Venezuela: My experience in the surveillance state

http://boingboing.net/2013/07/08/snowden-and-venezuela-my-biza.html

by grey-area • 13 years ago

74 60 13 years ago

ianferrel• 13 years ago

This is terrible and it's good that it's seeing some press as a result of Snowden's plight. But the author tries to imply that Snowden is somehow approving of Venezuela's policies.

Seeking asylum isn't an endorsement of Venezuela. It's a last-ditch-effort to stay free against government oppression.

privong• 13 years ago

Seeking asylum isn't an endorsement of Venezuela. It's a last-ditch-effort to stay free against government oppression.

It's not clear that jumping out of the pan and into the fire is the best option though.

aptwebapps• 13 years ago

I think most people would prefer the US's version of government oppression to Venezuela's, but might change their mind if they thought they were going to go away for long time if they stayed in the US.

jlgreco• 13 years ago

He didn't flee the country because of the things he blew the whistle on.

copx• 13 years ago

Well, I sure would prefer Venezuela to receiving the Bradley Manning treatment.

I think Snowden would do a lot for his cause if he faced the Obama administration in court.

However, it's cheap to ask others to be martyrs. Can't really blame him for saying "Okay I risked a lot by leaking this but I am not going to spend the next 20 years in a cell if I can avoid it!"

narrator• 13 years ago

So in 20 years every country is going to be a surveillance state. How does this alter the sci-fi universe? Is every sci-fi novel taking place in the future going to have to be some spin-off of 1984 to maintain credulity? Did we all not want to hear that? Is there any room for alternate future visions of civilization given that they are all variations on a panopticon theme? Is this some sort of political singularity in the making?

blendergasket• 13 years ago

I think the tension between centralized panopticon infrastructure run/controlled by a power system that's trying to maintain control and the long-tailization, balkanization and echo-chamberization of the ideas that get spread across it will be a defining factor in the chaotic world we're moving into.

rayiner7• 13 years ago

There are more than a few steps from surveillance of Facebook accounts to Orwellian dystopia. There is more to 1984 than just surveillance (mind control, etc). Whether one leads inexorably to the other depends in large part on what you think of democracy. If you think that an educated people can be easily manipulated and controlled with doublespeak, as they are in 1984, then some sort of dystopia is likely, and frankly that's the case whether we have a surveillance state or not. If, on the other hand, you think people are mostly rational and capable of determining rationally what sort of world they want to live in, then that will always create a bulwark against tyranny.

I'm personally in the latter camp. I think that a generation of millennials, who don't particularly value privacy and don't see much wrong with the government monitoring certain communications when they voluntarily post every little detail of their lives on Facebook for hundreds or thousands of people to see, are still nonetheless rational people who will stand up against any infringement of the things they really care about: house and home, family, their means of making a living, etc.

My bigger concern is actually with regards to automation and robots. Despotic regimes depend on having military force. That is they only way they can suppress the will of the majority. But soldiers are just people, and pitting soldiers against their own countrymen is an unstable equilibrium in the long term. It's not sustainable in the face of actual public opposition. But automation and robots changes that equation. It makes it possible for a few to rule the many without relying on the inherently unstable situation of trying to keep hundreds of thousands or millions of soldiers loyal to the despots against their own families. To the extent that dystopia keeps me up at night, that's what I worry about, not surveillance.

unclebucknasty4• 13 years ago

I seldom agree with you (I think maybe once), and the first paragraph of this post alone is loaded with statements with which I'd disagree.

But you cannot be accused of being uninteresting.

I mean, you spend so much time here smacking down people's concerns about very real things that are happening in the news as we speak. NSA-spying, growing government power, curtailed liberties, etc. You have a tendency to characterize people on the other side of that argument as conspiracy theorists, or otherwise irrational and on the fringe.

But, what keeps you up at night is the possibility of an army of killer robots controlled by a couple of multi-billionaire megalomaniacs holed up in a subterranean fortress.

Wow.

clicks4• 13 years ago

    I think that a generation of millennials, who don't     
    particularly value privacy and don't see much wrong with 
    the government monitoring certain communications when 
    they voluntarily post every little detail of their lives 
    on Facebook for hundreds or thousands of people to see

Where are you getting this idea from? I'm a millennial, I value my privacy. Most of my non-CS/IT friends also care about their privacy. The key difference is that they had been unaware up 'til now that giving your data to Facebook meant giving your data to the gov't. They had weird, inchoate notions about what it means to share and what some potential implications of that can be.

A recent Pew poll said 6% of Americans use Reddit. Reddit is overwhelmingly used by millennials, so just from there you get some idea of where millennials stand on this: and I think it's pretty clear (there's almost certainly some NSA-related post on frontpage any given day nowadays), they're not happy with their privacy being violated.

jf271• 13 years ago

Google "nicaragua neighborhood watch". It doesn't need to be high tech.

kposehn2• 13 years ago

Excellent article.

