras.

As a result, thousands of crimes, including murder, were uncovered or prevented. But how to improve the results, if such cameras were ten or a hundred times more?

It is clear that between these two phenomena have a qualitative and quantitative difference. Cameras are installed in public places rather than at home, in the car or in the garden.

People who we, as taxpayers, instructs us to guard, deployed operations, in comparison with which pales most feverish plans of the East German Stasi.

However, the Stasi had to deal with a global threat metastatic ideology of murder. The essence of the danger and all that we are afraid hundredfold enhanced technology that is both good and evil.

I would like to see our spies overheard phones, intercepted correspondence and each pressing of those who fell under suspicion.
But on the other hand, if the world of secrets creates its own universe, its expansion has signs of cosmological scale.
What kind of society we want to protect? Total surveillance society for the common good?
Such public domain whether we seek?
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