Why ubiquitous surveillance is bad.

Ubiquitous: Present, appearing, or found everywhere.
Surveillance: Close observation of a person or group.

Translation for the cognitively impaired Lefties who occasionally lurk here: Somebody who is not your friend watching every goddamn thing you do.

Here's what happens when governments do that:

Government restrictions on the Internet have risen over the past year around the world as regimes use violence against bloggers and turn to censorship and arrest to squelch calls for reform, a new report from a U.S. advocacy group has found...

 

[snippage]
 

Other findings include:

 * Physical attacks against government critics are intensifying: In 19 of the 47 countries assessed, a blogger or user of information technologies was tortured, disappeared, beaten, or brutally assaulted for their online posts. In five countries, an activist or citizen journalist was killed after posting information that exposed human rights abuses

 * Bloggers and ordinary users increasingly face arrest for political speech on the web: In 26 of the 47 countries, including several democratic states, at least one blogger or Internet user was arrested for content posted online or sent via text message.

 * Surveillance has increased with few checks on abuse in 12 of the 47 countries examined

 * Citizen pushback has increased and had an impact in 23 countries. Advocacy campaigns, mass demonstrations, website blackouts and constitutional court decisions have resulted in censorship plans being shelved, harmful legislation being overturned and jailed activists being released.

For those (few) who still say to me "oh, that could never happen here!", have you been to an airport lately?

The Phantom