I think its worth remembering that art outside of the west is still predominantly centred around religion; despite the huge entertainment complex; maybe not so predominantly then
She states imagine that the police had a large map
in which they can track the movements of everyone
everyone has a card index
By tracking this motion everything that is useful to know can be found out without
disturbing the actual privacy of the individual
This would be a superb gift to the police
They'd love it - my addition
Actually, the UK police force say that get very good leads from social media
She uses antinquated language and technology but her analysis is spot on.
This is what she actually says: The Okhrana, the Czarist predecessor of the GPU, is reported to have invented a filing system in which every suspect was noted on a large card in the centre of which his name was surrounded by a red circle; his political friends were designated by smaller red circles and his non-political acquaintenances by green ones…
obviously the limitations of this method are set only by the size of the filing cards, and theoretically a gigantic single sheet could show the relations and cross-relations of the entire population. And this is the utopian goal of the totalitarian secret police. It has given up the old traditional police dream which the lie detector is still supposed to realise, and no longer tries to find out who is who, or who thinks what
One of the essential differences, as far as I see, is that the populace is implicated, as a large network of informers are required and which must permeate the body of the population; whereas the NSA/GCHQ surveillance apparatus is automatic.
She adds:Now the police dreams that one look at a gigantic map on the office wall should suffice at any given moment to establish who is related to whom and in what degree of intimacy; and theoretically, this dream is not unrealisable although its technical execution is bound to be somewhat difficult”
She was right about the technical execution; she was writing in the 1950s; so half a century was required; enough so that Hobsbawm would reiterate the same point in the 1990s; saying that only open air conversations would be free from surveillance
Arendt was a big fan of Plato
and Heidegger, obviously :)