The way that these amendments can change specific punctuation without clarifying the impact or meaning of the change seems terrible. Like trying to read a git commit without any message.
I am not surprised that a colossal moron like Turner would spin disallowing warrantless spying on American citizens as guaranteeing “constitutional rights to our adversaries”.
unsurprising. this has been a major reason the Republican house speaker is looking at a recall (yet again.) hardliners are upset the FISA regulations havent been renewed to their liking, and Mike Johnson (current speaker) would likely shore up his chances of making it at least 200 days as speaker if he passed this.
getting moderate or traditional conservatives (let alone democrats or independents) to sign this is another matter entirely. FISA has become a babadook policy the US government would just as soon slowly forget about and expire, similar to GITMO and the more acerbic policies of the Bush administration during the WoT. these types of regulations enjoy pretty unilateral disapproval because they have the potential to bite the hand that feeds.
from what I've seen its the traditional democrats and republicans who are in favor, with the leftists opposed on human rights grounds and the hardcore trumpers opposed due to their grudge against the FBI
They're called neocons (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism), just one wing of U.S. conservatism and honestly plenty of modern Democrats could be described in this camp as well.
I think our government (USA), whether full of political appointees or "civil servants" aka bureaucracy, has grown far too large and should be scaled back tremendously. Further, the USA is a Republic of Sovereign States with the Federal Government for protection of borders and interstate commerce as outlined in the Constitution.
For instance, something like the Department of Education, is overstepping the role of Federal Government, and I think the statistics prove me correct. I also believe that FBI/CIA has been weaponized in favor of what would historically been perceived as Un-American activities across the globe. Let's start with the Iran-Contra affair and the very well known fact of cocaine running ruining the mostly black inner cities of the 1980's. This in my opinion is something heads should roll for, and those involved should be held accountable and thrown in jail. I think these people are POS, and frankly if you disagree with my statement, I think you are too. It's inhumane and disgusting.
To me, much of the US's power comes from its centralization and radically ceding that back to the states would leave it diminished on the world stage.
The CIA/FBI rabbit hole, to me, collapses down to the "Who watches the watchers?" question.
I'm of the opinion that there will always need to be clandestine activities (domestic and international), that proficiency in that domain generates outsized benefits to a nation, and that oversight should continually be improved and strengthened (but is fundamentally impossible to accomplish completely, due to the nature of the enterprise).
The neocons are all part of democratic apparatus now. Once it became known that they were not going to get war profiteering under Trump, they switched wagons. Democratic party is the party of neocons now.
Individual identities transcend binary party classification, especially over issues as complex as international engagement.
In the Democratic party, there's the group advocating for involvement on the basis of individual rights and one on the basis of supporting the post-WWII rule of law world order.
In the Republican party, there's still the group advocating for American exceptionalism. However, given that Republican presidents initiated the last two major wars (Afghanistan and Iraq), general party support for military interventionalism is at a low ebb. Give it a few more years for memories to reset (~2028).
Huh. now that they do not please their voters, conclusion is that they are infiltrated by neocons? I don't think they are changed. They just showed their true colors with the recent events.
I don't know why you're being downvoted, it is true. Even though Trump sucked, he did start 0 new wars. Whereas the current administration has signed us up for several conflicts, which the neocons love.
It seems like anything critical of the deep state get immediately downvoted here and then floats back up after a certain time. There also no argument given as to why the downvotes occur. Maybe downvotes with substantive replys should carry more weight?
And theres always shareblue monitoring forums, which is deeply embedded with spooks.
Unelecteds heavily vote democrat/big government because of job security. They don't care about your rights hence pro-FISA. As a matter of fact it appears many of them believe your rights are afforded to you by the government, which seems very totalitarian.
If the President is elected, and the President holds the power to staff the executive branch (subject to the approval of Congress and the restraints on arbitrary exercise of the CSA of 1883 and CSRA of 1978), then in what sense is the bureaucracy uncontrolled by the electorate?
Or do I misunderstand the American system of government?
