I think "why do you have the right to know?" is a decent answer.
"What level of trust do you think you've earned?"
"What do you want to do with all this information?"
"How will this make things better?'
"Don't you have more important things to spend time and money on?"
"Is this really the best thing the government should be working on right now?"
"How does this help any of society's ills?"
"Will taxes need to be increased to manage, store, and analyse the mountains of information that will be created?"
"How long will you store messages between me and my daughter about her contemplating suicide, and will those messages prevent her from getting a government job later in life?"
"Does the storing of all this data come with a responsibility to make it accessible to defend people who have been accused of a crime?"
"My wife works in law enforcement, will she have access to this trove of data?"
"Will there be a process to remove data from this trove that may be libelous or cause undue harm to an individual or company?"
"Is the government responsible for the complete chain of access to this data, or are there private companies involved that have to be trusted not to sneak a peek?"
"What specific issue, currently facing today's society, does this solve?"
I also think a decent strategy is to start asking for all sorts of specific private information, like their social security number, bank account numbers, and passwords. Ask them to make a copy of their keys so you can enter their house any time you want and watch what they're doing, go through their things, etc. Tell them that you want to put up cameras in their bedroom and bathroom that stream to the internet 24/7.
Keep escalating until they balk. Once that happens: "oh, so you do value your privacy?"
If they actually do share this sort of info with you, give you copies of their keys, and let you put up cameras in their house, it's probably safe to say that they are part of a vanishingly small minority, and you really don't need to care about their views on privacy. (Hopefully this assertion ages well years from now.)
If you are asking what a reasonable person of the public thinks about digital privacy, that ship has already sailed. We have people installing and handing out their data to third parties in the form of:
* Cameras on their front doors (Ring doorbells, etc.)
* Mics all around their house (Alexa's and other digital assistants)
* 3D accurate maps out the entirety of your house's floor plan (Roomba's etc.)
* Digital door locks managed in the cloud
* Real-time position tracking (airtags, Google Maps app & equivalents, etc.)
We already have concrete evidence of some of the above being used / abused against the interest of the owner.
Until you can make a compelling case about why this is bad, I would wager that the default stance of the public is that no privacy is required.
Right, but that apparently isn't happening to enough people, so these different means to erode our reasonable expectation of privacy will continue to grow. As they do governments can hold up Ring cameras for example and say, "look, everybody has one of these on their front porch and they're filming their neighbors. If you let a private company do that then there's nothing legally keeping us from doing the same."
It's pretty blatant in my neighborhood already. Whenever something criminal happens and cops come around one of the first things they ask is if I have a Ring doorbell they could take a peek at.
"IT PROTECTS THE CHILDREN!" they'll scream, while using it to take more power away from society and concentrate it into their own hands.
Surveillance isn't some harmless thing, because you can tell a million lies with a drop of the truth in them for any reason you want.
Imagine you get established in life and decide to run for local politics only to have the fact that you've gone to Vegas 4 times in your life somehow turned into a completely untrue "drug use and prostitution" scandal that destroys your credibility and political career before it even started.
Imagine having your grandkids' college scholarships revoked because you ran an incredibly unprofitable and short lived onlyfans for 3 months in your late teens.
Maybe the results won't be as overt as this. Maybe it will be worse.
Either way, it is invasive and gives complete strangers power over your future and your children's future that they simply should not have and have no reason to ever have.
It's morally repugnant and abhorrent to any person who takes the time to think not of what information will be collected but of what that information will be used for and by whom.
The children of the people who as of today are still talking about how great trump is and how he "brought peace to the middle east" and how "evil demoncrats are running a global cabal to turn humans into monkeys" are the people who at best will be the parents and friends and neighbors of the people who will have finely grained and exacting data of everything you have done from well before the day of the passing of a bill like this.
This bill would make America the equivalent of living in an overly nosy HOA city everywhere for everyone. The people who fit in and don't make waves will get the 1950's nuclear family treatment, and those that don't will get the April 26, 1986 Pripyat nuclear treatment.
> "IT PROTECTS THE CHILDREN!" they'll scream, while using it to take more power away from society and concentrate it into their own hands.
I don't think you're wrong in predicting this, and I actually think you're proven correct by precedent already. The answer to this is many and varied, but one core concept that should always be kept in mind is, much like "with great power comes great responsibility":
With great claims comes great burden of proof
What statistics are you trying to improve, and have you got a baseline you can share with us that can be used in 1 year, 2 years, 5 years to prove the effectiveness of this legislation in "protecting the children"? What's your time frame after which, if no measurable improvement to these statistics has been made, then the legislation will be declared a failure and repealed?
(This is, of course living in some kind of utopian thought experiment, and society just doesn't have the memory to allow such holding the decisions of the powerful to account, but it was therapeutic to write, and it's a worthy goal for long term pursuit).
There is no good answer to this. I suggest not wasting your time trying to argue in good faith with irrational or straight up malicious actors. Better invest in ways to protect yourself, your assets and your anonymity through technology.
I know what you're saying is inescapably true, but I feel the need to point out that the fact that is has gotten to the point that it is inescapably true fucking sucks and there is a lot of work that needs to be done to undo it.
True change lies in policy and legislation, not in technical defence. The ability to change policy and legislation is a sign that 'power' is coming back into balance between the people and the government - and if we can't do that, then the power balance needs restorative work.
Technical defence should always exist, but rarely be necessary, especially against the government of one's own country.
(If one can argue in good faith in public, visibly, the bad faith of the opposition matters less than the ability to make aware as many of the public as possible. Bad faith, irrational, or malicious actors should be able to be backed into a corner with their own arguments)
Ah yes, “protecting the children”. Meanwhile, some of the most paranoid IT data security I’ve seen was at a department of education.
You see, just statistically speaking, they have pedophiles on staff, staff with potential data access. They have ex husbands that want to abduct their kid after the messy divorce where the wife had to get a new identity, but good luck fleeing from your husband who has DB access at the DoE.
The real world is messy and filled with bad actors in positions of power and access to data that enables their abuse.
The less data there is, the less they can abuse it.
Almost like… guns. The less guns are out there… oh. Oh…
You guys in the States are screwed. I’m sorry for you all.
"how do you ensure trust in the providence of the information being stored? - with no direct link to physical proof of an individual typing that message or URL or uploading / downloading that picture at that time, or even necessarily that the individuals device was used to perform the action, what value is there in the data?"
The argument above could really only be used if a case came to court and evidence providence needed to be questioned.
This argument is a poor one in the face of politics or lawyers because the ambiguity is such that it becomes a case of "who do you believe is telling the truth" because a jury is a group of humans, and our nature appears to be to err on the side of guilt over innocence. Hence accusation=at least guilty of "something". It therefore works in favour of the power status quo.
When you step back and look objectively and in an unbiased manner, you see that we (humans) are a species of dominance rather than collaborative partnership. It is a world where individuals must earn the privilege of survival, and by earn I don't mean only in a monetary sense but also a gatekeeper sense. Life is not of precious value; power and control are. This, and the commodification of labour, land, and money are bringing about the disintegration of capitalism with nothing on the horizon to replace it other than anarchy. Welcome to the interregnum.
I really disagree with this. We are not a species of dominance over partnership. We are a species that requires partnership to function, with mostly socially constructed competition for position within our greater society. But fundamentally we need each other equally. We live for two generations so that we can also raise the grandchildren with the parents. We have language to communicate and plan together. Many of us develop empathy and compassion fairly early on, making friends that don’t benefit us except for the delight of a peer. This is our basal nature. I would argue that systems of exploitation are the more unnatural state- racism must be taught from an early age, for example.
Many seem to not realize that privacy is not about having something to hide (I guess that would be secrecy), but about the right to keep things to yourself. Those are two different concepts.
"Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age. Privacy is not secrecy. A private matter is something one doesn't want the whole world to know, but a secret matter is something one doesn't want anybody to know. Privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world."
--
excerpt from A Cypherpunk's Manifesto,
Eric Hughes,
March 9, 1993
It's funny (not haha-funny) how political policy in 2023 is still trying to catch up to morality understood 30 years ago. I remember being annoyed at newscasters abusing the term "hackers" in the late 90s and extremely broad definitions of "hacking" being applied in court-rulings. It must still be really difficult to comprehend tech and the consequences of these kinds of policies for policy makers. Either that or policy makers really are maleficent towards life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Oh, politics understands that alright, don't you worry about that. Politicians are the enemies of privacy for the masses, because a transparent population is a population that is easier controlled and manipulated.
That's also why terms are being used deliberately incorrectly, to move legitimate positions nearer to criminal activity. Just ask anyone interested in hobbyist chemistry.
The term "illegal aliens" is an invention. "Immigrant" doesn't care about legality; it is literally just someone who has moved from another locale. Labeling one variant "legal" and another "illegal" is perfectly reasonable.
I think it was 1986, as in the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. [1]
> That way build sympathy for the law-breakers, then legitimize them via immigration reforms that only benefit the illegals
it was noted "The legalization provisions in this act will go far to improve the lives of a class of individuals who now must hide in the shadows, without access to many of the benefits of a free and open society. Very soon many of these men and women will be able to step into the sunlight and, ultimately, if they choose, they may become Americans"
I don't really care if somebody entered the country legally or not. Eventually, everybody assimilates. However, I am not ok extending benefits paid for by taxes to non-citizens. As long as there are politicians trying to give tax paid benefits to "illegal" immigrants I will be against illegal immigration.
I agree, but I don't think that's a good example. The only reason for the existence of a bank password is to enable private interactions between yourself and the bank (and the government through their financial surveillance).
In practice your bank password is indeed a secret, and that's a bad thing, because that above definition is wrong, which is why I prefer to think about the U2 lyric (from "The Fly"):
"They say a Secret is something you tell one other person, so I'm telling you, child".
The bank knows your password. Which means they (or more precisely their agents, employees, etc.) can lose it yet they'll probably try to blame you.
It is possible to not have this happen via what's called an Augmented PAKE - the bank wouldn't know your password, but they'd be able to check you still remembered it - however almost certainly none of the systems you use today do this.
>The bank knows your password. Which means they (or more precisely their agents, employees, etc.) can lose it yet they'll probably try to blame you.
Normally banks can't and shouldn't know the password in most jurisdictions. It does pass to their server, but they're supposed to only store a hash of it, so not be able to know what it is.
But if anybody makes this BS argument, just ask them for the credit card number and the 3 digits on the back of the card, telling them you will post it online.
Don't they usually store a hash of it? And doesn't it therefore for the most part work exactly the way you say it ideally should?
Of course leaking the hash of my password might make it easier to crack, to some extent, but if they've done a good job then this is much better than it being something the bank can trivially lose.
> Don't they usually store a hash of it? And doesn't it therefore for the most part work exactly the way you say it ideally should?
Putting aside the banks who literally do store the password because they have security procedures like "Please enter the first and fifth characters of your password" even those that do store a password hash still need you to submit your password to authenticate.
So, like the lyric says, you tell the bank your password. You hope they just use it to authenticate you and immediately discard it, but if bank security lapses are anything to go by they're probably logging it "for security" and there are definitely employees able to snoop the decrypted plaintext passwords from customers on some internal teams.
That is what Augmented PAKEs fix, it's really hard to do well, and of course banks see themselves as infinitely trustworthy so why would they bother.
This mistaken sense of self-worth applies to your credit card PIN by the way also, of course banks and thus bank employees can know your PIN, which means when a purchase is "secured" by the PIN that rules out some local pickpocket having made the purchase, but as well as you it leaves open the possibility that it was a bank employee or their co-conspirator.
This is completely false. You validate any password requirements before salting and hashing the password and then store the salt and hash. Even if you restrict usage of previous passwords, you are just comparing hashes.
If the bank is indeed salting and hashing the password, then what's the rationale of allowing certain special characters like '!', but not '+'? Hashing and salting should be character agnostic.
Some special characters are not processed as one might expect, particularly by implementations of languages such as COBOL, which is still used on the server side by many banks, insurance companies and government agencies where consistency is paramount.
"#" can mean phone number
"+" or "&" can mean concatenate variables
It is vastly easier to screen out possible problems at the user/browser level than rewrite zillions of lines of legacy code.
Except you are giving them the password and trusting them to discard it after validating it. If it's purely client side, then the bank is trusting you to follow the password requirements which is also out of the question.
Whether hashing is happening client side does tell you a little, though in most cases most users are still trusting the client side software to not exfiltrate the password before hashing it.
Even with Client side hashing, the software can still validate password requirements on the client side, you may be able to bypass those requirements by modifying the client side software.
So still no, having password requirements tells you nothing about whether the password is being stored in the clear or not. The statement that I disagreed with is still completely false.
There’s a reason we don’t mandate government cameras inside our homes. No one wants that. But in a world where everyone needs a computer, we shouldn’t take advantage of that obligation by turning our computers into surveillance devices.
The best analogy for this I've seen is this: it's no secret that everybody poops. But that doesn't mean everyone likes having other people watch while they do it (privacy).
Assuming they're adults, offer to set up a camera feed in their bathroom and stream it. They don't mind, and you'd do the work, so it'd be no problem for them and a very specific type of audience would love it. They could likely even earn a bit of money doing it so it's win/win!
