Replies (1)

• @masek@infosec.exchange 2026-10-03 11:28

  @Leszek_Karlik@circumstances.run This is a very personal opinion: I think this confuses the immediate effect with the systemic effect. Yes, in an authoritarian regime, false positives may initially be a feature rather than a bug. Arbitrary punishment creates fear, and fear can help suppress opposition. The regime may therefore tolerate a level of false positives that would be politically unacceptable in a democracy. But false positives do not stop having consequences just because the regime doesn't care about human rights. They create an enormous business opportunity for corruption. If being flagged by the system can cost you your job, your freedom or your life, then making sure that you are not flagged suddenly has considerable economic value. Officials can sell protection, investigations can disappear, rivals can be denounced, evidence can be manufactured, and surveillance itself becomes another instrument in internal power struggles. At the same time, every false positive consumes resources: investigators, police, intelligence officers, prisons, bureaucrats and ultimately money. A sufficiently noisy system can drown its own security apparatus in useless information just as easily as a democratic one. The difference is that an authoritarian regime can hide these costs for much longer. But it cannot make them disappear. Fear may strengthen authoritarian control in the short term. Corruption, resource consumption and the gradual destruction of reliable information corrode the state in the long term.

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