A Moral Thesis in Defense of Surveillance

People talk about civil freedoms, and they incorrectly attribute lack of surveillance the status of a civil freedom. Freedom from observation is not freedom, freedom from incorrect enforcement is freedom.

Observation does not alter the moral scope of the individual, or the moral scope of the society. The individual's choice to limit their own moral scope under observation is what limits their scope. Surveillance does not affect the effective moral scope. Enforcement defines the ( effective ) moral scope ( the scope of actions that individuals can do without expecting hindrance from society ).

More comprehensive surveillance, leads to more clear enforcement, and more clear enforcement preserves in clearer definition those freedoms which are expressly not prohibited under the moral scope of a society. Surveillance is a tool of freedom. Specifically, a tool that contributes to preserving the freedom of action of individuals by contributing to more effective enforcement.

Without surveillance the machinery of enforcement can be more messily and liberally applied.

The fake left doctrines complain about surveillance as a tool of oppression.

Surveillance is seen in fact a tool of freedom, it is the light shone upon. The fake left doctrine has framed the entire debate incorrectly. Absence of surveillance is not a civil freedom, it is in fact an assurance of imprecisely applied enforcement.

Surveillance is a civil freedom.

Lawful enforcement is a civil freedom.

The remaining civil freedoms, known as "civil liberties" are those things permitted by an individual's effective moral scope.

Civil liberties, like morals in general, are not absolute, they are the choices made by societies to define themselves at a particular time and place. ( The color of absolutism is invoked because that promotes harmony -- if something is absolute it is beyond question. This is not a real admission of absolute, simply a shorthand for a society saying the debate about this way we define ourselves is complete, for now. )

Civil freedoms are distinguished from civil liberties in that civil freedoms include those acts, two of which are defined above, which effect whatever civil liberties are chosen. Civil freedoms include the machinery of creation of civil liberties.

The relationship between the state and the individual is somewhat akin to that between a parent and a baby. A baby is many things, and it is also helpless and chaotic without the governance of the parent. The parent's attentive observation ( surveillance ) of the baby presents the baby from harming itself. The state's attentive surveillance of the individuals presents them from harming themselves and others.

If large groups of individuals were capable of governing themselves in an ad-hoc fashion then...the internet, reddit, all of these places would be domains of inclusion, tolerance, peace, and respect. In fact, moderators, and moderators of moderators, and policies, and a central authority are required to prevent chaos and harm.

These things ( observations and controls -- surveillance and enforcement ) are the very enablers of the same liberties that
the fake left doctrine purports they destroy.

The fake left doctrines complain about surveillance as a tool of oppression. They use "freedom" in an intangible, absolute sense. A mythological "Perfect Freedom of the Individual", a delusion that fails to acknowledge the social context in which any freedom of action exists.

These fake left doctrines are founded on a delusion of a freedom unhindered by a social context. They are the fake left's dream of the mythical Powerful Individual, a delusion to compensate for the collective belief of the fake left of the powerlessness of the individual against some mythical oppressive force. In fact, for an individual exposed only to lawful restriction of their action, their only powerlessness is their fabrication of their own powerlessness.

The mythical oppressor of the fake left is in fact, not the lawful surveillance state, it is the individual that chooses to believe itself powerless. Surveillance is not oppression, incorrectly applied enforcement is the very definition of oppression. And as the net of surveillance is narrowed, a broader net of enforcement must be cast to protect individuals from themselves. The fundamental that the fake left has not grasped is that the trade off is not between "broader freedoms and broader surveillance" it is between "broader surveillance or broader enforcement", and broader enforcement, without the information, is going to be incorrectly applied.