Its inevitable because of the power dynamics between democracies and totalitarian regimes. Democracies thought that with the internet they would topple totalitarianism because of free flow of information. They forgot that totalitarian regimes can just imprison and shoot all who have access to and propagate the information. Now the wheel has turned and the same regimes are weaponizing AI and shill farms to create enough propaganda to destabilize a democracy for the price of a few dollars. We're all headed towards a global race to the bottom because of it, the dream of the early internet has been crushed because of human evil.
US and British democracy certainly aren't the best implementations around. If you wanted to divide and rule you couldn't come up with a better voting system for that than first-past-the-post.
without the sarcasm people not voting is a huge issue. voter suppression is a central tactic for conservatives. Openly their cult leader recognizes "if everyone voted we'd never have another republican elected president"
> The United States is not, nor is it intended to be, a democracy.
It is more nuanced than that. Technically, the constitution establishes a federal democratic republic form of government:
- federal: union of 50 states
- republic: ultimate power held by the people and their elected representatives AND has an elected or nominated president rather than a monarch
- democratic: governance by officials elected by voting of the population
Representation in a republic may or may not be freely elected by the general citizenry. In our case, representation is via electing representatives of the people, i.e. democratic.
I am not yet sure why there are these soundbites of "democracy" vs "republic", since we are both.
One interesting feature of our setup is while we are a democracy, we also have inalienable rights that the majority cannot vote away.
My perspective is that emphasizing that the US is a "republic" and not a "democracy" is not just to be pedantic (certainly they enjoy being pedantic) but to underline that the US system is not set up to be a majority rule. All the wolves can't vote to eat the sheep for dinner type of thing.
Personally, I get suspicious when elected leaders start talking about the powers they need to fight the "threats to our democracy".
No. There’s a term for what you’re describing. It’s called, “liberal democracy.”
The whole “We’re a republic not a democracy,” lie isn’t about that at all. It dates to only WWII. Specifically, it was coined by America First’s Boake Carter as quip in response to Roosevelt’s talk about “the defense of democracies” and “the arsenal of democracy” while arguing that it was perfectly fine for the nazis to run wild in Europe. This phrase continued on with John Birch Society, where it morphed into its sophomoric partisan quip and excuse for unpopular minority rule it is today.
When anyone utters this phrase today, it’s a tell that they literally have no idea what any of the words they say actually mean.
> When anyone utters this phrase today, it’s a tell that they literally have no idea what any of the words they say actually mean.
I'd argue it's a tell that they don't understand the history of the term or the perception of it held by those who disagree with them.
For most people who say it, I believe "we're a republic, not a democracy" means "we're not majority rule, there are structures in place to protect the interests of the minority". This is why they don't trot out the phrase every time the word "democracy" is used. It's a rebuttal to specific instances where people invoke "democracy" to mean "most people I know disagree with you, so your opinion doesn't matter".
Maybe I'm projecting my own views here, but I generally agree with what I believe people are trying to convey when they use the phrase. I don't use it myself, because I know it's not an effective way to communicate my position - not because it's technically not a true statement.
For what it's worth, there's also more nuance to the word "democracy" than you seem to be presenting here. At the time of the founding, it basically meant "rule by popular vote", and was pretty much a synonym for "mob rule". A large part of the US system was explicitly designed to work around the shortcomings of direct democracy.
> For what it's worth, there's also more nuance to the word "democracy" than you seem to be presenting here. At the time of the founding, it basically meant "rule by popular vote", and was pretty much a synonym for "mob rule". A large part of the US system was explicitly designed to work around the shortcomings of direct democracy.
But even this is a misunderstanding of the terms as even (mis)understood in 18th century. Representative (i.e. indirect) democracy doesn't inherently provide any defense of the minority. It's literally just a scaling solution. Nor does the constitution as drafted provide any protections to a minority. In fact, this lack of protections was one of the biggest arguments against ratification, and directly resulted in the Bill of Rights to address some of these issues. Even judicial review of unconstitutional laws didn't exist until 1803, and arguably is extra textual.
