[PCWorld]

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[Bomabes]

"When taxes are too high, people go hungry. When the government is tii intrusive, people lose their spirit. Act for the peoples benefit; trust them. Leave them alone."
"If you dont trust the people, you make them untrustworthy."
-Tao Te Ching
The dumbasses in China's government should pick up a copy.

[starbus]

China's leaders often issue statements that reflect their assertion that the free inquiry of its citizens would lead to subversion or at the very least pornography, false prophets and generally polluted ideals.

But just how different are the actions of the Chinese government and the US government. To be sure, the US government is far less controlling. They allow for a wide breadth of freedoms and thought. Or do they? Let's look a little closer...

The United States was an experiment in democracy. It was unique among larger nations of past centuries, but there are many historical antecedents for individual freedoms, justice determined by peers, and even for free election of rulers and law makers.

But from the very start, America not only tolerated, but codified, a constitutional framework that allowed for a majority of civil venues (commerce, politics, academics, and even the implementation of justice) to arise from the people—instead of top-down, from the government.

This unique and bold difference is captured in the phrase “a government of the people, for the people and by the people”. It expresses the idea that crowd dynamics can actually build and govern a society. Given a structured framework, average citizens might actually build a more fair and thriving society than a king, dictator or even a parliament. This bottom-up approach to the highest levels of government is sometimes glossed over by characterizing it as one of our freedoms (another very important aspect of a free and democratic society), or by assuming that it is part of our entitlement to privacy (not as clearly part of our legal framework, but also an important aspect of our strength).

China and many other countries, assume that access, inquiry, and assembly can only be good things if the goals and thoughts are guided by the government. They believe that the Communist party has a better concept of right & wrong, good & bad, pure & polluted, then the commoner or any institution dreamed up by commoners.

In most countries, this type of presumptive control (“Your government know what is best for you”), is neither shocking nor demoralizing to citizens of most nations. It seems reasonable. After all, without someone imposing structure, who will ensure that we are doing the right things?

Although the United States has not yet interfered with our freedoms (some gun owners may disagree, based on their interpretation of 2nd amendment), in the past decade, it has launched an incredibly broad and frightening program of spying on its own citizens. The program is massive that it could be used in the future to identify and block any behavior that the government deems to be subversive. Massive, warrantless spying & seizures are not the same as controlling, but it is only a step away from a totalitarian society. For now, the US population generally tolerates these new programs, buying into the explanation that personal freedom and a desire for privacy must be balanced against a rising treat of terrorism in the homeland. That is, the government claims that data mining applied to lives of private citizens (data collected from an unbelievable array of public and private sources) will help them predict, disrupt or interdict very heinous crimes in the making.

In this respect, the Chinese government is really not very different than the US government. They find it a bit easier to control the interests and activities of their sheep. The US government would rather leave the sheep with the impression that they are free and self-determined. Instead, they are monitored almost to the level of having an RFID chip installed at the base of their brains in constant Bluetooth contact with swarm receivers installed on every light post.

The metaphor makes for terrific drama on the CBS Television series, Person of Interest. What’s that? You don’t believe that this metaphor is valid? You will soon. What remains to be seen, is how the American people put up with domestic surveillance as the facts become more widely discussed.

Ellery Davies is chief editor of AWildDuck (dot-com). He is a frequent columnist at the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo and Cnet on issues of politics, economics, technology, law, social phenomena—and especially, privacy.