We Must Not Normalize Digital Surveillance Abuses. EFF’s New Guide Underlines

Liberal democracies have their flaws, simply because, as many Marxist scientists and philosophers have pointed out, true democracy is not possible under a capitalist structure. Legal equality is defended by both the left and the right. Can there be legal and rights-based equality when laws have been conceived in all Western and liberal constitutions as formal rights? The right to buy decent housing, but if you have no money you cannot access it, etc. Freedom, closely related to the different interpretations of equality, is understood in liberal democracies as negative freedom — “free from…” rather than “freedom to…”. The same applies here. Rights are understood in a formal sense: everyone has the right to a fair trial, to access culture, etc. But for that you need resources. And I will not get into the different interpretations of fraternity. It was first interpreted as brothers belonging to the same community (the Jacobins), only to later be reinterpreted as a brotherhood of property owners. There is no liberty, equality or fraternity when the most basic conditions of the population are threatened by large socioeconomic actors who pressure from outside to eliminate all national and popular sovereignty. The Greeks voted in 2015 for what they wanted to do. What happened? A financial coup d’état. The government changes. Trump threatening the Argentine population that if Milei was not elected they would not have US dollars. The US historically provoking coups in countries whose citizens voted for something Washington did not like, and so on and so forth. One has a true democracy when one is able to vote for what one truly wants, free from coercion, free from conditioning. That does not exist, because at its very foundation, in capitalist societies there are those who own everything and those who own nothing. In many countries we are experiencing this with real estate speculation. What are the politicians we voted for going to do? Nothing — they are bound hand and foot, or they are simply corrupt. The media stays silent because their investors are who they are…