Society will have no chance of progress if surveillance prevents it from deviating our current beliefs and values🧠
There is value in dissent and lawbreaking. Humanities greatest thinkers are those who defied groupthink and authority bias and followed their own judgement. If a single set of views were to dominate society, the world would be static and dull. Ubiquitous surveillance is the enemy of social and intellectual progress.
If the old beliefs and values of society could have been imposed perfectly through mass surveillance, we could never reach the point to where the majority of members thought those things were ok. There has to be a period where they are still forbidden yet increasingly tolerated, so that people can look around and say, “You know, that wasn’t so bad.” This process may take decades, but it’s a process that can’t happen without breaking norms and laws. Freedoms we now take for granted were once considered to be threatening or even criminal by previous power structures. Those changes might have never happened if authorities were able to achieve total social control through mass surveillance.
References
- Schneier, Bruce. (2015). Data and Goliath The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World CHapter 7. Political Liberty and Justice (Location 1591). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company.