What's left is split a legislative and executive, a legislature that is a poor copy of the House of Lords and the House of Commons, and an idiosyncratic points system that 248 years later has not only yielded three unpopular presidents, but elevates whims of a few voters in depopulated states. None of that protects a minority from an abusive majority, nor does it make an affirmative case about why the majority rule should not apply. Far from protecting the minority, electoral college actually enables minority rule. The same can be demonstrated with gerrymandering and legislative seats. A real concern for minority representation balanced with majority rule would address these obvious failures, but it doesn't.
Even the Wish.com House of Lords is joke as originally conceived, since it empowered state legislatures rather than the people of the state. It's a very concept that is an opposition to the very idea of a common nation, but not alien to the idea of a confederation. Now this may have made sense in a 18th century drawing room, but hasn't made sense over 160 years. They thought they were making a European Union, but that's not what developed.
The American constitution may have been great 250 years ago, but it's not by any modern standard today.
> I am not yet sure why there are these soundbites of "democracy" vs "republic", since we are both.
Probably as some weird way to further the divide between left and right. It is really popular to demonize the other side because it's a very effective way to get people riled up enough to vote.
> The United States is not, nor is it intended to be, a democracy.
Even if that were true, it's not really up to the people who intended it to be something else 200 years ago. It's now on us to figure out what kind of nation we want to be.
Many people suggest ranked choice, but it has the significant problem that you might have little idea who won or who is leading until the very last vote is in. One vote in a close race could kick off a chain of events that changes everything. And for a Federal election, a stupid and stubborn state (like the one I'm living in) could stall and delay submitting their results for weeks.
Approval voting doesn't have this problem. When there's a clear winner, it's obvious and you can get back to business.
TBH, "counting votes" for weeks is an issue exclusive to banana republics.
There are plenty of functional democracies like Germany, in which the votes are counted by the end of the day and the results dont change by several percentage points during the next few weeks after the election.
Fair enough, but the last US presidential election had this banana nonsense going on with various recounts lasting for weeks. Maybe you can fix all the states in the entire country while you rework the election system, but since ranked choice and approval voting both solve the two party problem, I don't know why you'd risk the down side for ranked choice.
As a born-and-raised US citizen who went through US schooling and therefore got a load of political science, no.
The US is a republic. You could call it a form of democracy, but you would first call it a republic before a democracy. Representativity is what makes it NOT a democracy.
James Madison, a US founding father, felt that (direct) democracy led to mob rule and did not think that people directly voting on issues was a good idea. You can read his opinion from 1788 in the Federalist Papers, #55: https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/text-51-60#s-lg-box...
"Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob." - Alexander Hamilton or James Madison
The world of political science is massive. There is no "best" system because once you read through this entire body of study, you realize it consists of compromises. People have been trying to figure this out for a very long time.
Voting behavior can be easily hacked as one can see in world elections. Its not for nothing you have analyst, advisors or other sort of experts in the field of electioneering.
I'm sure it's deep staters down voting me. That's fine. Oh look, even the Indian Supreme court state election machines can be manipulated by partisan humans. Go figure.
Not that I disagree, but what I believe makes Switzerland a functioning democracy is that people feel represented. Go complain about the result of a vote in Switzerland and people will say "did you vote?" instead of following you to invade the Capitol. If you did vote, then people will say "well, you're in the minority then".
The mere fact that most people feel that way shows, to me, that the system works. Compare that to e.g. France where Macron got less than 20% in the first round. It means that 80% of the votes were not for him, and of the 20% remaining, a lot did not want him but just thought he was the best chance against the far-right candidate. Right when Macron was re-elected, you could say that more than 80% of the people who voted did not want him. That's a problem IMO.
Not sure what you mean. The people in Switzerland votes for a ton of stuff (not just for a president every 4 years). If you manage to always be on the minority, then probably you are doing it on purpose. The norm is that people are sometimes in the minority, sometimes in the majority. That's called consensus, that's what makes for a good democracy IMO.
The opposite (again IMO) is a system where the people votes for a president every 4 years, and invades the Capitol when they lose. BTW Switzerland does not have a president, but instead a group of 7 representing the biggest parties in the country. So there is consensus even at the highest level.
