re: "“We are, like, that far from a turnkey totalitarian state”
totalitarian: exercising control over the freedom, will, or thought of others; authoritarian; autocratic.
A few days ago, I read that televisions are revolutionizing the spy industry... that people are, essentially, bugging THEMSELVES with leaky devices that can be read from the street and convey a wide range of information.
A week before that, the story was that by EOY 2013, the NSA is going to be keeping a copy of *ALL* digital content: E-mails, phone calls, audio, video, financial transactions, *everything* - in what they were referring to as a bottomless database.
Yesterday, I read that Sweden is nearly cashless today and sees itself becoming COMPLETELY so in twenty years or less. That means that everything moves to credit cards. It all becomes trackable. Searchable. Interpretable. Ultimately, government and banks gain the ability to shut off people's access to their own funds.
We are, indeed, close to a totalitarian society. The tools are almost all in place. All that's needed is for the right (wrong?) people to invoke them. They'll do so soon enough. These changes have been made for a reason.
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