The ability to go do something anonymously, perhaps some act of protest or resistance or sabotage, and then resume normal life afterwards without having to live forever after as a fugitive, it contributes to the legitimacy of a system that requires us to occasionally make compromises like being groped by TSA.
So long as I can assume an anonymous role on occasion, and other people can too, I must think twice before doing anything destructively rash. Nobody else has bombed this thing yet, and they surely could, so perhaps it exists with the consent of the people around it.
But if surveillance and control exceeds some ill defined threshold such that its not clear that so many of us actually could get away with fighting back against the machinery of control that surrounds us. Well then one must question whether it actually exists with our consent. And in that case, if we're lucky enough to be able to get away with dismantling it, it very well may be our responsibility to do so.
That's the principle. There must still be some line not yet crossed. Because otherwise there's nothing to do besides fight. So we don't let them cross whatever the arbitrary line is because most of us are not prepared for the fight.
The issue with that "principle" is that it takes one person, who could very well be from a different society with different ideas of consent, or just a suicidal lunatic or someone in for an insurance scam, to ruin it for everyone.
I'm not sure if we're worried that the outliers are at the top exerting illegitimate control or at the bottom undermining it without justification but either way I agree that there are no easy answers here. It's just something you've got to navigate if you want to have a society.
So long as I can assume an anonymous role on occasion, and other people can too, I must think twice before doing anything destructively rash. Nobody else has bombed this thing yet, and they surely could, so perhaps it exists with the consent of the people around it.
But if surveillance and control exceeds some ill defined threshold such that its not clear that so many of us actually could get away with fighting back against the machinery of control that surrounds us. Well then one must question whether it actually exists with our consent. And in that case, if we're lucky enough to be able to get away with dismantling it, it very well may be our responsibility to do so.
That's the principle. There must still be some line not yet crossed. Because otherwise there's nothing to do besides fight. So we don't let them cross whatever the arbitrary line is because most of us are not prepared for the fight.