Oh God! Not that line again! It's right up there with "If it saves one life then it's worth it"
You don't understand. No, you might not have anything to fear right now, but the more they erode our rights little by little the easier it will be to bring in even more repressive steps in the future.
You might trust the government not to abuse the myriad little bits of information they are collecting on YOU right now. You might. I wouldn't. How do you know what the next government, or the next one or the next one will do with the information that we, by our sheeplike acceptance of little erosions, have allowed them to collect? Local council officials are abusing it right now.
How much more efficient would the Holocaust have been if the Gestapo could have watched everyone going about their business? If they knew exactly where people were going and were able to track their movements just by switching from one camera to another.
Resistance is futile. We know where you are.
Never mind the fact that these cameras are expensive to install, even more expensive to administer and an excuse for the authorities to do nothing to really improve the crime figures by putting proper investment into the police force where it counts, i.e. with extra real policemen.
The fact is that they just don't work for the purpose they are sold to us for. i.e. the prevention of crime.
They get us used to changes by introducing them slowly and in little ways. You're quite happy to be watched as you walk down the street. How would you feel if there was a camera in your living room to make sure that you don't make some politically incorrect remark to your wife? It's only a question of scale. Don't think it couldn't happen. Orwell saw it coming. There are a lot of aspects of 1984 that have happened already. Just because the rest of it hasn't doesn't mean that it couldn't.
Comments like yours play right into their hands.
Als sie die Kommunisten geholt haben, habe ich geschwiegen.
- denn ich war ja kein Kommunist.
Als sie die Sozialisten und Gewerkschafter geholt haben, habe ich geschwiegen.
- denn ich war ja keins von beiden.
Als sie die Juden geholt haben, habe ich geschwiegen.
- denn ich war ja kein Jude.
Als sie mich geholt haben, hat es niemanden mehr gegeben, der protestieren konnte.
First they came for the Communists,
- but I was not a communist so I did not speak out.
Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists,
- but I was neither, so I did not speak out.
Then they came for the Jews,
- but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out.
And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.
Martin Niemoller