And the proliferation of ballot questions in US states has been a rather mixed bag. And in many locales in the US, there are direct votes on many local matters.
Now, you might find even that a bit overbearing, but I believe the right of a community to influence the architecture of their local town shouldn't be seen as a bad thing. The feeling was that the few minarets that already existed were incongruent enough, that they didn't want a carte-blanche on more sprouting up, which I think planning permission had already been applied for.
Minarets. Another referendum - in fact the first one ever to be accepted since the reconstitution of Switzerland as a federal state post-Napoleon - banned kosher/halal slaughtering of animals (at the time it was directed against Jews, not Muslims). The ban stands to this day.
I don't always know what "politically incorrect" is being used as a euphemism for but banning mosques seems straightforwardly bad to me idk I guess I'm just a woke dumbass hey.
As said above, it was not banning mosques, but minarets specifically. There were only 4 minarets in Switzerland at the time, and no plan to build any more. You could try to build a minaret in Switzerland, get the permit refused, appeal, and try to go up to a court high enough to make that law illegal. But it seems like nobody cared.
It was more political theater at the time. Not that it was a good vote, but I wouldn't say that the Swiss democracy doesn't work based on that. Switzerland is an example of consensus, and a functional democracy.
Not that you're a woke dumbass, just probably not a true believer in democracy. The thing described above I also dislike, but I recognize I'm not a resident or voter there and I shouldn't get a say in their lives
Well, I would have said that the base criteria for a democracy is that the government is an extension of the will of the people (hence the name). But we can agree that Power separation and Representativity are reasonable proxies. But the US isn't well set up for representativity at all. Without going into the finer issues like gerrymandering or the more controversial things like the electoral college, the core issue is that a first-past-the-post system means there can only be two meaningful parties. So you can only really have two sides, when real issues often are far more nuanced than that.
huh...I always thought of the US as a republic with some democratic features. I mean that's why we have things like the electoral college. Your voice influences but doesn't not actually drive.
Too many people think they have to run for congress or president instead of thinking more locally. Jesse Ventura is a great example of what the founders envisioned as encouraging people to get involved in politics. He was unhappy with the local city government. He ran for mayor and won and spent four years in charge. Went back to his private sector life and then five years after leaving office, ran for governor and won.
I've had friends get involved in their local politics and have been effective. My buddy was a professional skateboarder and run twice for a local office and he barely lost both times and has vowed to stay involved in his cities politics.
You're seeing more and more people getting involved at the national level who said they never had any inkling of getting involved in politics but have thrown their hats in the ring.
There was a reason the founders made the barrier extremely low to get involved in politics, either locally or nationally. They wanted people to have a say in how their governments are run and to make it simple for them to be the change they want to see.
Jesse had been out of wrestling for years before running for mayor of Brooklyn Park. You have to remember this was back in the late 80,s early 90's when there wasn't any internet or social media. I remember reading an article about him resolving some issue the voters brought to him thinking, "I had no idea the guy was still living in the state, let alone running a city as their mayor."
I will give you he did use his radio show to air his grievances and tell stories about his wrestling years and being a frogman (the precursors to the SEALs) so that did bring him back into the public spotlight. He ironically had always dabbled in politics, and even appeared on Howard Stern saying he was going to run for president with gulp Donald Trump who made a guest appearance with him talking about it when he was governor.
So you're right, by the time he ran for governor, he was back to being very well known and leveraged that to a degree where he had to give up his radio show in order to run for governor.
I'm sure that makes the medicine go down easier, but we're not powerless at all. We choose to have no say. We choose not to run our own campaigns and get grassroots approval. Less than half of us vote. The rest accept the status quo, despite the fact that they don't have to. We give away our power.
All of the methods by which a dark horse can run and win are there. The state will not remove your votes or intimidate voters not to vote for you. You will not be poisoned by radioactive toxins to prevent you from running. You will not be kidnapped, or your family threatened, or a bomb set off in polling locations. This isn't in any way like so many other actually repressive regimes. All you have to do is go and run.