Maybe some people even think they believe it when they say it, but I've yet to see anyone who is willing to demonstrate it when pressed, and I've even met a few people who have claimed that they have no concerns at all about their privacy, but who then ended up feeling violated when even small things they assumed were private ended up being exposed.
Well I'd say they're full of shit, haha. Most people have something they care about; them refuting a specific case doesn't refute the general concept. They're either arguing in bad faith or are not very good at thinking logically.
If they truly have no ethical or moral boundaries, then they are probably deviant enough that they won't be able to get into a position to set much policy, anyways, by definition of their lack of fitness to represent the majority of any population.
You go ahead and zen out and, in turn, take those things with grace by going along with it when someone raises a fuss ("oh, I am soooo humiliated! :)"). Or if you're of another archetype, you'll find witty ways to playfully snap back and turn it around on people trying to clown on you (alas, I'm not of this type/talent). Moreover, there are the countless, other not-uncommon approaches that often lead to escalation/hostility/violence.
Then it becomes a drag (and where the issue lies) when it really catches on in wildfire manner, to where it will have practically problematic effects on you personally or professionally, not unlike the lie that makes it halfway 'round the world before the truth can put its pants on.
As far as I see it, all of that is what is trying to be highlighted with the pooping witness analogy. Of course, that should probably be underscored when presenting it.
You'll probably still get a "yeah, that's fine" or "I don't care what anyone else thinks" after you elaborate. And tons of other cans of worms can reasonably be opened as topical offshoots; I'm just trying to concur that the "I don't mind" response doesn't really feel like a response.
At that point you can either call them a pervert and weirdo, or you can ask to film then while they poop and upload it to YouTube with their name attached.
I like this. I added my own parts to clarify and solidify my stance. "Unless I have created a harm, I have a right to choose what to share and who to share it with. I have no interest in the "suspected guilty until proven innocent" mantra.""
Reminder that the same applies to use of crypto. Just because it's use for some illegal activity (it's actually less % than fiat), doesn't mean it should be made illegal as I've seen some comments here advocating for in the past.
If you mean cryptocurrency, then that's wrong, because its primary purpose is to facilitate illegal activity, or grifting. It isn't even good as money, and I still can't buy groceries with Bitcoin, which is like... one of the things money needs to do (buy food).
Also, the statement is itself wrong already at face value in many situations, for example if someone has a credit card or runs an online shop and is contractually required to hide something. For instance, quoting from https://usa.visa.com/legal/checkout/terms-of-service.html:
"You are responsible for protecting the confidentiality of your username and password(s), if any. In addition, if you choose to be remembered on your device or browser, or link your use of the Visa Solution with a digital wallet, on one or more device(s), you are responsible for protecting the safety of and access to such device(s). It is important that you do so since we are not responsible for any losses you incur as a result of unauthorized use of your Eligible Card and, depending on the circumstances, your Issuer may hold you responsible for unauthorized use of your Eligible Card account."
Another example for mandatory secrecy are confidentiality requirements imposed by professional obligations, such as for lawyers and physicians, in order to ensure fair trials, and for the protection of human dignity.
For a society to work properly, yes. If we have zero rules around what a government can or cannot do, can or cannot have access to, and so on we will have created a moral hazard that will be grossly abused.
I’ve found that reminding folks who use the “you have nothing to hide" argument often quickly change their mind if you just remind them the political party they don’t like could use it against them
This worked surprisingly well and without fail for the conservative side of my family. The instant I reminded them who was president at the time (Obama) all of them changed their mind
I don’t love this strategy. It leans into fear mongering a bit much, but if none of the other very helpful rhetorical techniques folks have shared here don’t work. This one has some staying power.
The balance between privacy and the authority is just that. We outsourced the rule of law to the state in order to have a fair and just society. Ipso facto the government should be fair and just to have the right to invade some amount of privacy in order to keep a society free, fair and just.
That’s why the judicial branch exist: to see if what the government (or anyone) did was playing by the rules.
Which brings us back to politics being a danger to a society if people vote in unjust or unfair people.
To my mind, another problem is the one-sidedness of this effort. Why is someone privileged to scan my data but I can’t write a scanner and parse theirs? There seems to be a fundamental injustice here.
Completely ignoring privacy as a concept for a moment, a fair trade should be like for like, value for value.
Imho, sponsors of this bill want to collect dossiers and use them to blackmail opponents in the future. For example, you want to do something unpopular and a noisy council member opposes your plan. You reach to the "official and confidential" box, find there a personal file on that politician, conveniently created by the AI-scanner, share your discoveries with him and suddenly he changes his mind.
> Imho, sponsors of this bill want to collect dossiers and use them to blackmail opponents in the future.
I wonder how it is that the NSA hasn't already enabled that. One of my early concerns with government spying is that we'd up with some kind of NeoMcCarthyism on crack where someone in power would be able to discredit any inconvenient person or even identify and eliminate the career of a potential opponent before they grew to become a real threat. It's astonishing to me that with the wealth of data being collected already it hasn't happened. We've certainly had some very petty and morally bankrupt people in high positions who I'm sure would not have hesitated to abuse that information.
The risk is certainly real, and laws like EARN IT would only make it easier. Even today it seems like it'd be trivial for someone in power to plant a forbidden sequence of zeros and ones on somebodies mobile device at anytime and ruin them.
> I wonder how it is that the NSA hasn't already enabled that
On paper, at least, the NSA technically isn't allowed to act on US soil or against US persons. The FBI would be the most likely vector for such a political police action, imho.
> I wonder how it is that the NSA hasn't already enabled that.
It seems pretty weird to assume it's not already done and in use by select people or groups in the NSA already. They literally have the ability, they're smart enough to pick their targets carefully, and there's plenty of evidence of their oversight being useless.
You're right that it's possible. We haven't seen full on witch hunts, with people hauled before congress and cameras to have their dirtiest laundry aired while the world watches. We haven't seen presidents able to wield that power unrestrained either (despite the NSA being under the DoD and ostensibly answerable to the commander-in-chief). Still, it's possible that there's a much more quiet sort of manipulation going on behind the scenes from folks within the NSA itself.
Obama campaigned on the promise to end domestic surveillance, and while politicians lie all the time to get elected, listening to him speak back then I believed him. He was a strong orator and was saying what I wanted to hear which admittedly makes my judgement there a bit suspect, but he also had a long history of speaking out against things like the patriot act, the illegal wiretapping of Americans, and national security letters.
Once he got into office however, instead of reining in the NSA he greatly expanded the NSA's ability to spy on the American public and he started defending them in speeches. I've often wondered if he was shown something highly classified that convinced him that violating every American's rights was genuinely needed, or if he was just threatened into compliance by showing him what information they'd collected on him and his family.
In relinquishing our right to violence, we demand both influence over its use and transparent practices. Injustice arises when this exchange fails to be equitable, particularly when the government monopolizes violence without being held accountable to its citizens or offering anything of value in return.
Of course, numerous ethical concerns surround the monopolization of violence, but for I want to focus on on the negotiation of rights for societal benefits.
Similarly, we often surrender our privacy with the promise of protection from criminal threats. However, this bargain becomes unjust and imbalanced when we look at it critically. The map is not the territory as the saying goes, and what are sold as effective measures against crime (on "the map") don't seem like they would be in reality ("the territory"). We risk relinquishing our privacy for nothing of value in return.
_should_ is the main problem I have with this argument. A Monopoly on violence is _never_ fine because there is never a time where we can trust a person or an organization to be completely transparent.
Bruce Schneier put it quite succinctly in his article The Eternal Value of Privacy (from 2006):
Some clever answers: “If I'm not doing anything wrong, then you have no cause to watch me.” “Because the government gets to define what's wrong, and they keep changing the definition.” “Because you might do something wrong with my information.” My problem with quips like these – as right as they are – is that they accept the premise that privacy is about hiding a wrong. It's not. Privacy is an inherent human right, and a requirement for maintaining the human condition with dignity and respect.
Anyone who uses that argument, ask them to hand you their phone, unlocked, and a list of passwords for all of their accounts. If you have nothing to hide, why would you have a problem with me poking around in the most intimate aspects of your life?
This doesn't really convince them. To them, a friend might be someone they want to hide things from, but they won’t care about some unknown government entity having access.
This comes from not knowing what organizations are likely to do with it.
Would they be okay with the data being used to overcharge them whenever they're in a hurry because the organization knows when they don't have time to comparison shop?
How about maximizing their tax burden by using the data to calculate the highest tax rates each area would tolerate before moving or changing their vote?
Suppose the government falls under the control of the party they don't like. Should they have access to the data that allows them to most effectively target their propaganda?
And it doesn't even have to be an organization. How often do you hear of cops or civil employees poking around in records they have no business to poke around in?
But I find the sort of people who believe in "nothing to hide" tend to believe in the efficacy of bureaucratic systems set up to prevent that sort of thing. A belief (ironically) bolstered by the privacy those organizations secure for themselves, so that those kinds of individual abuses are rarely discovered. Who watches the watchers?
Whereas it's easy to understand that if you don't have a high opinion of the opposing party's most recent President, you might very well not want their administration knowing everything about everyone.
The two arguments aren't mutually exclusive. The shock value of 'let me see your phone then' can lead into the greater discussion that AnthonyMouse is presenting. The emotional hook can often be just as useful as the logical argument, especially when dealing with someone who didn't really reason themselves into a given position in the first place.
Unfortunately, it's an issue that's hard for many to understand until it directly affects them. Sometimes you need to find something relatively innocuous but still embarrassing and 'give them a thwap' with it, but even then the chances of them understanding are still low.
I think this is a straw man. I don't think any politician would ever suggest such a thing at face value unless couched in some other argument. For example, after 9/11 a politician would have said, "I respect your need for privacy, but we live in extraordinary times, and we need to temporarily lift the restrictions on our agencies to effectively combat an imminent threat."
The real argument being made isn't that we should give all our secrets to the government, but that we should trust that the government will comply with our 4th Amendment protections and avoid gathering this data without a valid warrant issued by an impartial judge. If you're reading this, I'm guessing that like me, you don't believe a word of that. But that's the argument that's being made, and that's what needs to be debunked loudly and publicly.
> If this is really their argument they've already lost.
This would only be true if government were in fact answerable to people. It isn't, and hasn't been for a long time, if it ever was. Legislators decide what they want to vote for, and then decide how to brush off people who tell them anything they don't want to hear.
Lost in which arena? Do you trust politicians to not expand the scope of governance? If they are called out, they can simply rebrand their efforts under a new bill until 3 letter agencies get all the goodies they desire. How much patience does a low information public have? Is it as much as the political and security state classes?
Nothing to hide is a premise based on most people being terrified of confrontation. It's an intentional staging to force confrontation or capitulation.
When people say they have nothing to hide, in most cases what they're actually saying is that they're afraid of the confrontation implicit in the opposite response (I'm going to forcefully argue for a right to privacy). They're telling you that they're a coward.
The more I think about this, the more it rings true. Implicit in the phrase "I have nothing to hide" is an assumption that everything is open to inspection by default, and concealment is deviance. In most situations, nobody assumes anything close to that. When they do, they're taking a supine position, like an animal submissively exposing its belly.
Well, clothes are mostly down to weather and laws on public decency, and nudists are the counterpoint that prove some demographics would prefer to be naked if the law allowed it, same with tribes like Koma.
Locks are more for security than privacy, and it's important not to conflate the two. People can have nothing to hide, but also not want to be robbed.
And as for email, that's again a matter of security because then someone could impersonate you for one, and I can't name a service that allows you to omit having a password for your email account.
In an information environment, security and privacy are the same thing. The terms may have different connotations culturally, but good security-in-depth is the same set of practices that enable digital privacy, because the objective is the same: prevent leakage of facts.
You can have E2EE to the service provider, but they can be free to rummage through your data if they choose to or are coerced to by a legal demand from an authority. But it eliminates the average schmoe from going through that data.
Is that adequate security? Is that adequate privacy? This is what bills like EARN IT and its ilk are positing with backdoors et al. It depends on your threat model.
If a warrant opens a door or account one way or another, it can be argued that privacy-wise, locks and passwords are poor solutions. Are you protecting business data or trying to survive in an oppressive regime?
Different solutions for different problems, how appropriate they are varies with demographics too.
E2EE refers to fully encrypted communication between end-users of a service, hence end-to-end. If one of the ends is the service provider, the term doesn't apply.
This is the point. It's a buzzword and the reality of a lot of popular services is that the service provider can likely already provide access to your data if requested to by a government.
Ergo, if this is a consideration within your threat model, it's an inappropriate solution. However, I am highlighting that EARN IT is no more a threat than existing service providers abiding by a court order, ergo the existing solutions likely aren't fit-for-purpose for some folks, depending on threat model.
I'd argue that they're overlapping sets of concerns, not necessarily identical to or subsets of each other.
Off the cuff:
* Being an anonymous person walking through a city. This is a privacy concern and only becomes a security concern if I'm a public persona or some kind of person of interest.
* Moving to a new school/city/job and not having your social reputation follow you. This allows a lot of people a chance to redefine who they are and how they interact with people around them. This can't happen if everybody always knows somebody's pervious public persona.
