Comment by wilsonnb
8 years ago
At that point, what's to stop them from forcing me to present myself at the interrogation booth anyways? Does it matter if they have data "proving" that I've done something wrong, or if they just make it up?
8 years ago
At that point, what's to stop them from forcing me to present myself at the interrogation booth anyways? Does it matter if they have data "proving" that I've done something wrong, or if they just make it up?
The "evil government" can't actually gain anything by targeting people completely at random. They'll have some class of political enemies and be very happy if they have a way to identify them.
The problem is that, today, you can't predict what will get you in trouble tomorrow. So even if you intend to live your entire life in complete compliance with whatever the current government wants, you won't be able to live in compliance with what the next set wants in the future. You can't simulate liberty by keeping your head down - eventually you will disagree with the government.
To a lot of people, "disagreeing with the government" means convincing a population that is largely happy with the way things are that something unjust or wrong is happening. That's the pattern of civil rights, environmentalism, and other activist movements that we have had in the West. This is not the whole story: in countries and times with poorer situations, disagreeing with the government can mean a conflict with your own practical (economic) well-being, as a member of no particular minority. In fact it is all of this bean counting about rights an liberty that keeps us away from "disagreeing with the government" in ways that are easier to convince people about the significance of.