We have more power in this society than anyone in any other. So why do we claim we're powerless? Because it makes us feel better that we're so lazy. I could run for office, but that might restrict my time watching The Office. Better to just say that running is pointless, so I don't have to make the change I want to see.
And even if you don't want to run, you can vote for independents, you can complain to your representatives, you can organize your friends and neighbors to petition local government for local reforms and participate in larger state and federal efforts. Individually we may be a drop in the bucket, but collectively we are a wave. You can't say that isn't powerful.
I vouched for this comment to be non-dead. I'm not a US citizen, but I can see why this comment would be contentious for US citizens. I also think it's a valid point, and doesn't cross any HN guidelines (more than other comments that exist in this thread). I'd like to give it another chance and see how it goes.
People who downvoted or flagged the above post are themselves examples of what’s killing HN. Bunch of snowflakes who don’t want to hear the truth: Political engagement works and matters even at the small scale - we are just lazy as hell.
Look to how unpopular CSPAN is. Everyone says they want the “truth” of politics. The truth is on CSPAN, and no one watches it.
We do have some power, but the system is absolutely intended to suppress the power of the masses. The senate as an institution, the cap on the number of reps in the house, the electoral college, representative rather than parliamentary legislature elections, dark money/super PACs/Citizen's United (and other things that look even closer to outright bribery) and first-past-the-post are ALL anti-democractic institutions intended to preserve the status quo for the already wealthy and powerful.
As for having more power than any other society? Delusional. There are far more democractic electoral systems.
> but the system is absolutely intended to suppress
This seems asinine. I am not psychic, I can't always deduce intentions, but sometimes I can see the lack of intent. Things evolve, they develop, and though there might be many factions hoping to steer things in directions they want it to go, the net effect of many factions doing this is our ship just swirling around randomly in the ocean.
When you talk about "intent", it's just rabblerousing. You hope to rile people up, so they'll do what you prefer they would do. It's unnecessary to talk about intent. Whether the system was intended to suppress the power of the masses, or whether the system randomly and quite accidentally developed to do that is moot if it suppresses the masses. The only thing reasonable people should be discussing is:
1. Does this system suppress the power of the masses?
2. Should that change? It's not all that clear that the masses should have power. We've seen what mobs and riots are like, and most of you are ill-informed, opinionated, and susceptible to the effects of rabble-rousing.
As for answers, I think yes, it does suppress power of the masses. I would be skeptical the intelligence of someone who suggested otherwise. And on the second, I'm uncertain... there are days where it seems like only a lunatic would want the masses to have power. But, if they don't have it, others do, and whoever they happen to be, I've not seen many outcomes I've liked.
> the cap on the number of reps in the house
Haha. Do you want that to change? I stumbled upon a weird political science hack a few years back, and I'm convinced that as few as a dozen people (nobodies, even) might change that by the time the next census rolls around. Low effort, you might have to allocate 15 minutes to go talk to a state rep/senator (plus a few hours to prepare... rehearsal, haircut, getting your nice clothes dry-cleaned). It'd bump the number up to something like 5800+ reps in Congress.
The other stuff's all dead in the water. But I know how to ruin the rep cap.
It's more than the ability to put your name on a ballot, between the media control the main parties have, their purposeful entrenchment and anticompetitive setup, and the necessary financial burden; your biggest problem is that simply nobody will know who you are.
My state passed a democratic ballot measure to set up a non-partisan redistricting committee. When it came time to instate new district maps, our state Senate pretended to consider the committee's maps, and voted for their own maps; despite the vocal outage of nearly every citizen who shared a comment on the situation.
I can't coordinate with my "community", when my senators have declared it to include downtown SLC, Tooele, Beaver, Cedar City, St. George, etc. To contrast, Utah County (the most consistently Conservative area in the state) basically gets its own district.
Yes, the US gives all the rights you list to its citizens. But with representation wffectively degenerated into a two-party system by the quirks of the eletion systems, any independent candidates must gather massive support to have a chance. It is more likely that an independent candidate will end up supporting their worst opposition because winner takes all heavily punishes splinter factions by completely discarding their votes.