I would like to say that I was aware already of Venezuela's tactics, but I knew nothing until this article and the follow-up research I've done. Makes Snowden's choice seem rather odd/silly now.

zwegner• 13 years ago

Snowden didn't leave the US to escape surveillance (as he's made clear, that doesn't really help). He left to escape a lifetime in prison.

mpyne6• 13 years ago

He left to escape a lifetime in prison.

Like, Obama could just order the jury to convict him and order the judge to sentence him to prison? Neat system, that.

alan_cx3• 13 years ago

And your sensible, viable alternative country is?

kposehn2• 13 years ago

Iceland.

rafaelm3• 13 years ago

This is only one story of the many, many times opponents to the Chavez and now Maduro government have been recorded, and exposed to public ridicule live on national TV by government sanctioned programs.

Hugo Chavez even used to call in and congratulate the guy that used to run La Hojilla. What more approval do you need than getting congratulated by the leader of the revolution!

During the last presidential election this guy even dragged out what he said was a statement by a former police officer that said the he caught Capriles (the opposing presidential candidate) fellating another guy in a car outside a house. I don't know if that statement was true or not, but it was constantly used to ridicule him live on TV.

My sister is friends with a girl who is married to a journalist. These guys hacked her e-mail and found some personal pictures of her in the beach with her husband and he showed them on national TV and exposed them to ridicule, saying that he was a cheapskate that wouldn't pay for his wife's boob job,etc.

Karma is a bitch though. The TV show is now cancelled because the guy used to report to his cuban minders in regular meetings that were recorded. Somehow one of these recordings was leaked and he was caught bad mouthing a ton of people in the government, including Cabello, the most powerful guy in the govt right now (even more than Maduro).

grey-area3• 13 years ago

I found this article fascinating, more because of the background it gives on the current situation in Venezuela than because of suggestions of Snowden's possible exile there. It truly does sound like Venezuela is close to dystopia, exactly the sort of dystopia that Snowden (and many others before him) have warned about. The routine use of surveillance on television shows to discredit opponents at all levels of the system is terrifying. Who hasn't said something in private which could easily be taken out of context, and used to construct a plausible smear and destroy a career? Even the TV host who abused access to recordings, Mario Silva, was eventually hoist by his own petard - the whole story resembles the show trials and purges under Stalin, where no-one was safe, not even party members.

While this might be useful ammunition for the US administration to smear Snowden by association, and is probably darkly amusing for residents as they watch their government talk about asylum for a whistleblower on the very powers they abuse, I actually think it's far more interesting as an example of a surveillance state gone awry.

mpyne6• 13 years ago

While this might be useful ammunition for the US administration to smear Snowden by association

The U.S. won't even have to hardly mention all this. All they need to say is that Snowden fled to Hugo Chavez's native land, on purpose, and public opinion will be sealed in the U.S.

grey-area3• 13 years ago

Perhaps I have more confidence in the perspicacity of the US public than you, and you should also note this is a global issue, not just a US one. To me this story says more about the dangers of a surveillance state than about Snowden.

http://www.quinnipiac.edu/institutes-and-centers/polling-ins...

stfu3• 13 years ago

Yes, his is incredibly bad stuff. But let me put it into context:

I would love to read a similar run down on what amount of money, intelligence and human resources the US has pured so far in the Venezuelan opposition.

After the Cuban fiasco these actions became definitely less outrageous, but it seems save to assume that the US is not standing on the sidelines at election time in counties with a US critical government.

Morales' European grounding shows quite clearly what kind of globally coordinate hell the US services can create for countries unwilling to surrender. Consequently almost no democratic nation is able to withstand this kind of internal and external pressure politics - as demonstrated so vividly by the outcome of Snowden's asylum requests.

And it still remains a big question mark in how far these three nations are not just going to use him as a bargaining chip for future negotiations with the US.

I am wondering myself how a nation could theoretically withstand US pressure without having a well oiled internal spying and propaganda machine.

rafaelm3• 13 years ago

So because there is a "threat" from a foreign nation, the government is allowed to spy on its citizens critical of the government and expose them and ridicule them live on national TV?

Sounds very similar to the "terrorist threat" excuse another surveillance state is using.

scarmig• 13 years ago

I'm torn. Venezuela's government has had more than its fair share of real coup attempts in the recent past, so there is an actual non-imaginary threat there, instead of terrorist bogeymen.

The fact that Chavez and his boys did launch one of those coups originally, though, makes me less inclined to give benefit of the doubt. Why should I have to take sides between two groups of bad guys? There's an honor in condemning everyone who violates human rights.

stfu3• 13 years ago

I am not saying that it is right. But I just don't know how a non-US compliant government can stay in power without questionable tactics.

If you create enough internal fraction by pumping up a pro-US opposition and external through embargos and sanctions, even the most anti-US electorate will soon or later question their positions.

grey-area3• 13 years ago

I would love to read a similar run down on what amount of money, intelligence and human resources the US has pured so far in the Venezuelan opposition.

