In this day and age of the surveillance state, a quotation worth remembering from the legendary Orson Welles over 50 years back.
A policeman’s job is only easy in a police state.
— Charlton Heston as Mike Vargas in the movie “Touch of Evil” (1958),
Orson Welles (screenwriter and director)
Curiously, a similar statement was made over a decade back, in fact a couple of years before 9-11, before the world changed.
We should not be building surveillance technology into standards. Law enforcement was not supposed to be easy. Where it is easy, it’s called a police state.
— Jeff Schiller, an IESG member and MIT network manager, Wired Magazine, 1999
(via Answer Girl and Steve Worona)