This is the reason why Kennedy's efforts to appear on the ballots can ultimately hand Trump the presidential election by splitting the Biden canp.P
The US has culturally accepted this flawed system. The UK has a multiparty parliament despite first past the post. This comes at the price of up to more than 60% of the votes getting effectively discarded.
I believe firmly that the US would be served better today if it transitioned to a proportional voting system. But the constitution is treated with too much deference to expect meaningful updates to get it in line with 21st century realities.
If I’m interpreting your joke/comment correctly, if you object to the complete corruption of the US political process by special interests you must be a Russian propagandist, is that correct? I don’t want to put words in your mouth.
For whatever reason there’s a fringe, but somewhat common, tendency in the U.S. to insist that “democracy” means “direct democracy” and that “republic” means what everyone else calls “representative democracy”. This is then used to derail people complaining about the U.S. being undemocratic, as you can see here.
I have no idea where this meme comes from, because for 99% of people “republic” just means not governed by a monarch or traditional aristocracy and is orthogonal to democracy. For example, Canada is democratic but not a republic, North Korea is a republic but not democratic, Saudi Arabia is neither, and France is both.
Honestly, if you look up the definition of republic and democracy, if you blink, you’ll miss differences, and even then, the USA is best described as a democratic republic.
Obviously, the last several years has taught us why the right wing is so intent on getting rid of the word “democracy” in describing the USA, and they fundamentally do not believe in the right to vote.
How about a pm last less than 60 days? Any totalitarian country like that. We are talking about a country my exam question is “all Brits are slaves, discuss”. Still.
Anyway may be you are the bots we talked about. And if not even more sad.
Sure, surveil all internet traffic is just to prevent 'human evil,' not to perpetuate it further.
I can't even imagine writing this comparison of democracy vs. totalitarian regimes while the 'democracy' is behaving in the same way as a totalitarian regime in this context.
A ridiculous fairy tale. Dictatorships need hardly interfere with the "stability" of a society which launches a bloody and monumentally expensive temper tantrum in response to 9/11 but allows thousands more to die each year for want of basic medicines
It's just a ROI calculation. A Russian fighter jet costs $25 mil, so a rational course of action would to weigh the benefit of buying another jet vs. buying a dozen congressmen, or flooding social media with misinformation to cancel a multi billion dollar defense bill for Ukraine.
For example, Abrahamic religious leaders have made the concept of god toxic. But if you go by their dogma, then their god is responsible for the state of things.
Many of the non-abrahamic religions in the USA don't even have a god in the same sense, or they see their (equivalent to) god as the fabric of the cosmos and thereby not able to be abandoned.
I agree about the money though. It is the leading religion now.
The uninsured. The underinsured. People on the "wrong" insurance plan. People without the budget slack for $100s or $1000s per month for the medication they need. Poor people who don't bother going to the doctor to get needed prescriptions because they can't afford the initial visit. Rich people whose doctors fail to mention the drug that costs $250k because no past patients cleared for it could afford it. People going to the doctor who gets financial kickbacks from the inferior drug's drugmaker. People prescribed drugs that kill them.
If your question was actually serious, this is a non-exhaustive list.
When the GP said "basic medicines", they probably meant all the generic stuff that can be had without insurance for a few dollars; all the stuff that is on the WHO list of essential medicines[0], that is.
I'd venture that drugs that cost hundreds of dollars or more per month in the US are all cutting-edge stuff. I mean, sure, you have stories of people getting charged $10 for a pill of acetaminophen at a hospital, but that's a separate matter unrelated to the fact that you can get a bottle of 500 pills for single-digit dollars at your local Walmart.
> The uninsured. The underinsured. People on the "wrong" insurance plan.
Plenty to criticize about the US healthcare system, but let's remember that countries with nationalized medical care also suffer from their own ills, mainly in the form of long wait times. Ultimately, no place has enough doctors per capita that every sick person can be treated promptly and cheaply; so care must be gated one way or another. In America, you pay with money; in most other countries, you pay with time.
