Please hear my position to end mass surveillance, sockpuppetry, astroturfing and any other state terrorism.
In Argentina and mostly south America we had military dictatorships, with over 30 thousand “missing” human beings only in Argentina. The excuse for kidnap was the same than today the NSA uses for mass surveillance, they claimed “terrorism”. It was a systematic theft of businesses and properties from tortured and assassinated individuals, the elimination of protest and free speech, and a “national debt” contracted by this dictatorship that you may hear today as the debt Argentina has to pay to some “vulture funds”.
And I am not even starting with the kids stolen from torture camps.
Of course, the systematic elimination of political dissidents is nothing new, but it’s enlightening to see how deep nations cooperate with each other to pursue this goal. The degree to which nations claim to uphold human rights mostly only determines how covert these assassination operations are. Luckily, covert operations under false flags are more expensive than over ones, so it’s worth at least something if a nation officially claims to strictly protect human rights.
This topic opens up two questions for me:
How can state terrorism be stopped or reduced? That methods are effective for that purpose?
How do we protect ourselves from state terrorism? This will become increasingly important as we gain political influence.
Legal measures are the most fundamental and often most neglected barriers against oppression. If you ask me for one thing we need now, are legal constituents in our favor, and they have to be local and international. Meaning that we have to secure for example a website against government intervention in legal means.
I acknowledge how alien this may sound, but you have to admit there has to be lawyers and NGOs involved with us that secure our freedoms, and our privacy.
I see. I agree with you that we need those legal measures in place to limit state intrusion in people organizing themselves to improve the world with non-violent means. This seems to be a quite relevant piece of policy that is rarely addressed by any party, so the Transhumanist Parties would raise their profile by specifically raising this concern and promoting legislation to restrict the power of governments, even if that legislation might only be partially effective in practice, especially when covert operations are involved.
This seems to be an issue that is suited for a discussion within the Transhumanist Parties. For this forum itself, we may focus on protection against government and other malicious infiltration.
I suggest you address this issue within Transpolitica and the Transhumanist Party Global – at least as suggestion for policies to adopt.