Here's a little mental exercise. Just an exercise, to keep the mind supple and agile.
Suppose there were a technocratic cabal determined to establish absolute control over the all societies by the imposition of an absolute, totalitarian surveillance state, enabled (finally, and for the first time in human history by modern information technology).
Are you supposing that?
Now suppose this. What is THE most important asset such cabal would have? This is not hard – it is information technology. If, however, this totalitarian infrastructure were, in its nascent state, still somewhat fragile – that is, there were sufficient risk to that infrastructure from, say, zealots of liberty, then the cabal would of course have to safeguard that asset until its absolute control was established.
Thus the greatest enemy to the cabal is any credible threat to its burgeoning information infrastructure.
Keep supposing that this cabal saw that the only way to keep zealots of liberty from rightfully destroying the absolute dominance of this technology would be to convince such elements that the information infrastructure – the very one that is being built to enslave them – is their means of freedom. It would have to convince such elements that, for example, there was an evil cabal, and the only way to bring the evil cabal to justice was to employ that information infrastructure, that surveillance complex.
The cabal would have to convince the zealots of liberty that the information needed to bring the enemies of liberty to justice were contained in its servers, that the damning evidence itself could only be obtained by the use of ubiquitous, covert surveillance means. If it were able to do this, the technocrats could ensure that its greatest enemies – the zealots of liberty – would never seek to destroy the very machine that would soon tame them.
It's brilliant, don't you think, in a tragically diabolical way?
Thank you for playing. Carry on.