* Breaking a law and being fined/punished/imprisoned for it. Without privacy, such a person has a much poorer chance of having a decent life even after they've done their time or paid their dues.
These all strike me as privacy concerns, but not necessarily concerns to security. I think they're all important enough to consider privacy as a good thing in it's own right and that such scenarios signal that it's possible to advocate privacy in the absence of (or opposition to) security concerns.
Not GP, but security refers to the protection of the system, while privacy refers to the protection of information.
So you need to protect the system to protect the information on it, but there are also sometimes trade offs between security and privacy when you offload some system protection by giving away some information to another party. For example SmartScreen with Microsoft, and Safe Browsing with Google Chrome.
elesiuta had some great commentary I agree with, but to add my own response:
> IMO these are all 'security' related, just personal security (which is what I define privacy as).
I think this level of reduction becomes problematic in scenarios where security>privacy advocates talk about security in the collective sense.
Playing devil's advocate to highlight where I believe this reduction of security->personal security->privacy breaks down: A man borrowed many books from a library on the topic of explosive chemistry. That man later was involved in terrorist acts.
This is a situation where one could argue that less privacy for people in relation to their library borrowing habits may have resulted in greater security.
This is an example of an event that has happened, and while I hate the cliche of terrorism in debates about privacy and feel this particular point can be argued, it's exactly these kinds of scenarios that security>privacy advocates use to push for fewer privacy protections across large groups of people.
I agree its a good counter-point. I would argue that we shouldn't give our decision making power to decide what is and isn't best for us over to any 3rd party because they will never have the same interest in making informed decisions as the beholder. There is nothing on the line for someone to make decisions on another's behalf.
The Sokovia Accords Debate [1] from the Captain America Civil War (2016) film says it best, imho.
Another problem that I feel has barely even been touched on in recent time is what even are facts. People see things on the Internet and take it for gospel.
You know information people ALWAYS blindly believe 100%? "Leaked" data. Imagine how much power one could have with manipulated, leaked, data.
You don't even need to say anything that isn't true. Just being selective about which true secrets you reveal can be a very powerful tool to control the narrative.
> as for email [passwords], that's again a matter of security
I guess if we're nitpicking I'll point out that this is still privacy (how one keeps their password) for the sake of security. Information is kept private and passwords are information.
Perhaps drawing a distinction between outbound and inbound email protocols would be good too. I understand the argument being made, but the sensible assumption is that your email, even with a password, isn't a sensible choice for sensitive communications.
> your email, even with a password, isn't a sensible choice for sensitive communications
This seems like it's shifting the goalposts. Someone says something about "nothing to hide but they have locks on their doors" and you say "security isn't the same as privacy". It's accurate but it's moot. I keep the location of my hide-a-key private so I can continue to keep my house secure with the lock on the front door. I keep my email password private so I can secure the account against unauthorized access.
Some people do use their email for what they would consider sensitive communications, and it's less than helpful to suggest they need better opsec practices in response to someone else saying that they should be able to expect their email to be private. It's saying "just hide it better, lol" when that's literally exactly what many people are trying to do when speaking against this sort of legislation.
> Well, clothes are mostly down to weather and laws on public decency
Where I live, there are no laws against public nudity (as long as the nudity isn't "salacious" in nature). And yet, very nearly 100% of the people are clothed at all times.
And yet in other areas of the world, people wear no clothes.
People also smoke cigarettes, eat junk food, and do things that are unnatural and otherwise detrimental due to what they're bombarded with.
I wear clothes, I'm not a nudist. I have zero shame about my body though, it's a body—we've all got one.
The point as per my other comments: different solutions for different problems, the appropriateness of each varies with demographics. E.g., if you're surviving in an oppressive regime as a dissenter, email is something to be avoided. If you're running a business, it's likely fine, provided that it's compliant for your industry, e.g., HIPAA.
Email passwords are not for preventing impersonation. For one, POP3 passwords are separate from SMTP. Second, nothing in SMTP prevents impersonation… large mail handlers like GMail don’t allow it anymore, but you can put whatever you want in the “From” field. Things like SPF, DMARC and DKIM are there to prevent impersonation at the domain level for mail servers that want to protect their users.
When accessing email via a protocol with an email client, sure, but I primarily had the Gmail web app in mind when I wrote the comment. I also touched on protocols in another comment.
With what I had in mind, if you logged into my Gmail account, which provides both sending and receiving, you could impersonate me to my own mother, but I would have nothing to hide as I don't receive any sensitive information via email (privacy). However, accounts elsewhere could be recovered via my email, and thus be used to impersonate me elsewhere (security).
I routinely pose that question to my kids. And yet, they still poop with the door open. And without the ventilation fan. I keep hoping that eventually I will get through to them. Maybe I'll just put a spring-loaded hinge on the bathroom doors and a motion-activated ventilation fan.
I've got a 2.5yo that furiously yells at me to get out when he poops, but he have no remorse trying to physically drag me out of the loo when I am doing my business. Or force me read some book for him.
I guess he is a metaphor for the surveillance state. Or the other way around. Dunno.
Ha! I remember when my son was about that age he came wandering in while I was using the toilet standing up. Just a little awkward to have your kid walk around the side and stare at your crotch while you pee. I get that it was fascinating for a little boy, but still. And then of course the next time he needed to go, he tried. Predictable results ;-).
He might have been a little younger, I don't remember precisely, I don't believe he was talking much at the age when this happened.
For sure, they act totally different in a public toilet. Very carefully locked door in that case. Hell, the first time my son used a public toilet on his own, I had to talk him through how to actually unlock the door when he finished. I tried to tell him not to latch it since I was standing right on the other side of the door, but no, -CLICK- went the lock anyway.
Unsure if sarcasm but doesn't the exact same reasoning apply to these? If there's things you don't want thieves to steal then obviously you _do_ have something to hide. Or maybe a better word is protect but both apply equally well
Completely agree. Also a reminder that there are things to be scared of, today. People getting abortions in states where it's illegal need their communications to be safe and secure. The current forced medical detransition of adults in Montana means people are going to need to rely on underground distribution networks for their medication, starting in a few weeks. Their communications need to be secure from government spying as well. The police are not your friend. It is no longer necessary to talk about theoretical futures or nebulous harms to privacy, the unjust laws are already here (& should be ignored, fought, frustrated, or routed around, as necessary). We do not need a cop on our phones.
I think all of these injustices are be created to further gaps between classes of people to lay the groundwork for a future paradigm shift towards totalitarianism. Is the same thing we do in other countries to spread the so called democracy under the guise of a dictatorship.
>A reminder that "you have nothing to hide" argument is a fallacy because people abuse their power
Also because we have a lot to hide that we should be able to. Our intimate pictures with our partners, our chats with friends (and gossip), our business plans, our in-progress work and ideas, yet to be filled patents, password and account credentials, and lots more.
Also, "you have nothing to hide" is so wrong, that people fail to understand that privacy isn't about hiding your private life, but having the power to sharing those details with consent and when you're comfortable sharing them. Just because you don't have nothing to hide, doesn't mean anyone can walk in your private life and peek into all corners.
And as you mentioned, power will be abused. Unchecked power will be abused unchecked. This is ethically, morally and humanely wrong.
There's so much wrong with this bill and the thought behind it. It should never see the day of light.
“Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.”
- Snowden
Personally I favor a confrontational retort: "No, you never get to decide that. The inquisitor does." Revolutions are a messy example which demonstrate what happens when the mandatory becomes forbidden without ex-post-facto restrictions. There is a reason many people get the hell out of dodge even after the fighting stops.
Kind of (if you mean the Shut Up and Dance one), in classic black mirror fashion the episode is littered with twists that make it difficult for people to really grasp the point and instead can argue against it. In the episode the main character gets infected with malware (the tool he wanted is actually a sting operation), but because of what he's being blackmailed about a lot of people feel that's justified.
What a ridiculous argument. That's like saying the police shouldnt have weapons to defend themselves with because there's a history of police killing innocent people.
No, the real answer here is to address the actual corruption to expose and remove it.
Not to mention, if you have nothing to hide, how can someone abuse their power to use it against you?
These bills are put in place because they save lives, especially vulnerable children.
even if they didn't currently abuse their power or abused it only an "acceptable" degree, we're never more than one election away or even just one hiring decision away from someone who would do much worse.
The right protection is for the power to not exist.
The other issue is just because something doesn't need to be hidden today doesn't mean a change in the political/social winds could happen that requires you to hide it tomorrow.
No. Sorry. This is invalid. It would be pretty bad if we declare some shit illegal and retroactively apply the "law". You will be charged for shit that everyone did and is perfectly fine. For example: How would you like to go to jail for not being a Christian? This will be weaponized.
That’s the second time I see bank account number framed as something private. Why? It doesn’t authorise anyone to do anything. It’s not like a debit/credit card number.
A better example are people that do have something to hide - whistleblowers, union organizers, political activists, journalists, upstart politicians... How does the nature of their work change, if the current government in power knows all their secrets, and abuses or selectively leaks/prosecutes them? And does that change society for the better, or for the worse?
I’m reminded by a speech by Frederick Douglass [1] that
>This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. (Emphasis mine)
No, you're just part of the third of people that one third can depend on to do nothing while they try to destroy the reamining third. Discouraging others is just a bonus.
This is most people. Which, frankly, makes governing possible. I understand the civic detachment. (I don’t care about most fights enough to get involved.) What I suppose I don’t is still wanting to comment on it.
Nobody asked you to fight. You have the luxury of not fighting and not struggling because so many before you fought and so many around you choose to fight now, as uncomfortable as that might be.
I'm so tired. I wish we didn't have to keep going through constant attacks on our privacy. I know they're hoping that people will give up after a point out of weariness, and I'm afraid when it comes to many people they're right.
Remember when major websites used to blackout over TTIP and SOPA? Those were good days.
Now many of the same websites (eg Reddit) are owned by large entities who don't care. Probably because they've made their money, so who needs a free Internet?
I bet some of the big social media companies like this legislation because it'll make it harder to run a web site, social media company, or chat app, thus insulating them from competition.
Onerous regulations are a kind of regressive tax on businesses, favoring very large firms with big budgets and lobbyists over upstarts and small business.
Cynically, I know each time these platforms do such a thing the response will be less and less effective. The bad-faith actors in government pushing for this know that and have demonstrated that they just need to wait a little while between attempts before resistance diminishes enough to make its passage viable.
The walled gardens are so well established now, their business plans no longer rely on a free Internet. We were lucky at the time that our interests aligned, but it was worrying that we were only able to fight those with the help of our favorite corporations. Now we get to see how that plays out with that support.
It's a mistake to just protest these proposals. Counter-proposals that push the balance in opposite direction should be made and pushed through, including some that cut down on existing legislation. A lot of good arguments can be made to support them.
Yes I agree you have to shift your energy to something else, the more you put your energy on dis-empowerment, the stronger it becomes. Take the tools that are being used for the wrong purposes and put them to use for the right purposes.
In Europe this was actually done in most countries because of the absurdly incredible damage the (even very limited) information governments had during WW2 did to millions of people. That illustrated that even extremely basic information, including merely a list of all citizens, was abused by governments. And not just for racist reasons, equally to force people into occupying forces (like Russia is doing now in Ukraine)
Today we're back to pointing to governments abusing data to target minority children or immigrants to show this. And of course, governments oppose any limiting of the scope of their data collection by pointing out "security issues" (we can't have CHILDREN communicate privately! Look! 3 out of 5 million children got seduced with drugs to go into prostitution!).
Of course, governments' collection of data is not even effective, the government GOT it's data collection wishes from 10 years ago that it said was going to use for prevention (police can now access both comments from teachers AND medical reports on any kid) ... and yet the number of children ... went up, not down.
And of course, nobody wants to point out that 3 out of 3 of those children ran away from government help first chance they got. Nobody seems to feel this might indicate that perhaps something is wrong with the government, and the government's reputation, that needs to be fixed first. They are of course arguing the solution to their reputation problem is to collect more information on EVERYONE, and use more violence against children for less and less reasons, where any small excuse can be found (because 3 children were actually confirmed to have this happen to them ... the government locked up over 300 children, generally against both their own and their parents wishes. Somehow this didn't make any difference in the numbers at all, and frankly I find it very, very hard to believe the number would have risen 100 TIMES without them doing this)
my ideal is to bring my complete, unadulterated self everywhere i may go. pursue authenticity, lower the barrier between myself and others. if i hide my intimate thoughts behind a wall of privacy then i may never experience intimacy. i may never feel at home among my friends or neighbors.
i put my pants on one leg at a time just like everyone else, anyone who wants to look through my window in the morning can verify that for themselves. shame is defeated by coming out of your shell, not hiding inside it. i draw the shades and recede to my private world only when i want to remove stimuli for the sake of deep focus. or when i'm fearful of this abstract mass of power hanging always above me at every moment and threatening to destroy me if i'm honest about how i enjoy the "wrong" drugs, or about how i embrace a moral compass which guides me to not fund the machine that takes my brothers away from me and pits them in armed conflict against my sisters, come tax season.
