Anne Applebaum's "Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956" documents the process of imposing authoritarianism. Particularly important is the combination of surveillance and the threat of violence. You can't have a thug with a baton on every street corner, but with enough information, you can credibly extend the threat of violence far beyond the number of thugs available. The number of nodes in a tree grows much faster than its depth.
How should we compare this kind of upstream oppression--heading off free expression, movement, association before they happen--with more localized forms of assault? More concretely, what should we make of the software developers, designers, salespeople, and managers who collaborate in building these kinds of systems?
How should we compare this kind of upstream oppression--heading off free expression, movement, association before they happen--with more localized forms of assault? More concretely, what should we make of the software developers, designers, salespeople, and managers who collaborate in building these kinds of systems?