I think this would only work if everyone also had perfectly equal power to abuse the resulting information flood. In the U.S., it's common knowledge (or at the very least, common belief) that the majority of politicians are corrupt and routinely do things that would land the rest of us in prison. Despite that knowledge, we generally have no power to do anything meaningful about it because they make the rules.
I don't want a world where every move I make is being watched and I'm subject to arbitrary action by people who have power. I think total surveillance, even if it includes the powerful few, would be a disaster for human rights and freedom in general. So what if the dictator is impeccable in his daily routine, if he's watching every move of a population and subjecting them to unequal treatment under the law?
> The point is that hypocrisy would eventually cause a change, but there would be a period where things would work the way that you describe.
That may be possible, but it's also possible that total surveillance would result in a permanent entrenchement of whoever manages to gain (or maintain) power through the transition. It's very hard for a competing ideology to rise in prominence if it's possible to detect and crush every individual who starts to disagree, before they can even communicate it to anyone else. I think it's likely that with total surveillance we'd soon see the rise of rapid automated enforcement, which would be a incredible impediment to any attempt at changing the status quo.
Don't even pretend like we're not 100% there right now. You are describing reality as it exists currently, nothing more. The tolerance of ideological debate is at the pleasure of those in power, but try to take it any further than you will be visited by various systems of control.
"I don't want a world where every move I make is being watched"
That's already the case. There is (near) total transparency for the population. The only way to fight back, is to have total transparency for the powerful few too.
But they make the rules, and have the money and the power, so this ain't happening.
I don't want a world where every move I make is being watched and I'm subject to arbitrary action by people who have power. I think total surveillance, even if it includes the powerful few, would be a disaster for human rights and freedom in general. So what if the dictator is impeccable in his daily routine, if he's watching every move of a population and subjecting them to unequal treatment under the law?