Posted by root-parent 2 hours ago
I'm all for transparency and accountability but my assumption is that the bad things being done by LEO and intelligence are far worse than this.
Basically any organization that does any attempt to analyze threats of any sort will have a need to collaborate with law enforcement.
Walmart does it for theft rings. Canonical does it for hacking threats targeting Ubuntu. Your bank does it for people trying to steal money.
The existence of a mailing list or something of that sort isn't particularly worrying. I don't think it's reasonable to expect a firewall between police departments and local businesses any more that it would be reasonable to expect one between PDs and local residents.
I would be alarmed if it turned out that Amazon was giving the Seattle PD direct, warrantless access to data about their consumers, or something like that. But there's no evidence presented here of anything particularly sketchy going on.
I think there’s lots of stuff in this space that is worth paying attention to, including for example just how complete a profile companies like Experian have assembled on US citizens, or Flock and LPR generally.
This just seems a lot of fluff with nothing substantial, hence a nothingburger.
We have to accept the fact that presently all democracies are merely simulation of a democracy. At the least in the USA; other countries may be a bit better, e. g. Switzerland or the scandinavian countries are somewhat better (though also not to be trusted - see how Sweden pursued Assange).
Perhaps this is how things always end? Democracies are kind of like an obsolete model when you compare it to authoritarianism (assuming the USA would still be a democracy rather than a tech-corporate-fascist country run by a corrupt elite of superrich).
Technology has made it not only possible, but easy, to control a lot more people. Freedom generally, and democracy specifically, are the exception. Might-makes-right authoritarianism is the default human condition and I think we're seeing a regression to the mean. I don't even mean in the last few years or whatever, I'm not making a comment on any country's government today. But look at the last 30-40 years, and imagine what the next 30-40 might look like, and I think we're going to look back on today fondly as when we had more freedom.