I have lived through a communist regime and I believe that accusations, surveillance, and keeping files on innocent people can destroy a lot more than just their careers and lives. It slowly creates some kind of "let's just do nothing to make sure they don't notice me and put me on the list" atmosphere. It might take decades but it has crushing impact on society. Society needs certain things to thrive - like people doing stuff and communicating without fear and self-censoring. Pervasive surveillance can ruin that.
How can the nation so famous for its entrepreneurial spirit not understand that you have to accept some risks in order to thrive. You can never be totally safe - there is always going to be some attack vector left. You have two options - accept that some bad things will happen, limit the control you try to have over society, and thrive. Or try to act on everything, prevent every risk... and you will fail... and damage your society more than any terrorist ever could in the process.
I am not naive - there needs to be some surveillance. Of course that safety is an important value. But it should not be the most important everything-else-trumping value.
If your security services react to a real intelligence about a real threat - that is great. But if they react to stuff like some old guy taking a picture of art (and this is not the only case, nowadays it seems more like a rule than exception) - well, you might be building a cowardly society that is so risk-averse that it will degrade its progress in the future.
This also basically means losing war on terror and giving them what they want.
> accusations, surveillance, and keeping files on innocent people ... slowly creates some kind of "let's just do nothing to make sure they don't notice me and put me on the list" atmosphere
This is absolutely right. Censorship is internalised into self-censorship.
How can the nation so famous for its entrepreneurial spirit not understand that you have to accept some risks in order to thrive. You can never be totally safe - there is always going to be some attack vector left. You have two options - accept that some bad things will happen, limit the control you try to have over society, and thrive. Or try to act on everything, prevent every risk... and you will fail... and damage your society more than any terrorist ever could in the process.
I am not naive - there needs to be some surveillance. Of course that safety is an important value. But it should not be the most important everything-else-trumping value.
If your security services react to a real intelligence about a real threat - that is great. But if they react to stuff like some old guy taking a picture of art (and this is not the only case, nowadays it seems more like a rule than exception) - well, you might be building a cowardly society that is so risk-averse that it will degrade its progress in the future.
This also basically means losing war on terror and giving them what they want.