The WHO list of essential medicines is not just over-the-counter drugs. It includes things like the chemotherapy drug cisplatin. I happened to need that for testicular cancer ~10 years ago, and the treatment cost was $50k (as "payed" by insurance). That overall seems pretty reasonable to me for the treatment I received, but definitely not something I'd expect the median American to be able to pay out of pocket.
The median American would not have to pay out of pocket, as nearly every American has health insurance (since the ACA, it is actually illegal not to have insurance).
I think it's accurate to say that the median American is insured, with only 8% of the population uninsured [1]. Although, to put that percentage in perspective, that's 26 million people and likely thousands in excess mortality relative to the insured poplulation.
I believe you're referring to the ACA's "individual mandate", which imposed a federal tax penalty for being uninsured. I won't argue whether that makes it illegal or not, but I can say that the individual madate was eliminated by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2019 [1]. There's no longer a federal tax penality for being uninsured.
This is purely anecdotal, but of that 8% (26 million), I would posit that most of those people are uninsured by choice. e.g., probably mostly young, maybe part-time workers without chronic illnesses.
I find it amusing that people are basically advocating for the government to become every citizen's Medical Daddy (the GP of this comment) backed by the threat of state violence in a thread that is ostensibly about freedom from the security state.
My question is serious. The US Government spends $2 trillion per year for health care for the poor and the elderly, and also spends a significant amount for for tax credits for health insurance for those that are neither poor or elderly. Furthermore, hospitals always treat regardless of the ability to pay.
How many more $ trillions and how many fascist medical bureaucracies would achieve your ends comrade?
I am not a fan of the American healthcare system. Navigating it takes brains and effort that shouldn't be required. But if you have them it is essentially not possible to die here from lack of healthcare, and it's possible but surprisingly difficult to go bankrupt (except from lost wages, which is also a leading cause of bankruptcy in the UK).
Yes, so this is where the brains and effort (and time, forgot time) come in.
The anecdotes in your links (that I read - can't get through all of them right now) have a common theme, which is that people died because they either needed very expensive and/or experimental treatment that probably would not be affordably provided to them under any plausible healthcare system, or else they got a bill, decided they couldn't pay it, and did without or tried to self-ration their healthcare.
The correct course of action in that case is to call the healthcare provider and negotiate A) a 90+% discount and B) a payment plan, both of which are pretty readily available in the American system. You have to know that's possible, and you shouldn't have to, but it is possible. Then you reach out to the charities, government programs, and/or nonprofits from my original link to cover what you still can't afford. Same deal if you get screwed by an insurance company as in the Guardian article.
This is, again, not something I'm trying to defend. It's not the way a sane healthcare system would run. But it is a system that works, more or less, for those who know how to work within it.
The anecdotes show that this is not an 'occasional' or 'edge case' thing but a systemic thing. The statistics show that at least 40,000 people die a year for not having enough money for healthcare and these are the people we know. The statistics don't include those who never go to the hospital to avoid risking medical bankruptcy for their families even if they die themselves. Just being in a hospital bed for one night without anything being done costs $3000/night, whereas waiting in the ER without anything being done can cost $100/hour.
This is a systemic thing. Its not 'not a sane healthcare system'. Its literally a machine that kills people to maximize profit. And it became like this only because people let it and justified this or that other thing in the system.
> Just being in a hospital bed for one night without anything being done costs $3000/night
No, it doesn't. It costs whatever you can negotiate it to cost. I've been without insurance; one experience isn't data, but in my experience just telling the hospital you haven't got insurance is, again, good for 90+% off by itself.
Hospitals (ed: non-profit ones, but I'm pretty sure similar rules apply elsewhere) in particular are required by federal law to have 'well-publicized' financial assistance policies.
> Its literally a machine that kills people to maximize profit.
If that were true it would do a good job of maximizing profit. It's not even that good. Healthcare margins in the U.S. are 0.7%, which sucks. If you're the proverbial evil billionaire or whatever you'd rather own almost anything else.
