alt Hacker News> But a bit weird how a core American "surveillance = big no no" belief was thrown out in a few years.
I can't speak for China since I'm not as familiar with that culture, but as for the US, the culture has not changed, as you can see by protest campaigns like this and many similar types of protests (e.g. public destruction of Flock cameras). The culture in the US was founded on minimal government interference based on those trying to escape persecution elsewhere at that time, and that thread is still baked into many facets of US politics.
What has changed is the state. Surveillance has been growing constantly, to much of the disapproval of those who live in the US (e.g. Edward Snowden's revelations were very damning and the revealed surveillance was very much protested against, and likewise after the Cambridge Analytica leaks). But it's a bit of boiling frog syndrome for those experiencing it: the state can grow more controlling of our lives slow enough not to be perceptible, or to spin surveillance under manipulative politics, which is for example what led to bipartisan support of the Patriot Act. This makes it difficult to stop. Technology is especially a double edged sword for making this worse.
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The useful idiots were happy to bury their heads in the sad and ignore the broader trajectory so long as the state threw them a bone from time to time. A few speed cameras here or there, environmental violation lead generation via location data there, maybe even a shotspotter deployment or two. It didn't take much to not just keep HN quiet, but to get their active support, as every brick in the road to hell was laid down.
Thanks for explanation. To be honest, that's what I've heard from my American friends as well, and I genuinely respect this position (as I agree somewhat agree with it). But at the end of the day, the results speak for themselves. Since it's a democracy, if it was an issue people cared about, they would have voted in someone in local/state/national level who would oppose surveillance, no?
I understand that it sounds a bit condescending to paint the whole nation in such manner, but this is what it looks like to me an observer with no skin in the game. And I understand that when you're in political minority, you can't really do much to change it.
I can't respond to a couple of dead comments under my post, like the one says "Difference is china uses to police speech. Police in US use it to catch scumbags". And this is exactly what I meant in my post. There's an interesting perception of "when X does it, it's definitely for bad stuff, but when WE do it, obviously it's for good". Again, sorry, I think I woke up in a shitty mood, and picking up fights.