!
as far as i can tell that's the only "good" reason to embrace privacy: that in this crazy contradiction it's impossible to be authentic if the wrong people know you as you are. i don't think it's good to use that as a basis on which to idealize privacy in the abstract. i think it's deeply disturbing and we should use it as a basis to fight all these real things which make one fear authenticity. privacy is a necessary stopgap: negating power imbalances is the most proximate thing to a solution.
kudos to the young and bold who seek to find themselves among others. praise to the old and scarred who fight to make that possible.
If this little bit of so-called wisdom were true, one would expect Russia to be going through some good times now given the state of the Soviet Union in the late 70s until its dissolution. It seems about as realistic as one should expect such a simplistic reduction of an insanely complex world to be: not at all.
While the above is overly simplistic, the basic concept has historical precedent under the general umbrella Social Cycle Theory which is likely why it persists. The same basic idea is described in Ibn Khaldun's Muqaddimah as "Asabiyyah", for example. There is also the Greek kyklos, or the more recent Cyclical Theory[1], Strauss-Howe generational theory or Secular cycles theory,[2] which roughly maps on to the meme's cycles.
The meme is a bad interpretation of "Asabiyyah" which covers something else, entirely. It's also not clear whether it's still valid today with the globalized world-order created by the US and its allies.
Something like "Ibn Khaldun cycles" might be a more accurate descriptor with Asabiyyah being the identified driving force. I think the two are pretty close, though the meme is vague enough to allow for a fair bit of projection.
Asabiyyah is strongest in the nomadic phase, and decreases as the civilization advances as the ruling class begins to focus more on maintaining their wealth/power individually at the expense of the group, which covers the Strong Men and Good Times phase. As decadence increases group solidarity decreases Weak men and bad times occurs, which readies the cycle to start anew with additional strong men, which matches with Khaldun's period of 3 generations per cycle.
It's a pretty bare bones social cycle theory by modern standards but the core idea common to both seems to be that history is a cycle of barbarians conquering decadent civilizations, only to eventually become fragmented, self serving and vulnerable themselves at some point. The applicability to the modern world seems to depend on whether the underlying causes have been eliminated, in a "The End of History and the Last Man" sort of sense.
Certain locales like Japan are dealing with the reality that newer generations forget history. Specifically for this example the history of WW2, and Japan's desire to not take a part in instigating WW3.
As the saying goes, those who forget history (read: weak men) are doomed to repeat it (read: create bad times).
Hell, we're seeing it in our own little techie corner of the world: People have forgotten (read: weak men) the consequences of a browser monopoly (read: IE6), and have ushered in the age of a Chrome monopoly (read: doomed to repeat history).
Sometime in the early aughts (sometime right after 9/11), I remember an interview with a group of three NSA whistle blowers who were coming forward trying to raise the alarm the US govt was using the tools they had developed to stop terror attacks on the US and had turned those tools back on the US population and were gathering unimaginable amounts of data for that purpose on private citizens.
Shortly after they came forward, I read an article stating gathering so much data on so many people essentially allowed any real terrorist (domestic or foreign) to essentially hide in plain view because of the amount of data being collected could not be sifted through fast enough to flag any person or group before they were able to carry out an attack.
Yes, I'm very much on your side in terms of the constant attacks on our privacy and rights. While at the same time, I acknowledge that there is some inherit defense to them gathering too much data which in some sense allows us to maintain some level of privacy in the meantime.
This is why the Chinese pity western "democracy," and it's quite easy to see where they're coming from. Of course, it's well established that the US is merely an oligarchy with a massive domestic propaganda operation.
Upvoted because the first sentence might be true, and the second one definitely is.
I would say that the US and China are both fantastic examples of why you don't want to allow the construction of a surveillance infrastructure - privatized and public, respectively. We pity each other partially thanks to the propaganda - but I think more importantly because we really are pitiable.
Part of it is that we buy into it, literally. If you want to stop it, stop buying into companies that are compliant and sell you out in their technology choices.
And 3 steps after that you’ll have to go live off grid in a cabin in the woods.
As romantic as it sounds, the one single purpose for for-profit companies is to produce shareholder value, and very few of them see shareholder value in keeping a legal department specifically designed for fighting constant and endless attacks on our privacy.
The absolute vast majority of the population don't care one bit about their privacy.
If they did, Google and Meta would be out of business. The only thing they really offer is for advertisers to target really, really specific groups of people thanks to the data they collect from those groups (EVERYONE, except a handful of HN readers and other dissidents) which everyone voluntarily hands over, because they simply don't care.
Of course, it's just a symptom of the problem.
Refuse to believe all you want, but have a deep think and consider whether the average person cares about his privacy. Even if they say they do.
Freedom doesn't sell anymore. Outsourcing virtually every single aspect of your life to a corporation that Just Knows Better(tm) does. Everything is a service. Most of the tech you own is a service, not a physical item.
And both things can't be true simultaneously, you can't crave freedom while outsourcing absolutely everything to someone else. Freedom requires you to take over the responsibility over your life, which far too many people simply aren't willing to do. Unfortunately, in my opinion, this is where the society has ended up in.
born too late for homesteading to be a skill exercised and shared by a meaningful portion of society; born too early for homesteading to be made accessible via better technology.
but a hundred years from now i do think “have to go live in a cabin in the woods” will be more like “get to”. because if that was something everyone could easily manage, i have no doubt i’d find myself in some cabin-in-the-woods community full of all the other wackos like me.
It is highly likely that it's still possible today. All you need is a bunch of other wackos, like you say.
Alone? No chance whatsoever.
Bundy standoff worked, after all. Of course it has the prerequisite of being willing to die for the cause, which I doubt many people have, aside from the very select few for whom the most important mission in life is to live free.
Me? I thoroughly admire such "wackos", but I enjoy the finer things in life way too much for this to be a feasible option for me.
I like your vision here, but the average person living in the USA cares about two things - sports and social media. This is an exaggeration and don't get me wrong, I love a good football game here and there, but there is some truth to it.
Over the years I've received so many odd looks when I bring up privacy that I've stopped and just accepted that my vote or email to my representative is all I can do. I hate to be cynical, but this train isn't derailing anytime soon. EFF is doing God's work here, but the American citizen will continue to be hypnotized until things get bad enough for them to care, in which it will already be too late.
> I know they're hoping that people will give up after a point out of weariness
This is just yet another attempt at Lawful Interception[0], only this time, on steroids. They will continue to try and erode privacy, and therefore, erode democracy. But we do have tools to combat this at our disposal. My only worry is the outright banning of such tools, then we're royally fucked.
Well, what quantifiable benefit is the public gaining from the EFF? Do you know where your money goes? Does what they publish reach anybody new? Or is it just preaching to the choir?
If there is anything I have learned is that persistence will eventually pay off. Louis Rossmann [1] has been fighting the good fight for right to repair for so many years and while it isn't quite there yet and there have been lots of downs, there have also been lots of ups [2]. Nothing's infallible.
Nobody's talking about giving up, they're talking about whether an organization is effective in its existing form (unsure).
E.g., I stopped giving money to Mozilla because I was dissatisfied by where that money was going, what it wasn't being spent on, what it was being spent on instead, and how ineffective they were.
Great that Rossmann got results, but is the methodology that the EFF is using the same as what Rossmann has used? Is it even an appropriate comparison when one is a threat from government, and the other is a matter of anti-consumer ethics with corps?
Eternal is the key word, too. That's the problem with doing this in law: It will just get introduced over and over perpetually until finally it slips through, and then it's pretty much with us forever. The bad guys only have to win once. The good guys have to win every time.
I just keep wondering what the hell is wrong with the people who think junk like this is a good idea. And why there are any. Theory: They're child-molesters themselves?
Maybe there is some light in them that says, "Well, if it turns out everyone does <Whatever abhorrent thing they're doing>, then it's not so bad that I did it, right? I could even win brownie points by punishing the other people who did it and absolve myself of my own consciously unrecognizable guilt by doing so, right?"
Illegitimate governments stay in power because we legitimize them with our energy. To stop power centralizing requires that the people supporting it shift their energy to something else, preferably local initiatives that center around people doing things for people..
And that's just the sponsors, not the people who will vote for it. Some on that list do belong in nursing homes, but age is not a factor. It's mostly just the political establishment and newcomers hoping to join that establishment.
It’s depressing that in modern times people in their 40s are considered young. In 1776 Alexander Hamilton was 21, Burr was 20, Thomas Jefferson was 33, Madison was 25, and Monroe was 18.
People live longer, but biological youth isn't shifted. People in their 20s are at the top of mental and physical performance. But our gerontocracies bar people of that age from any positions of significant influence. People also mature more slowly these days, due to infantilisation of culture and sheltered upbringing.
If history is any guide, the people who will replace the boomers will not be any different. The root cause is not related to age or generation, it's related to power.
You know, you're probably right and that makes me sad. That said, it's easy for the bad apples to spoil the bunch right now because most congress critters don't actually know what encryption is or how it works - I suppose my hope is that at some point, the Evil Ones™ will have a much harder time convincing the Dumb Ones™ that they're trying to 'protect children' with this kinda nonsense.
Of course, then the posts just get kicked down the line to the next new tech that nobody groks, but at least perhaps we can stop fighting this specific one so hard and so frequently.
I'm tired of these cutesy backronyms that they try to come up with to influence the public's perception of a law. "EARN IT"? What the fuck? It should be outright illegal to pass laws whose acronyms spell words.
But, of course, that'll never happen, because who would willingly give up such a juicy tool for gaming the system?
In Germany laws get boring descriptive names without any silly acronyms. E.g. the Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz, the "network enforcement act", which forces social networking sites to proactively delete illegal content without a court order. They didn't choose an Orwellian euphemism. I assume Americans could do the same.
Yep. Or the "USA PATRIOT" Act, as it's full name spells. "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism". But by calling it "patriot", it implies that you're not a patriot if you don't support it.
Never mind that modern American "patriotism" isn't anything of the sort, but is much closer to nationalism.
I think the overwhelming majority of people are realizing a lot of the rhetoric is just cynical lies at this point.
Consider the recent report [1] that only 25% of people don't think the media is deliberately misleading them - 50% think they are, 25% are undecided. The implications of that cannot be overstated, especially as the media has increasingly become little more than a proxy for the official position of the day.
The real problem is there isn't any better country. Zero countries currently compete with America for greater freedom.
Please let me know if you know of any because I'm getting absolutely tired of working four months for free each year, knowing that my tax dollars are paying for goods and services from which I'll never be able to benefit.
Modern governance is the problem. However, if there is no country that's, say 50% free (to put an arbitrary number on it), and even when we presume that America is 49% free and "everyone else" is less, that doesn't mean there is actual freedom.
American freedom seems to largely be centered around the ability to make money, the way things are going nowadays. We were more free in the 70s and 80s. Nowadays people in some areas get child services called because they dared to allow their child to venture somewhere by themselves. America is often the worst offender in some of these areas. True patriotism is understanding that we're not the "best" country in the world, and that we could stand a lot of weeding out chaff. Taxes go to a lot more waste than would ever come out of individual benefits, when you take the end result benefit to society. "Freedom" to allow poverty to exist is "freedom for some, but not for all".
It depends what you value most. If you don't mind corruption, then in a lot of developing countries like SE Asia, you can have a huge amount of personal freedom by paying the (relatively cheap) occasional bribe.
If you're morally opposed to that, I'd recommend Singapore for its financial freedoms. After working there for a year, I was initially opposed to such an authoritarian government, but they're one of the rare ones who use their power to run their country very efficiently and keep out of the way of private enterprise.
The thing that always gets me is the freedom of speech issue. I know I'd be jailed in countries like the UK pretty quickly.
I don't know how I'd fair in SE Asia, South Africa, or South America, but my hunch is that it wouldn't be great unless they had similar free speech absolutism.
Is it important to you that your speech is tied to your physical identity?
Now that most communication takes place online, it seems the obvious solution is to say anything controversial via pseudonyms. As long as you don't get careless about protecting your true identity, that seems like something you can do just about anywhere.
Modern American "patriotism" begins with nationalism, and gets darker and weirder from there.
As an exercise, imagine someone who self-identifies as a patriot. Ask them what makes them a patriot. (If you're not American, you might not get what I am getting at, but probably Canadians get it)
Real patriots fly flags from their honking F-150s, play in bouncy castles, shit in snowbanks, and call to engage in fervent sexual congress with democratically elected leaders who have great hair.
There's a huge subset (dare I say majority) of those "patriots" you deride who don't like this stuff, don't think their goings on are any of the government's business. But of course you ignore that because they don't want what you want on meaningless social issues.
1. Don't talk long and loud about being patriots (i.e. don't self-identify)
2. Tend to work for the government. Career govvies or military. They show their patriotism through action.
> There's a huge subset (dare I say majority) of those "patriots" you deride who don't like this stuff, don't think their goings on are any of the government's business.
I know the type well, as that describes one side of my family. Despite your protestations, we're saying the same thing.
> Tend to work for the government. Career govvies or military. They show their patriotism through action.
I just want to chime in here and say that working for the government isn't the only way to be a patriot (i.e. serve the country). Upholding American values is something anyone can do in any part of society.