Do we really need to take sides here? Can't both states be doing bad things, just as other governments are also doing things that will lead down this path? The US has a reputation as a bully internationally for good reason, but that doesn't mean their enemies are without blame or are fighting them for purer motives. Most states use the same dirty tactics, it's just that some have more power than others.

I really don't think you should try to defend this outrageous violation of privacy and democracy by saying it is somehow linked to standing up to the US.

stfu3• 13 years ago

I am myself struggling with my post. But I just don't see how a nation can withstand US power in the long run without dirty tactics or becoming some outpost of another superpower.

It looks to me that even the Snowden case has shown so far little to no consequences for the US internal situation. But it has shown that a counter point to the US perspective is internationally needed.

cgrubb• 13 years ago

I would love to read a similar run down on what amount of money, intelligence and human resources the US has pured so far in the Venezuelan opposition.

How much money is given to Venezuela is public.

http://gbk.eads.usaidallnet.gov/query/do?_program=/eads/gbk/...

It takes some time to make sense of this data. The funding agency and the implementing agency are usually the same. I personally am not familiar with some of the agencies, so I have to read about them on Wikipedia. The "funding account" seems illuminating. The "implementing partner" is I think who got the money in Venezuela, but all we get is the implementing partner "type".

All the same, it doesn't look to me as if any money is given to opposition political parties.

mrxd• 13 years ago

Pretty terrifying that Venezuelans have to live without protection of the 4th amendment! So glad that here in America oh wait...

pvnick• 13 years ago

Snowden never claimed to be an idealistic saint. He's only human. He's facing the same, or worse, inhumane treatment as Bradley Manning [1]. I doubt he really cares at this point the politics of the country that keeps him safe. I know I wouldn't.

Besides, if this whole ordeal can even partially force the US to return to being the shining beacon of human rights it pretends to be, it'll be harder for countries like Venezuela to point to them and say "see? Look they're doing it too."

[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/12/bradley-manning-...

jmduke• 13 years ago

Snowden never claimed to be an idealistic saint. He's only human.

I agree, but I think a lot of people (a lot of HN's contributers included) are nonetheless beatifying him, and also taking the logical leap from "this country is willing to provide refuge for Edward Snowden" to "this country has a better stance on privacy issues than the United States."

I agree that I hope this entire thing puts pressure on the US, but I think comparing the situation in the US and the situation in Venezuela is difficult. The level of overt corruption in Venezuela (and Mexico, and many other countries, both those allied with the US and not) is still impossible to comprehend in the US.

mpyne6• 13 years ago

He's not facing the same treatment as Bradley Manning initially received, unless he has some military background none of us are aware of.

autodidakto2• 13 years ago

An earlier article submitted here was by the the pentagon paper's guy (who decided not to go into exile), in which he said Snowden did the right thing and would have ended up like BM had he stayed.

fieryeagle• 13 years ago

Very useful article. This is nothing less to be expected from a Communist bloc nation. Public media smearing is just one facet of oppression.

If we are talking about Snowden as a beacon for freedom of speech and basic human rights, his move would seem like an unwise one. However, he is but flesh and blood like any of us so running to an oppressive state for relative safety is just fine. Survival comes before ideal.

D9u• 13 years ago

...a man who is now in disgrace himself because, in a weird twist of fate, a recording of him was leaked and broadcast on TV. The irony! Live by the sword, die by the sword.

NSA = Nothing Sacred Anymore

One would think that with the past experiences of US President's wiretapping enemies and the resulting scandals, that the current administration would seek that fabled "moral high ground" and not stoop to such low levels.

However, at this point, Snowden doesn't really have too many options...

contingencies• 13 years ago

With regards to interpretation, which is clearly slanted in one direction here, just because Venezuala's government haven't yet secured their rule to the point where doing the surveillance in secret and neglecting the potential popular effect of leaking interceptions is politically viable, doesn't mean they're necessarily more of a surveillance state than the US, UK, or many others.

Perhaps it just makes them a more playful, immature and open version of a surveillance state. Sort of like the NSA's cutesie two year old puppy. (Meanwhile the US, Europe, the UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and China gnash rabid teeth in the dog house proper - the sign above the door reading: "for grownups only".)

lambdasquirrel• 13 years ago

One thing I haven't noticed in any discussion is how the Founding Fathers of the U.S. turned to France (then a monarchy, and one less free than Britain) for help during the Revolutionary War. That Snowden might need to flee to one of these Latin American countries may be ironic, but it is the best practical option, just as accepting French aid was the best option back then.

junto• 13 years ago

It seems plainly obvious to me that Snowden's only option will be to reside at the leisure of a state that is a natural enemy of the US.

Any country that is a friend to the US is not safe to Snowden. However, I cannot think of a single stable democracy that would risk the wrath of the United States.

Snowden has a secondary problem with countries such as Venezuela, is that they are inherently unstable. Should the current Venezuelan government fall and switch to a pro-US government, then I assume he has a rather big problem on his hands.

Venezuela: My experience in the surveillance state

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