bloc

It's a device straight out of the Cold War east bloc.

So many cold-war era US criticisms of the Soviet bloc are coming true in this country, except that the surveillance here is more effective than what we saw in The Lives of Others.

The secure European cyberspace would have a "virtual Schengen border", it adds, referring to the treaty that allows freedom of movement within the EU but imposes controls on entry to the bloc.

If you think about it in that light, it makes the \n achievements of the socialist bloc seem pretty \n impressive: a country like Russia managed to go \n from a backwater to a major world power with \n everyone working maybe on average four or five \n hours a day.\n\nThat is a very selective reading of history.

Arguably the US is already in a situation where it takes extreme situations before the major media outlets wants to rock the boat.> When the media feels too uncomfortable to openly publish government secrets which were previously leaked?I'll grant you this is probably a good indicator - I can't think of any examples of obviously authoritarian governments that'd tolerate this other than for documents obviously "leaked" with permission.> When most people think the government is authoritarian and needs to be reined in?\n> When enough people think the government is authoritarian that, under a democratic system, they would be a powerful voting bloc?This doesn't make sense to me as it's incredibly hard to judge, and a government can be authoritarian but still be roughly aligned with the interests of a majority in a way that makes it seem relatively open on the surface.