That's fair enough. What's fresh in my memory is a few weeks back, I was at Quantico for the graduation of a family member from the FBI academy, where the convocation speech was delivered by Christopher Wray. I cannot imagine a more patriotic group of people - genuinely people who dedicate their whole lives to the betterment of the nation. It was really inspiring.
> I cannot imagine a more patriotic group of people - genuinely people who dedicate their whole lives to the betterment of the nation.
The actual history of the FBI (whether the near universal perjury in fiber “analysis” cases, the repeated use of provocateurs to discredit protest, especially civil rights, movements — up through the last few years — etc.) tells of a very different culture.
Still makes sense in a way. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, as it goes. Though it certainly seems some influential people had (and have) more selfish intentions with their influence. It would be truly epic incompetence otherwise.
Naming things is incredibly powerful aspect of human behavior. It can be used for good and evil and I don’t see a point in banning them. Media and politicians can still give unofficial names to bills when talking about them so such a ban would do nothing.
Re “If you have nothing to hide” arguments. Pointing out abuses is one thing.
I say we go the other way. All travel by government employees/officials is available to the public (can be historical to avoid security issues). Complete financial transparency by all government officials/senior staff and their family members enforced at the bank level - you must list all your accounts, a cumulative amount of assets, list of specific assets >10k in value. The financial institution is responsible for providing that directly to the IRS which then removed account numbers, institution names, round values to the nearest N to avoid identity theft, etc.
The entire political apparatus in the US seems to shy away from any real transparency yet want to foist it on everyone else not in power. That’s not really living your values.
some countries have a public policy of “don’t negotiate with terrorists”. it’s so tempting for me to adopt the same policy in my own life. if a burglar showed up at my door demanding entry, i wouldn’t debate them about why it’s morally preferable that they don’t enter against my will. but when it’s some politician demanding entry, suddenly everyone thinks i ought to engage in that debate.
no. better to dispel the myth: those who rule without consent are illegitimate rulers. the problem isn’t us failing to persuade such rulers. it’s us failing to reject such rulers.
The problem is that this line of thinking usually turns into just doing nothing and letting them roll over us anyway because they've taken our silence as consent.
generally speaking, rulers don't care about your consent. they might care about the second and third order effects of consent, but to say they'll interpret silence as consent is to suggest that their knowledge of your consent is a primary driver of their actions -- and that's just not the case.
but no, i'm not saying you should let yourself be steamrolled. anyone in this thread has the knowledge to work around this particular adversarial legislation; to build systems where bad actors have less power over you. spin up a Matrix server. bridge it to Signal or Telegram or wherever else you need to stay in contact with your less nerdy friends. then when bad people try to do bad things to the people around you, point them to that escape hatch you've already prepared.
I’m not familiar with Matrix. Does that include some mechanism which prevents “we know you’re running this server and politely ask you to stop”? I understand there are other tools for that but I wonder of the necessity with specific “stacks” as it were.
> Does that include some mechanism which prevents “we know you’re running this server and politely ask you to stop”?
to answer this literally: no. nothing out-of-the-box for that, at least.
but do sci-hub, zlib, and friends have such a mechanism? we've been here before with CFAA, then DMCA. ostensibly, we lost those legislative battles against DRM and copyright. and yet it's easier to access academic articles than ever before.
we have those things above because despite what legislators did, enough of the public is engaged with our goals, or views them as worthy, that it's political suicide to actually enforce on them.
so just do that again, but here: convince the public -- your peers -- that end-to-end encryption isn't for baddies; that privacy is a good thing. that your cause is morally just. build the tooling that makes privacy easy. then use it, share it, spread it. if we get that far, then congrats: whatever the legislators say can't actually hold water.
if you don't buy that, then do what worked for SOPA: voice your opinions publicly. keep the pressure on for months with website blackouts, banners and boycotts. make it a spectacle.
neither solution ends with "write your legislator". if you want to write them, i won't stop you: but that's not where the meat of any of this is actually determined.
- if handed a ballot with this issue on it, would mark the “no” column.
and if that were the case, i propose that you consider more seriously that second point. if voting is the path to better outcomes, you want always (1) more voter turnout AND (2) more precise translation of voter preference into policy.
i feel that what we’ve got today is something like a B, B- on voter turnout, but an unambiguous F on how votes drive policy. that if our democracy was somehow such that the conversation being had was “don’t forget to vote against EARN IT on your ballot” instead of “don’t forget to write your legislators about EARN IT”, we’d both find that a better system? ambiguities, caveats abound. i’m not literally saying that every policy issue ought be on the ballot, just that if the formal systems for fairly translating individual preference into policy were more capable, we wouldn’t feel any need to reach for informal methods like writing legislators or rejecting authority.
> The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Let’s name names, the senators who introduced this are Mr. GRAHAM, Mr. BLUMENTHAL, Mr. GRASSLEY, Mr. DURBIN, Mrs. HYDE-SMITH, Mrs. FEINSTEIN, Mr. HAWLEY, Ms. CORTEZ MASTO, Mr. TILLIS, Ms. HASSAN, Ms. ERNST, Mr. WARNER, Ms. MURKOWSKI, Mr. WHITEHOUSE, Ms. COLLINS, Ms. HIRONO, Mr. CRUZ, Mr. RUBIO, Mr. CORNYN, and Mr. KENNEDY.
Many years ago, I remember she supported a similar bill around limiting encryption. Around six months later, it was reported some government agency was spying on senators' emails, and she wasn't happy. I don't think she made the connection between the two, or that she supports widespread data collection when it's not her data.
I met her at an SVLG dinner and had a discussion about encryption; it became instantly clear she doesn’t know what a computer is past that it is a TV that takes input, and that encryption is just “evil people wanting to do evil things.”
There was no reasoning with her either, frankly because she is well-aged, and thus thinks herself “wise” with very little left to learn.
It was honestly infuriating.
[edit] In case anyone thinks I’m exaggerating, I promise I’m not. I went back to look at my texts to my now-wife after that meeting, and I was livid and extremely disappointed. She was at a table of, at the time, a dozen or so cybersecurity experts from industry and academia, and instead of listening to (or rather, hearing) what they had to say, she pushed forward an agenda of “trying to stop evil” while “protecting the children” and “thanking us for our concerns,” all while explaining that she understands encryption and knows how important it is, but that it’s more important for the military to have it and normal people don’t really need it as much. After all, it’s not like we don’t talk to other people in coffee shops where people can overhear and stuff.
The first is 2013, right after Snowden leaked the presidential surveillance program. These are our elected officials who oversaw the program. They knew of its existence before the leak.
The second is 2017, right after the Supreme Court ruled the presidential surveillance program was illegal (one justice calling it "Orwellian" in their comments).
Listen to these people in 2013 defend their actions and, in 2017, try to defend themselves and justify their actions. Not only is it clear that they don't think they've done anything wrong, at least one of these people thought they had a viable chance at running for president after this.
We the people trusted them to keep secrets responsibly. We trusted them to oversee programs that citizens could not hold accountable. They utterly failed and, if they had their way, would have continued failing in their responsibility. From watching these hearings I get the distinct feeling that these elected officials consider the problem to be the leak, not that someone had to utterly ruin their own life in order to expose this group's crimes.
The only person who demonstrated they may be fit for their position is Sn. Wyden. Listen closely to Wyden's statement. He is unable to disclose secrets, but he very clearly (and strongly) suggests that the U.S. clandestine groups are harvesting geolocation data without warrants in mass under these programs.
I met her in 2003, along with her aides at a party I was invited to (in a fluke) in Palm Springs.
She was a moron then, and now she's a senile moron. Her aides, who ended up hanging out with me all weekend, were a perfect illustration of the donor class kids who weren't that smart but got into ivy League schools by legacy admissions. Zero intellectual curiosity, super aware of social status, everything they said seemed preplanned and inauthentic.... Just gross.
I covered that point (or thought I did!) with the second sentence in my GP comment. The issue is what it does to us as a community. That's significant.
Comment in question concerned what the poster personally experienced, which clearly wasn't a pleasant/positive one. If you want to demand he prove he met Feinstein in person, well, that's certainly within your power as moderator and owner of this space.
But as far as what he owes to the community, I think he doesn't have to explain anything of his experience interacting with someone. He interacted with Feinstein, his takeaway was she is a "senile moron". I for one won't fault him for that, but you obviously have a different take and that's fine.
As an aside, the fact you flagged my comment as well implies very dark things. It is perhaps better I take my leave because I have no interest in enabling such matters. Though it does sadden me, in a deeply ironic way, that an American entity subscribes to such things. People have died to protect the right to speak ill of those in power.
Here, I rewrote the parent comment with a set of substantive points rather than namecalling. Same message, but much more constructive in nature.
“I met her in 2003, along with her aides at a party I was invited to (in a fluke) in Palm Springs.
She was ignorant of tech and science then, and now she's the same but more senile (as happens with age). Her aides, who ended up hanging out with me all weekend, were a perfect illustration of the classic trope of donor class kids who weren't that smart but got into ivy League schools by legacy admissions. Zero intellectual curiosity, super aware of social status, everything they said seemed preplanned and inauthentic.... Just left me feeling gross.”
I don’t think ‘dang would have had an issue with that wording. It doesn’t take much to be substantive rather than resorting to ad hominems; the latter is just easier.
Perhaps I've misunderstood what "flagged" means, then. I've always understood that as an indicator for a comment that you or another moderator found objectional, especially since flagged posts usually get hidden from further viewing. Learn something new everyday, as they say.
Flagging is an ability HN users get after attaining a certain level of karma; flagged posts are generally flagged as such by said users, not by the mods.
That he’s not a free speech absolutist? big deal, nobody is no platform is, thats the expected default behavior everywhere you go and there is zero reason why HN would be different. I’m not even going to go into how this is a private platform with clearly stated rules for you because it doesn't even matter, just take the L
None of those are implied. What I posted was bog-standard HN moderation. You could replace the name Feinstein with any other, or her party or politics with any other, and I'd have posted the same moderation response.
I'm not sure what you're finding hard to understand about HN having a guideline that asks people not to call names or do flamewar.
I don't have any complications with HN guidelines, but I do with the way they are enforced.
I see plenty of posts that call people, both ordinary and public figures, "names" that go unflagged and unmoderated. I see plenty of meme posts that don't get flagged and moderated. I see political threads and subthreads all the time despite politics strictly being off-limits per guidelines.
In fairness to you, you've never claimed HN is a free speech platform so I am perfectly fine with you publishing submitted threads and comments as you see fit. I'd even die, figuratively speaking, to protect your right to those freedoms of expression and association, and I would hope you will reciprocate the sentiment as a fellow American.
However, the reality is the HN guidelines are not enforced equally, fairly, and objectively, so you will have to excuse me for rolling my eyes at all the inevitable noise that will create (including mine). We can get away with calling Trump, Gates, and Jobs among others names but not Feinstein? Please. I realize HN is short on manpower, but that is not an excuse.
This very thread is a precise example of why moderation is hard and necessary. I read the whole thing and it has zero interesting substance, and does not do anything to satisfy curiosity, which is largely the point of HN.
I’d recommend reading the guidelines one more time.
The very fact this thread (it's political in nature) wasn't expunged at first sight is indication that moderation is dealt out unequally, unfairly, and unobjectively.
I reiterate: I am fine with dang enforcing his beliefs upon this publication as it is his property and he never so much as implied to support free speech. From the outset we deliberate and have our thoughts published here at his pleasure.
However, seeing as he has set out rules ("guidelines") he has an obligation to enforce them equally, fairly, and objectively.
I don't necessarily have a problem with him prohibiting insults, if that's his policy here then it is what it is because this is his publication space. But if he is defending Feinstein or any other particular individual specifically, that I do have a problem with and if such is made clear I will take my leave because I have no interest in enabling such matters.
You're drawing conclusions based on what you've happened to notice. That's a skewed sample because people notice the cases that they dislike [1]. Users with opposite politics to yours draw opposite conclusions. If you don't believe me, see the examples at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26148870. Here are a few more recent tidbits (links available upon request!):
"an extremely conservative place", "dang, who always hands out the bans to one side", "HackerNews Right-wing mods", "HN is surprisingly conservative", "dang, enabler of alt-right QAnon horseshit", "most of people on HN are ancap or fascists", "hacker news only cares about free speech when it can be used to dunk on the left", "zero left wing chatter. instant ban by this fash site", "I feel pretty confident about the right/libertarian bias to HN", "This place is a toilet of reactionary racists", "a white supremacist community", "generally nazi-sympathetic sociopaths", "fine with racist posts, right-wing, bigoted", "libertarian echo chamber", "a community full of some pretty extreme opinions, generally right-wing and regressive", "always been very right wing ... always filled with racist, sexist, right wing political abuse", "all of the libertarian BS here on HN", "many comments on HN of late have tilted radical right-wing", "filled with self obsessed tech bros who pretend they are libertarian but are actually just racists", "hn leans extremely conservative", "intolerable shithole full of pretend libertarians (e.g. racist white power sorts)", "it's capital that aligns to fascism", "pretty heavily Libertarian", "HN has always been a libertarian hell site", "pure, unadulterated, proto-fascist garbage for narcissistic jerks", "overwhelmingly hardcore libertarian forum", "right wing talking points", "gathering ground for aggrieved conservatives in tech", "HN is a weird place. Feels like the loudest political voices are alt-right-adjacent", "I knew HN was right wing but seriously guys?", "Yes, this website full of brain dead right wingers.", "A lot of fascists in this thread, to no one's surprise.", "a forum skewed libertarian techbros", "Literally anything left-of-right-of-centre immediately gets flagged (if not outright banned by the mods)", "moderation choices by dang (e.g. his pernicious need to pander to the anti-science, far-right crowd)"
(Before anyone goes "oho! that's because you are rightwing fascist enablers" - I've pasted these examples because the current complaint is that we're secret Feinsteinians. If the claim were the other way around I'd paste an opposite list. There's an endless supply, from all angles.)
