Terrorism and Despotism

When does terrorism lead to despotism. According to some news analysts, it happens when something called "mission creep" enters into the scene. It could work something like this: In a vigilant effort to route out possible terrorists a government begins to monitor all suspicious communications and internet traffic. Not knowing which interactions are suspicious and which are not the governmental entity in charge of terrorism decides it is best to monitor all communications. One especially helpful tool is the ability to monitor all social media connections so that the connections to all possible terrorists or potential terrorists can be known. To catch even more possible baddies the government agency decides to monitor any groups is thinks might be related to terrorist activities. This eventually includes any groups that are even remotely connected to speaking or writing out against the government in any form. That is an example of mission creep. What began as limited monitoring of identified potential terrorists has expanded into collecting the data of thousands of citizens for doing anything that could be defined as potentially related to terrorist or anti-government action.

Why should a person care? After all, the average citizen does nothing wrong. Most go to work, go home, follow the rules, play nice, and so on. But with mission creep in action, more and more average citizens get caught up in the net of potentialities. If someone knows someone who is the cousin of someone that once wrote a nasty remark about the president on a chat site, all those people may become unwitting suspects.

More fear needs more action. More action needs more control. Terrorism leads to despotism.

So it is on Kevutu. The few people who have rebelled against the tyranny of the control of the ceorans (bosses) have caused panic in the government leading to martial law and their own version of despotism. The Grand Council of Ceorans, the primary governmental body for the planet, has been disbanded by a subset of the council called the Directorate. They have called for martial law and are chasing down any citizen they believe to be related to the terrorists (known as freedom fighters in their own land).