Quote Originally Posted by Bob's World View Post
Then the modern information age destroyed the ability of governments to control information; which in turn destroyed the ability of governments to control populaces. This empowered the people of Eastern Europe, leading to the end of the Cold War. At that point the genie was out of the bottle. The west thought it only affected Soviet oppression of other populaces and began to celebrate our way through the Bush I and Clinton administrations. There were signs that the wheels were coming off, that small countries oppressed by ("allies with") Western governments were beginning to have problems with their populaces as well. That members of these popular uprisings were beginning to target Western interests as well. We saw these as small local problems and random crackpot acts of terrorism.
Sir, governments have never been able to completely control information. The advent of the internet and the "post-industrial information society" added a new dimension to narrative management and multiplied the number of actors who could participate in the few meaningful dialogues and legions of crummy monologues, diatribes and whining - ie "Leave Britney Alone" and "Here's my youtube mashup of Vladimir Putin as Hitler, aren't I smart?"

Even in totalitarian or authoritarian societies, people found ways to communicate, to crouch and conspire - seen most effectively in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes.

It's not really control of information that we should worry about, but rather surveillance of information, especially as Internet Service Providers now have the tools to conduct invasive information packet monitoring on a broader scale that is much more efficient than what they had after the release of the internet fifteen years ago. I mean, you could argue that a foreman has control over every box that moves through his yard - that control is meaningless unless he has some kind of strategy in place to know the contents of each box or packet as they move through and a way to stop and confiscate any that he finds suspicious.

I would also state that the quantity of information is irrelevant so long as you maintain a handle on the comparatively miniscule amount of quality information, which of course is context specific. The Imperio Arcani or Secrets of Imperial Policy would be a good example of that from the classical world. My latin is a little rusty, so please forgive me if the translations is rough.

I'd refer you to the following opinion by Ohm. It's about 80 pages, about 3/4's of the way through he lays out a fairly compelling case for adopting Cisco's Netflow protocol for all web interaction to prevent invasive surveillance.

Ohm, P. (2009). The Rise and Fall of Invasive ISP Surveillance. University of Illinois Law Review. (5), 1417.