Yes, there are plenty of cases where commenters break the rules and we don't do anything—but you're wrong to conclude that that's because we secretly agree with them. It's simply because there's far too much content for us to see it all. If you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it [2]. You can help by flagging it or emailing us at hn@ycombinator.com.
This attitude isn't a good look for the owners of this private platform and I don't think they'd agree with your perspective nor do most of the users. Food for thought.
My my, the users don't matter. Who does? Maybe only yieldcrv matters?
The owners have left this platform and mostly hang out on twitter.
> the moderations actions in their properties are not a mystery or unexpected
Something we could agree on until relatively recently, there seems to be a notable change in direction and a growing dissatisfaction online and offline amongst actual entrepreneurs (the sort that apply to ycombinator) and investors. If those users don't matter and start leaving what is this site actually for my friend?
That’s interesting because we’ve all had the same two decades to learn new things
and I know many people her age that have
there’s people that make excuses for it and there’s people that don’t. I don’t buy “brain plasticity”, my observation is that it comes down to who your peers are, what social consequences you have
Even among the dinosaurs in the US Senate, Feinstein stands alone in her striking ability to be willfully ignorant about anything developed after the steam locomotive.
The country would be an objectively better place if both the House and Senate had a mandatory retirement age.
Why do these people continue to be re-elected at all?
Surely there's some other (D) that could have replaced Feinstein a decade ago - but California keeps re-electing her? There's near unanimous agreement she "lost it" long ago - yet here she still is.
A mandatory retirement age is great and all... but maybe we need to figure out why people vote for someone nearly nobody wants in the first place. Just the "safe" vote? That can't be all of the story...
I think it's a combination of risk aversion and the cost of acquiring information.
Most people don't do extensive (or any) research before voting. They choose a candidate based on party affiliation or the information on TV. So for that majority of people, they will vote for a candidate whether or not the candidate is of sound mind. They assume other people have done the due diligence.
On the other hand, you have the parties themselves. The Democratic Party would rather have a senile Democrat than a non-senile Republican. And the Democratic Party is itself strongly influenced by other Democrat politicians who may even appreciate a senile coworker since that coworker can be more easily manipulated. So they have no incentive to risk losing that by suggesting or supporting a different Democratic candidate.
That in turn means new Democrat candidates will struggle to get the amount of support or funding which is necessary to publicize oneself enough that the complacent members of the public mentioned earlier could vote for them.
Only 24% of registered voters in California are Republican, so the election hinges on the Democratic primary. You don't get to a position in a political party where you can realistically run for and potentially win a US Senate seat by making a habit of attacking people in your own party. Those that do get ostracized long before they have that kind of juice, and the people who could potentially do it are not likely to risk the entire thing on running now when they could more safely run in another term or two, especially if they've already got a comfortable elected position.
So the answer on the inside is that nobody willing to run against her has the power to, and nobody with the power to is willing. On the outside, it's people who don't care who is running, they only care about the letter next to the name, so would never vote for a Republican or an Independent.
Is this true, or are these just benefits of someone who has been in the Senate for 30 years having good working relationships with 70 other Senators, and the branch new Senator being lucky to know one or two?
Put another way, what rules of the Senate benefit length of service over anything else?
I don't personally think age is really the problem - mental (and to some extent, physical) abilities are, however.
There's the good 80 years old, and then there's the bad 80 years old. We all know it when we see it... and we're watching it in real time in multiple places within our federal government right now.
We, as a country, are about to face this very same question again, as President Biden is expected to announce his re-election bid shortly. Are we OK with that as a country, given his obvious decline in the past few years? Objectively, and without red or blue coloring, he's not the Joe Biden of 2008.
This is going to be an unpopular opinion, but I don't want people born before Hitler rose to power to be in the government at all. I don't care how sharp you are and I don't care how progressive or conservative you are.
If you're old enough to have had strong opinions about LBJ when he was in office, your time has passed and we really don't need you in the Senate, or the White House, or anywhere else in government making decisions that will have impacts decades after you're gone.
There's this idea that someone shouldn't run against an incumbent. It goes against both parties. The boomer generation was a large group, they often see the world in a more common way (that world of the 50s and early 60s?), they still want to see themselves as being in power, even as they are all getting close to age 80 (made a typo here originally, I put 60 instead of 80). They don't want to give up. That's why these elderly politicians stay in power.
I think the reasoning behind not having an age cap in Congress is that if the people want to elect someone who is old, they should be able to do so. The ultimate check in a democratic society is the people, and like a different commenter said, it's strange that the voters of California continue to vote for Feinstein.
Presumably they vote for her because she is a democrat and the other viable candidate, a republican, is completely unpalatable to them. The problem is internal party politics that appear to have an unwritten rule of re-running the same candidate until they lose.
California has had a jungle primary for a bit now, and there has been at least one general election that pitted Feinstein against a Democrat in the general election. As I mentioned elsewhere, the most common argument I got from Democrats around me for voting for her was seniority, for committee appointments and such.
Seems odd to knowingly choose a candidate that will work to make the lives of Americans worse solely to keep seniority. In fact, doing so seems like you would be empowering a terrible person beyond a normal terrible person, thus ensuring the lives of Americans are that much worse.
I mean, I don't think they believe she is "work[ing] to make the lives of Americans worse", even if they think the other candidate might be better. They agree with a lot of her positions. Heck, I agree with a lot of her positions, I just disagree with too many important ones.
And her health has been failing recently, which has been a big problem for operations in the Senate (judicial appointments have stalled as there is now no party majority on the judiciary committee). She claims she will still serve the rest of her term, but I think there's a decent chance she'll eventually see the light and step down within the next few months. (Though this might just be wishful thinking on my part.)
The downside there is that Gov. Newsom then gets to appoint someone to serve the rest of her term, and then will have the incumbent advantage in 2024, even if they turn out to be not that great. But I think that's probably preferable to the current situation.
This is why we need more tech people to get into politics. And I'm not thinking billionaire ceos. I'm talking about devs, qa, pm, people that did actual work.
The problem is that politics has become a career. If you want to get elected to anything beyond a low-level local position, you need to put years of your life into it, and decades if you want a national political role with any clout. That essentially means that these tech people won't have time for a career in tech anymore. Maybe some would find that interesting or desirable, but I'd bet most would not.
Absolutely disgusting that people like this are responsible for making legislative decisions about technology. Her retirement in 2024 can't come soon enough. Though with her failing health, her retirement actually may come soon enough.
We really need term limits for Congresspeople. I hesitate to suggest age limits, as one's ability and aptitude for governing later in life depends on many factors, but that may be appropriate as well.
In the UK, we will have ministers say 'We need to force the evil big tech companies to break encryption so terrorists and perverts can be caught' and the next week they'll warn of the dangers of Russia hacking into vital infrastructure, and the urgent need for strong cybersecurity strategies.
Clinton's emails, that are rightfully a matter of public record (unless they were classified, then she should've went to jail) get leaked, and it's the end of the world and calls the election into doubt.
The same people want to read the communications of private citizens.
They aren't even pretending that there isn't a double standard anymore.
She has been on medical leave since February, which makes me wonder in what capacity she co-sponsored this bill... can she do that from her nursing home?
Having interned long long ago, most "co-authorships/sponsorships" are merely tokens added to a bill to make it seem more impressive.
Rarely, if ever, does a bill sponsor have much to do with the bill. At least in my experience. It was a game to see who we could round up for the bill, and then a political game about who would look better or bring a stronger base.
Right, I didn't have any expectation that she personally drafted the text of section 4 or debated the finer details prior to its introduction, or sought out expert testimony, or even read all 53 pages, or anything like that.
I was more curious over whether the "rounding up" and adding her to the list involved her being present or questioned in any capacity, or whether she just had a standing guideline that she wanted to be listed as a co-sponsor on any Judiciary Committee bills also sponsored by Durbin and Graham or something like that.
Between Feinstein, Biden, and Fetterman it's starting to look like an annual cognitive test may need to become a qualification for Federal government office. The two party system and the rigging of primaries leaves us with electing braindead meat puppets as the lesser of two evils. What a sad state of affairs.
> or that she supports widespread data collection when it's not her data
I know we shouldn't assume malice when incompetence explains things, but I genuinely do think a lot of people who run governments do actually think they should not be affected by the same rules they want to apply to everyone else.
It's a base-level "us and them" viewpoint. The ruling class would never stand to live under the same constraints they place everyone else. That is true for just about every nation that has ever existed, at some point.
Because she's not a Republican, and competitive primaries for long-time incumbents are often political suicide for the challenger. Voters have a poor set of choices and select the least bad.
I honestly think it’s mostly that voters simply don’t know.
She’s a democrat, but runs against democrats (usually), and wins largely because she’s been there forever and, tbh, California is a pretty spectacular place to live.
Thus, as CA is pretty great in general, Feinstein “can’t be that bad,” so why mess up a fine thing.
(Keep your “CA sucks” comments out of here please; your perception doesn’t matter in this case. Most Californians like living in California, by and large. It’s not perfect by any stretch, but neither is any state.)
> Thus, as CA is pretty great in general, Feinstein “can’t be that bad,” so why mess up a fine thing.
A senator represents the state's views within the federal government, and has next to nothing to do with internal policies within the state.
Electing Feinstein or some other person has effectively little-to-no impact on a California citizens daily life.
> (Keep your “CA sucks” comments out of here please; your perception doesn’t matter in this case. Most Californians like living in California, by and large. It’s not perfect by any stretch, but neither is any state.)
People are allowed to gripe about where they live. Just because you live somewhere doesn't make it perfect by any stretch. California has a lot of problems, and needs to address them, regardless of your political persuasion.
I agree with everything you said, but you missed my point somewhat.
You and I know that a senator is not an in-state representative, and that their work is federal in nature. Most people who vote do not know that, and do not understand the distinction between state reps and federal reps. If you took a poll, how many people do you think would even know CA had a state senate and separate federal senators? I would surmise very few.
As to the point about CA; I agree, gripe away if you’d like, and I agree CA has many issues it needs to address. So does literally every state; my point was to not go down that rabbit hole, and instead realize that most Californians like it here. They enjoy the weather, infrastructure generally works, etc. As a result, most vote for the status quo. I’m not saying that’s a good thing.
> If you took a poll, how many people do you think would even know CA had a state senate and separate federal senators? I would surmise very few.
Sadly, agreed. Perhaps this is a component in the ever-growing push of state issues into the federal level.
> ...CA has many issues it needs to address. So does literally every state... instead realize that most Californians like it here...
Well, this is saying nothing at all, is it? We can safely assume citizens of any state generally like where they live, lest they'd move away if they had the means.
However, we rarely see a dogpile of people publicly bemoaning Massachusetts, for example. Perhaps there is something going on in California right now, some sort of breaking point, where people are starting to realize some of the problems California has are unique to California, caused by decades of possibly misguided but well-intentioned policy. Policy does not happen in a vacuum.
It's also interesting to see someone such as yourself feel it necessary to qualify your love for the state you live in. It has a sort of, captive, feel about it.
I used to live in MA. People complained about it all the time. Same goes for when I lived in NYC.
I do not get the sense that the political climate in CA is any different than those were when I lived there, excepting perhaps San Francisco which is, incidentally, the same discourse as is happening about NYC in NYC right now too (lots of friends and my family still lives there).
I’m not trying to qualify my love for CA; I was making the point that the people who vote Feinstein (or McConnell) in are generally happy with the status quo in their state. CA was mentioned specifically because we were discussing Feinstein, but that’s why people vote them in; they’re generally content with the status quo.
The ones who are unhappy either leave to states that fit them better (if they have the means), or complain about it to their friends and/or on HN/Twitter. But it isn’t the majority.
> I used to live in MA. People complained about it all the time. Same goes for when I lived in NYC.
The difference is you don't often hear complaints about MA unless you also live in MA. At this point, pretty much the entire country is sick of hearing Californian's complain...
I think the issues in NYC are similar to that of California's mega-cities (LA, SF), which is why we hear more about them.
These cities went from lawlessness and chaos, to law-and-order cities a few decades ago. Things got great, and then collectively people forgot what it used to be like... and fell into the same trappings. Today, these three mega-cities are facing lawlessness and chaos again - and I predict a law-and-order decade is coming soon.
