"Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?"

"Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?"

Originally shared by Ralf Haring

"Here’s an example. I told Socrates, in our phone call, that I had read his blog. I assumed that once our conversation was finished he would go online and take down the blog, scrupulously doing what a smart surveiller would do once he realized he was the target rather than targeter — try to scrub the public domain of his existence to inhibit surveillance of him."

"Yet the blog stayed up. In fact, he continued posting — once about a blockbuster movie series he disliked, another time about a short story he generally liked. I asked McNeill, the research editor, what she made of this, and she was surprised, too. Although I could not spy on Socrates in the way the NSA spies on its targets, I had done a lot and thought I understood him. In addition to the biographical and financial data I had mined, Socrates and I have an intellectual kinship as writers. After all, editors have killed stories I have written. I have friends who have gone through graduate writing programs. I have taught in one. I have the same hope (probably futile) that my writing will do some good in this world and somebody in Hollywood will make a movie."

"Yet I had misunderstood him. I’m not sure I can ever understand him, even if he were strapped into a polygraph and had all the time in the world to answer my questions."
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/08/11/surveillance-philosopher-nsa

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