Lemeiux's Surveillance State

Lemeiux writing on the Surveillance State:
"It happens in China and, more particularly, in Xinjiang province, home of the Uighurs, an ethnic minority that also has the drawbacks of being Muslim and not especially enlightened. The indignity to which the Chinese state submits them are not more enlightened. The Uighurs can be tightly controlled because they are closely surveilled: ID cards tied to massive databases, constant video-surveillance and checkpoints, house-to-house inspections, a "convenience police station" for every square territory of 500 inhabitants (in the town of Hotan), government agents "adopted" by families, etc. This surveillance allows the authorities to rank individuals by degree of "trustworthiness," and to send to reeducation camps those deemed unreliable."

One could argue that democracies are different because there is a certain amount of consent of the surveilled involved.  Lemeiux counters that the West is being inured, like the famous boiling frog.

"Who ever thought that Americans would be, like mere Europeans, searched at "checkpoints," that many searches would be rechristened "inspections," or that border agents would have the right to search smartphones or other devices without a warrant, at the rate of 30,000 times a year (including searches of citizens' devices)? The NSA has been spying on millions of Americans. Until about 2010, according to Wall Street Journal data, the FBI had more DNA records than the Chinese government (which started later in the competition), although the collection is proceeding so fast in China that America doesn't "win" the race anymore; per capita, the two countries are now about equal."

And he points to the inevitable bureaucratic momentum that all democracies exhibit.

"Once in place, a high level of everyday surveillance, like a fixed cost, implies a low marginal cost of information; it makes control less costly and more tempting for the state. By the cost of control, I mean the resource and political costs of imposing new laws and regulations. When the cost of something decreases, its users want more. The more the state knows, the more controls in will enforce in the future."