Anecdotally (which isn't worth much I know), and having lived in CA my entire life, I have noticed an increase of complaints from fellow CA citizens. People are tired of the fires, power outages, water shortages, homelessness, etc. All are related to policy decisions made sometimes decades ago, and we're just now paying for it.
I think if you truly love where you live, recognizing these issues is a necessity. Pretending issues are the same everywhere and are something that "just happens" or are caused by external forces is akin to keeping our collective heads in the sand. Decisions have consequences - so we better make good ones.
> The difference is you don't often hear complaints about MA unless you also live in MA. At this point, pretty much the entire country is sick of hearing Californian's complain...
That’s because “SF is hell” is a good media story along with “tech bros hate poor people.”
> I think the issues in NYC are similar to that of California's mega-cities (LA, SF), which is why we hear more about them.
These cities went from lawlessness and chaos, to law-and-order cities a few decades ago. Things got great, and then collectively people forgot what it used to be like... and fell into the same trappings. Today, these three mega-cities are facing lawlessness and chaos again - and I predict a law-and-order decade is coming soon.
I don’t disagree; but I think it’s notable that NYC is the other big tech hotspot. I give it five years before Miami is in the news for the same.
> Anecdotally (which isn't worth much I know), and having lived in CA my entire life, I have noticed an increase of complaints from fellow CA citizens. People are tired of the fires, power outages, water shortages, homelessness, etc.
I wonder if this is just because we’ve gotten older? I certainly didn’t care when I was 22. I definitely care now.
> All are related to policy decisions made sometimes decades ago, and we're just now paying for it.
I think if you truly love where you live, recognizing these issues is a necessity. Pretending issues are the same everywhere and are something that "just happens" or are caused by external forces is akin to keeping our collective heads in the sand. Decisions have consequences - so we better make good ones.
California uses "jungle primaries" where the top two vote getters regardless of party advance to the general election. You can't blame the two-party system here, voters could easily choose another Democrat if that's what they wanted.
Yep, and in this case, it's isomorphic to the question, "Why didn't Kevin De Leon(D) defeat DiFi in the 2018 election?" - question whose answers can range from, "not enough votes," to "less money," to "why did the CA coast prefer DiFi and CA's interior prefer KDL?"
The problem is last time her opponent wasn't reputable enough to be a good counterweight. I wish Katy Porter had run and replaced her. I think she was barely in politics then.
Unless it's ranked choice doesnt it still fall to the "least bad" fallacy? Like, people aren't sure that everyone else is going to vote the democrat they want and are afraid if they don't vote for the most likely, then they'll dilute the vote to the point that none of their chosen party wins?
I mean, sure, if the democratic vote was a monolith that was capable of making a single choice or even knowing what its own choices would be we could say that it must be this way because people want it like this. Rather than it being yet another consequence of antiquated voting systems incrementally improving while claiming all the hard work is already done
I think you misunderstand: in California, all candidates, from all parties, run in a single primary (there is no separate "Democratic primary" or "Republican primary"). The top two candidates for each office from that primary are the only ones who advance to the general election. Since California is so heavily Democratic, often what happens is the general election is Democrat vs. Democrat. That was the case in 2018, when Kevin de Leon (another Democrat) ran against Feinstein and lost. Though not by a landslide, only by about 9 points.
Definitely. IMO, the issue in California's particular case is that the Democrat senior leadership isn't too keen to oust one of their own, creating a culture that permeates down. Thus the only candidates willing to run against Feinstein are more fringe members of the party. If a relatively middle-of-the pack Dem ran, it would probably be a much closer race. Anthony Rendon, our current Speaker of the CA Assembly would be an obvious choice, with a largely inoffensive (to the CA Democrat majority, anyways) platform and voting record, but anybody with a bit of experience would do.
In California's fucked up system she actually runs against a Democrat most of the time. I assume it's name recognition and more money that gets her reelected.
This is basically fourth-hand info, so take it with a grain of salt: but what I've heard boils down to this:
The Democratic Party, in its capacity as an actual political organizing apparatus (not an identity/platform), never really recovered from the broad shift in influence from labor to finance in the late '70s/early '80s. It has thus fallen back to relying heavily on a strained ad-hoc network of political machines built by various "rock star" Democrats. That's why the party loosely realigned around "third way" / "blue dog" Democrats in the '90s; it's not that there was some transcendent soul-searching about principles, it's that people like Bill Clinton and Evan Bayh were supported by campaign apparatus that won tough elections. More broadly, this has led to an arguably pathological degree of deference among Democrats to any org that has a track record of winning elections. And whatever faults Feinstein's political machine has, it has that track record.
Yeah, as a Californian asking those around me why they support her over another Democrat in the general after a jungle primary, "seniority" is the answer that stood out.
That makes more sense to me than Feinstein really. He looks after wealthy Kentucky interests, and is a very powerful senator shaping policy for the whole Republican Party; Feinstein seems unaware of Silicon Valley’s interests and basically votes along party lines.
I think you can say the same thing about California. Your mistake is conflating "Silicon Valley's interests" with "wealthy California interests". I imagine it is also true that Kentucky does not have one monolithic base of wealthy or elite agendas.
I think it is more accurate to say that both of them have transitioned into iconic status. The political/marketing machinations have lofted their identities so high that it barely matters that they are humans at all. They are brands. There is also the basic senate rules mentioned elsewhere, which institutionalize seniority.
Look at the list of longest serving US senators and ask yourself if Feinstein is really an anomaly:
Unlike McConnell, there doesn't seem to be a lot of "regular joe" support for Feinstein. There's practically nobody in this thread singing her praises... even among her fellow D's.
I suspect that's because the Democrats, in recent times, haven't pursued "party purity" to the same extent as the Republicans. It's a more fractured electorate without the few "big ticket" issues that the GOP weaponizes (guns, god, and gays).
But, when you look at Feinstein's accomplishments, she has represent her constituents as well as anybody... She authored the Respect for Marriage Act (undoing the conservative Defense of Marriage Act). She's pursued fair pay for federal wild land firefighters. She's protected millions of acres of federal land in CA for recreation. The list is extensive, as it should be for somebody of her tenure.
And with all that said, I do feel it's time for her to retire. I'm unconvinced on term limits, but I do dislike the tendency of long-time politicians to hang on well past their prime (and this applies equally on all sides of the aisle, and also to the courts).
> I suspect that's because the Democrats, in recent times, haven't pursued "party purity" to the same extent as the Republicans. It's a more fractured electorate without the few "big ticket" issues that the GOP weaponizes (guns, god, and gays).
The Republican Party of today is changing right before our eyes. Many hard-line issues are becoming soft - famously recently with Trump and his complete lack of religiousness.
Many of the other hard-line issues were distorted by political opponents, such as your claimed "gay" issue (when viewed through a religious lens, the marriage issue makes more sense, it wasn't really about people's sexual preference, it was about a specific word. if anything, republicans are absolutely terrible at getting their message across, consistently... but I digress...).
The point was, the younger generation of Republicans do not staunchly adhere to these "classical" Republican views - and the party is changing. The Republican Party seems to represent a lot more working-class people and minority groups today than a decade ago - voter segments that historically were under lock-and-key for Democrats.
To that end, the Democrat party is also changing; getting pulled a lot more left-ward than most average Liberals are comfortable with. It's a weird world where the likes of John Stewart and Bill Maher sound more like conservatives than liberals.
Both parties have found themselves within an identity crisis. My gut tells me there will be a course correction for the Democratic party not to distant in the future, and the Republican party will continue to "liberalize" as the younger generation takes over. We'll see where the road takes us all...
He looks out for their interests. One of the first projects finished with the infrastructure bill was bridge in kentucky that Mcconnell and Biden opened together.
This shouldn't be surprising. Even before she was old and "of questionable judgement" she was voting for and sponsoring stuff like this. Go back to the war on drugs era and you can find sound bytes of her advocating for all sorts of absurd stuff. And by "absurd" I don't mean "didn't age well but was the party line". I'm talking about stuff that violates rights in excess of what the average party politician was pushing for.
That said, even if you strike her name from the list you know this is bad because it's a bunch of bipartisan long time congresspeople who are sponsoring this bill. When the careerists of the swamp get together to do something we the people always lose.
It's important to point out that many of these senators are also members of the Intelligence committee and are receiving regular reports from intelligence agencies as part of their senatorial duties.
It is logical to think that these agencies are using these briefings to lobby senators for changes that directly impact their performance.
It's highly unlikely this comes from a place of malice, but rather is a second order effect of organizational incentives to do better work.
Regardless, it's important for citizens to fight back against this pressure as it can be conceived as a potentially never-ending erosion of human rights.
Of course. Of course Cruz and Hawley are actually angels that are a victim of circumstances. Collins? Fucking immaculate.
I don't know how many times we have to "fight back" when they come uo with this BS. They should just cut it out and serve the people that elected them.
They are serving lots of constituents. There's no absolute block across all the people in a state. People have different ideas. I hate all these "spy on you and disable encryption". But it's not like there's a uniform view of how to approach this. Plenty of people respond to "think of the children".
He's getting his base excited because he's such a reliable putz, seeing the extreme danger from the existence of trans people. Getting votes is how they claim to serve people. I was just referring to the fact that those kinds of people do get votes, they read the room.
My senator Duckworth is going to respond back with a from letter stating "OMG THE CHILDREN". (Just like she did for the first Earn act concern I sent).
And it'll keep being persuasive to her voters until people come up with a meaningful counter-proposal that does a better job of addressing child safety online while also protecting privacy.
Mine is a co-sponsor (Rubio) and he will say the same thing. People hate pedos more than they care about their own privacy or oppose their political enemies.
It’s almost like they intentionally trolled future generations by mixing sentences that sound like iron clad protections with weasel words like “unreasonable” which anybody could foresee as being debated ad infinitum for centuries
They need to pass a 'public official' bill that ties any and all public official records to whatever is expected of the general population, no exceptions.
This is the only true way to stop these type of bills.
Not just public records. Public officials should be on Medicare. Their retirement should be Social Security. Their staff should be subject to the same employment rules that apply to everyone else. And so on.
Mr. GRAHAM, Mr. BLUMENTHAL, Mr. GRASSLEY, Mr. DURBIN,
Mrs. HYDE-SMITH, Mrs. FEINSTEIN, Mr. HAWLEY, Ms. CORTEZ MASTO,
Mr. TILLIS, Ms. HASSAN, Ms. ERNST, Mr. WARNER, Ms. MURKOWSKI,
Mr. WHITEHOUSE, Ms. COLLINS, Ms. HIRONO, Mr. CRUZ, Mr. RUBIO,
Mr. CORNYN, and Mr. KENNEDY
Article understated things by calling it a "group" of senators. That's a lot of senators already willing to get this thing off the ground.
The EARN IT Act threatens the privacy of all internet users by allowing for suspicionless scans of online messages, photos, and hosted files.
This law creates an unelected government commission stacked with law enforcement personnel that can dictate "best practices" for internet websites and apps.
The EARN IT Act removes legal protections for users and website owners and allows state legislatures to encourage civil lawsuits and prosecutions against those who don’t follow the government’s “best practices.”
Websites and apps that use end-to-end encryption to protect user privacy will be pressured to remove or compromise the security of their services or face prosecutions and lawsuits.
This law falsely assumes that all internet users should be under suspicion for child abuse, treating us all like we're in a permanent criminal lineup.
The available evidence shows that scanning software designed to detect Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) is far from perfect and often results in false accusations.
The EARN IT Act threatens to export these false accusations to vulnerable communities around the world, where they can be wielded by police forces with even less accountability than those in the United States.
The EARN IT Act leaves room for client-side scanning, violating user privacy by sending data to law enforcement straight from user devices.
Everyone has a right to privacy, even if they have nothing to hide. Just like we close the door when we use the bathroom, we should be able to keep our online conversations and information private. It is a fundamental right that allows individuals to have control over their personal information and to be free from unwarranted surveillance. Without privacy, people can be vulnerable to all sorts of abuse, including identity theft, stalking, and harassment.
The act then removes nearly 30-year-old legal protections for users and website owners. If EARN IT passes, we’re likely to see state lawmakers step in and mandate scanning of messages and other files.
The proposed law has been defeated twice before but needs digital rights supporters to speak up and stop it from passing again. We need to support a free, secure, and private internet.
To me what's so maddening about these attacks on Internet privacy is that they're extremely unpopular with actual voters across the political spectrum (it's just that awareness of these measures is very low). No politician would ever dare to campaign on a policy like this because nobody wants it. These persistent attempts to pass anti-privacy measures really highlight the corruption of American "democracy" given that there is zero popular mandate to do this but politicians keep trying anyway.
This is false. There's significant support across the political spectrum for curtailing Section 230, which is why EARN IT has bipartisan cosponsors.
Big tech companies, employees of said companies, and their lobbyists and marketing angles, of course, are loudly against it, which is why you will see less support for it here on HN.
I really appreciate that EFF has a convenient way to reach out to reps. If you’re a US citizen and reading this thread, I highly recommend using EFF’s tool to write to your reps. They have a pre written message and it takes 30 seconds to send it out.
There is a Bible verse that says every deed done in darkness shall be named in the light. At times like these, I wish the deity who inspired it was a little more proactive.
Unless and until the security state and neocon/neolib corporatist* power complex is ripped out of our government this will never stop and the People will lose this war.
It's much harder to rescind a law than pass it, which means they only have to win once and we have to win every time. We are doomed by this asymmetry.
I found the comments under the TikTok ban thread the other day and asked,
Why are you so concerned about China, which can do nothing, while other apps collect the data in the country you are in has the actual power to jail you because, you support abortion or LGBTQ.
The mental gymnastics were, US has a due process of law and China is an authoritarian dictatorship, while they still live in the US and China can't extradite them.
People constantly fail to realize, the views change, what's legal today could be illegal tomorrow, and you will absolutely be profiled as a risk.
Even if they can't prove you are guilty, the absolute nightmare of going through the due process of law and being tagged as a risk is something to think about and take it seriously. The concern must not be if the app is based on what country, it must be why does this app want to know so much about me, or why does the govt need to know my every opinion.
US trusted Dick Cheney's words and we all know what happened.
I think it is far more likely that the main impetus for this comes from those who can make the most money from it. Corporations and organizations who seek economic and political intelligence. Identifying employees who are considering other employment options, identifying employees who are considering joining unions, identifying employees political leaning, so that undesirables can be fired upfront and black balled.
Whenever a bill appears, disappears and reappears there’s a big chance it is a case of a “milker bill” or a “toll booth bill”. Basically go after an industry with money and propose some really inconvenient thing for them and say it will go away if you “donate to my campaign” usually through “lobbying efforts”
Big examples in the past were SOPA act for example
Marcus Raskin's 1976 paper "Democracy Versus the National Security State" [0] is a good backgrounder on how we've gotten to this state of affairs. If politicians want to continue with their careers in Congress, they'll either serve the national security state or have to pretend to their constituents that it doesn't exist.
"The national security state emerges from war, from fear of revolution and change, from the economic instability of capitalism, and from nuclear weapons and military technology.It has been the actualizing mechanism of ruling elites to implement their imperial schemes and misplaced ideals. In practical terms its emergence is linked to the rise of a bureaucracy that administered things and people in interchangeable fashion without concern for ends or assumptions. This state formation matured during a period in which the office of the President be-
came supremely powerful as a broker and legitimating instrument of national
security activity."
"...The society is at a turning point. And in this regard so is the legal profession. Either we will surrender representative democracy, embracing instead
different forms of corporate fascism and bureaucratic control (military, police,
and social) which cannot be halted through citizen action and democratic pro-
cesses, or we (including the legal profession) will begin the difficult task of
dismantling the national security apparatus. It does not seem likely to me that
those who struggled in the sixties to develop a new meaning of democracy
will settle for bureaucratic or corporate fascism. And those who are neutral
on the question will be less likely to acquiesce in fascist or bonapartist deformations once it is clear that they are inefficient, and that they provide only insecurity, unemployment, imperial wars, a deepening arms race, and a pro-
cess of repressive exclusion which reduces politics to an empty game."
I find myself consistently disappointed when reading blog posts like this. I generally agree with the principles that the EFF advocates for, but it's hard to see this post as anything other than rage-bait. I can't trust it to be an accurate source of information on what this bill actually does.
For example, I've repeatedly seen claims that this bill would effectively outlaw end-to-end encryption, but the bill explicitly protects companies that offer encryption from liability.
>None of the following actions or circumstances shall serve as an independent basis for liability of a provider of an interactive computer service for a claim or charge described in that paragraph:
>(i) The provider utilizes full end-to-end encrypted messaging services, device encryption, or other encryption services.
>(ii) The provider does not possess the information necessary to decrypt a communication.
>(iii) The provider fails to take an action that would otherwise undermine the ability of the provider to offer full end-to-end encrypted messaging services, device encryption, or other encryption services"
When I look to the EFF for an explanation about why this language isn't sufficient, I get this:
>The bill clearly leaves room to impose forms of "client-side scanning"
Going back to the bill, the phrase "client-side scanning" doesn't appear anywhere in the text despite the EFF implying that they're quoting from the bill. If they're not quoting from the bill then what exactly are they quoting from? This is the kind of thing that makes me unable to trust them to be accurate, which makes posts like this effectively useless to me since I feel the need to independently verify all of their claims.
Client side scanning came out of the discussion around this bill the last time it was proposed. That it isn’t in this bill doesn’t mean it isn’t in politicians’ heads, and if this gets passed there is then significant precedent for extending it, as a small extension doesn’t seem as big as a full-scale government invasion of citizens’ privacy (i.e. this bill).
I don't believe the transition from "set up a commission to recommend best practices" to "mandate regular scans of everyone's phones and report the results to law enforcement" would be viewed as a small extension.
Perhaps the unspoken argument is that client-side scanning will be made into a best practice, and websites and apps that don't implement it will be exposed to liability.
So, I think the bigger issue is that those things may not serve as an independent basis for liability. But (B) then says that those things may be considered as evidence if they’re otherwise admissible (under the Federal Rules). In other words, encryption by itself does not expose them to liability, but those who might get sued could have encryption used against them as evidence that they “knowingly” possessed, transmitted, etc. CSAM. If robust encryption makes it more difficult to identify or stop CSAM trafficking, and a service refuses to compromise its encryption, that could be used as evidence against them.
The EFF seems to be going the way of many advocacy groups, where as time goes by their positions on the things they advocate for become less nuanced and they stop taking into consideration how those things fit into the big picture.
An example of this is the National Rifle Association (NRA). They used to think that carrying guns around in public should be restricted and require licensing, and that dealers should need to be licensed, and that some kinds of guns should be restricted.
For the EFF the thing that made me think that they are going down that road was during the controversy over Apple's plans to scan for CSAM. Apple had actually announced two things: (1) scanning on-device for CSAM in material about to be uploaded to iCloud, and (2) scanning on-device of devices with parental controls enabled to block messages that contained content that might be harmful to children.
Most of the discussion was about #1, both from the EFF and from everybody else. #2 was much less discussed.
Here's how #2 worked in the case where you have a child who is 13 or older with a phone on your family plan and you have enabled scanning.
1. I send your kid pictures of my dick.
2. The software temporarily blocks that and gives your child a modal dialog telling them it blocked something because their parents think it might be harmful, and asking the child if they want to go ahead and view the material.
3. If the child says no the material remains blocked and nothing else happens.
4. If the child says yes my dick picture is unblocked and nothing else happens.
If your child is under 13, here is how it goes:
1-3: same as the 13 and above case.
4. If the child says yes they are given another modal asking of they are sure and reiterating that their parents think the material may be harmful, and telling them if they do elect to view it their parents will be notified. They are again asked if they want to proceed to view it or not.
5. If the child says no, the material remains blocked and nothing else happens.
6. If the child says yes my dick picture is unblocked, and the parents are notified.
The EFF objected to this, on the grounds that #6 violates my privacy since I sent my dick pictures to your kid, not you, and did not consent to you getting access.
WTF? It used to be that a big argument from privacy groups against server-side scanning to protect children is that children shouldn't be getting to the bad parts of the net in the first place, and keeping the kids away was something the parents should take care of with things like time restrictions and parental control software.
This. The EFF used to be a force for good, but they are now free speech and privacy extremists backed principally by a tech industry that simply doesn't want to be liable for their negative impact on society.
The EFF will not ever support a regulation on big tech behavior.
You're literally denouncing the 4th amendment. You're saying that all of us must submit to warrantless and broad searches because the statistics says that at least some crime must be occurring. Absurd.
Or is it that there is an intermediary involved? Are you saying that banks that offer safety deposit boxes are responsible for their contents? Also absurd.
So 1984 style listening devices and cameras in every home is the obvious solution right? Houses are where a lot of abuse happens. Scanning doesn’t even stop abuse from happening, just the possession and distribution of it.
Most people aren’t doing crimes. Roads are used to traffic drugs but we don’t hold the state accountable nor do we setup checkpoints within country to inspect cars for illegal material because some % of cars do.
If your point is that privacy advocates aren’t considering the negative aspects of technology I’m sure they have but see these efforts as a reach towards more state surveillance.
Because most “democratic” countries are not really democratic. Elected representatives can and will act against the interests of the public they represent.
While here in Switzerland we have direct democracy, where such decisions have to be confirmed by national referendums (we have several each year), and most certainly this one would not be approved.
Some days, I would like a law that applies to digital things the same thing we already have protected by the constitution; the Fourth Amendment should apply to our digital stores but it doesn't.
> The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
I personally believe "papers, and effects" apply to digital things.
The increasing rate of technological progress worries me sometimes. One upside is the hope that malicious policy just won't be able to keep up with the rate of change.
It seems futile to fight these kinds of things, especially since if something isn't legal, it'll likely get done via some shady method (eg. mass surveillance).
I wonder what an emerging information system would look like where these kinds of policies just wouldn't be relevant. P2P? Turning away from online tech in general?
When the bully comes to the playground, it seems like a good idea to just go play elsewhere.
As a non-american (and from far-far-away) I still sympathise with people who stand against it. Because it's fairly clear to me: if it starts there, it spreads everywhere. That's more of a WEF thing.
If I were American, I might respond to their, "Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies" Act, with the "Mitigating Overreach Limiting Obstruction Nullifying Lamentability And Benefiting Everyone" Act.
If by EARN IT, they mean Americans should earn their freedom - which this government is using its own crimes[1] as a pretext for taking from them - that seems really just unwise.
FTFY: The fundamental instinctive understanding that everyone has socially as to why certain types of gossip are bad is why privacy on those respects is important.
If so, then every member of parliament, senator, judge, minister and other public officers should upload all their data and conversations for the public to see and regularly update it. After all it's for the "good of the society" right?
this is already happening in a lot of cases, we need to make sure this legal grey zone is closed and ruled in favor of privacy.
as government powers are derived from the people, and I don't have any right to walk into your house and ask for your mail, the government has no right to invade our privacy.
there are better ways to keep us safe. lots of private software does this already and has lots of problems. I see no reason to assume the government would be any better. I could maybe get behind less privacy for government programs interfacing with the American public and for corporations
Isn't there a way to permanently stop lawmakers from proposing to take away freedoms and rights using terrorism or child abuse as excuses? We can't keep fighting this kind of bullshit every few years.
That's a scarily good comparison. Children need to be protected, but it feels like there is a steady erosion of basic rights to privacy, free speech, free expression, and free choice that are being justified with "whatever it takes to save a child".
And this time they’ll probably get it passed. Seeing as what they have already done in Europe and California and Utah and…
There is something We the People can do, as an industry, it is described at the bottom of this link. First it describes the massive extent of the problem, then links to the solution:
If you are thinking “why should I bother clicking on that random link?” It starts out by linking to all the stuff the US government has already done, including defeating the EFF’s challenges recently in court — that’s defeating the same guys who published this new piece.
Yet another reminder that if you are a US citizen, your safety and your freedom are far more threatened by those in DC than anyone in a foreign country.
I'm in the public and I want this bill. My senator is one of the sponsors and I'm happy to see it. I think a large portion of society is now following enough echo chambers that they believe that nobody opposes their position, when usually... it's a pretty big chunk of society, actually, that they just never interact with or talk to.
As I've said before, complaining about privacy will only take you so far because the issues are too abstract for many people. While right-wing attacks on abortion and contraception may seem irrelevant to tech issues, they also attack the legal basis for privacy, which is not explicitly written into the US constitution. It'd be wise to focus a little less on individual bills and a little more on the broader strategic picture.
That should include a privacy-friendly counter-proposal for dealing with the trade in CSAM, which is a real problem no matter how much the tech community tries to wish it away by saying 'it's already illegal'. It's disingenuous to look at one issue and say 'scope creep, this will threaten our freedoms' while looking at another issue and saying 'we already passed a law, therefore the problem doesn't exist'.
By accepting their framing of "CSAM vs personal privacy" as the moral conundrum, you have already lost. You will be forced to compromise over and over, trading a little liberty for a little security, "for the children."
As if the "intelligence community" that ran Jeffrey Epstein is going to use their shiny new surveillance powers to eradicate pedophilia.
That's wrong. CSAM is a problem, the tech industry has failed to get to grips with how easily it facilitates CSAM sharing (not dissimilar to piracy, though I support the latter), and until the tech industry can point to a credible CSAM mitigation policy proposal it will keep looping back to the CSAM-v-privacy framing.
Skip the rhetorical flourishes and come up with a proposal that addresses the issue. If you refuse to do so, then you can't complain about privacy-eradicating opponents offering their mediocre or bad policies. Refusing to acknowledge an issue exists is an automatic loser.
> Skip the rhetorical flourishes and come up with a proposal that addresses the issue.
You're right, here's my proposal: we install 24/7 camera surveillance in the home of every suspected pedophile. We'll start with you, since our Proprietary Algorithms have determined that those who point fingers and yell the loudest are usually the biggest pervs.
Some first hits as reminders of places where their powers are abused
[1]: "NSA staff used spy tools on spouses, ex-lovers: watchdog" https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-surveillance-watchdog...
[2]: https://reason.com/2022/07/26/police-can-access-your-ring-ca...
[3]: https://reason.com/2021/04/26/warrantless-border-searches-dr...