That's a really surreal proposition. People who are sick cannot 'negotiate' anything. People who are recently treated and are recovering from an illness are the same. Something that is life-critical cannot be up for negotiation to start with, but lets allow it for argument's sake.
What if you 'negotiate' and the hospital and the insurance company just reject? Do you have pockets deep enough to fight with their lawyers for years? Do you have the time? One person against corporate behemoths. That defies logic.
> If that were true it would do a good job of maximizing profit
It does. It keeps both the availability of doctors and hospital beds to create artificial scarcity. It does vertical integration and ensures that whatever you do in healthcare ranging from getting insurance to going to hospital, from medicines to secondary care stays within the corporate shareholdership network that owns the entire conglomerate.
> when we attribute to malice what is obviously stupidity.
The reason that the system gets away with murdering people for profit is that people attribute to stupidity what should be attributed to malice. If large corporations are killing people for profit like they are, malice should be attributed to the actions of all the upper echelons of the corporate world rather than any kind of incompetence.
> What if you 'negotiate' and the hospital and the insurance company just reject?
If you are sick and can't negotiate, and no one can negotiate on your behalf, or the provider won't negotiate, and if they sue, and if you have no charity assistance, then you will be one of the folks who goes bankrupt from medical bills. I said it was hard, and you can see from that chain of conditionals that it absolutely is, but of course it does happen.
The effects of bankruptcy in the U.S. last seven years, at least as far as credit rating is concerned. Not great, but this is not serious in the way that killing people would be serious, if that happened, which again, it basically doesn't if you can navigate the system.
> It does.
0.7% is an absurdly low profit margin. It just is. The rest of your paragraph is basically true, but doesn't change that. At the same time, the U.S. spends a much higher percentage of GDP on healthcare than most developed nations. Ergo, what the U.S. system is really optimized for is wasting money
Since that is not a rational goal for anyone, it's stupid. Evil at least achieves something for the evildoer. I'll leave it at that.
> 0.7% is an absurdly low profit margin. It just is. The rest of your paragraph is basically true, but doesn't change that. At the same time, the U.S. spends a much higher percentage of GDP on healthcare than most developed nations.
Where do you pull out that profit margin. The healthcare sector does vertical integration - they keep the patient inside their services - from insurance to hospitals - and milk them.
Your system is not inefficient. It is. The efficiency is for the shareholders. Not for you.
It's probably worth pointing out that some of the largest American insurance companies are mutuals. They don't have shareholders, or profits. Admittedly this is rarer in health insurance than some other kinds, but State Farm, for example, does a huge health insurance business and sends its excess revenue, if any, back to its policyholder-owners as dividends.
Insurance companies that do make profits do much better than 0.7%, but then imagine how much worse that means doctors and hospitals are doing in order to drive the average down that far. And this was originally about hospital bills. Americans with insurance don't typically get bills from the insurance company, just statements of what they aren't going to pay.
> The healthcare sector does vertical integration
Here you have a point. American antitrust hasn't been good for some time, and tends to be less effective on vertical than horizontal integration. Nevertheless, while I can't immediately find a number on what percentage of American providers are owned by insurance companies, I'm pretty confident it isn't high.
I'm not a lawyer and I've heard of more ridiculous laws than that, so quite possibly, but even if that's the case, I wouldn't think it would cover billing x and collecting 0.1x when you realize someone can't pay x.
And even if I'm wrong about that, when lacking insurance I didn't encounter a medical provider, including big ones with big compliance offices, who wouldn't do it. But others' mileage may vary.
It's not like mental health problems are fringe lately.
It feels to me like you're speaking as though you are in the middle of the bell curve, but from my perspective people who can navigate this system are an exception.
That whole EpiPen debacle springs to mind... I'm sure if you looked into it you'd find other examples of basic medicines being unavailable to large sectors of the population purely due to the cost.
There are many people that don't qualify for free health care (and some that do!) but can't afford co-pays and co-insurance, and must go without that medicine.
And yet they do interfere and are actively engaged in sowing dissent, discord, and wacky ideas by utilizing the power of social media. Your comment is at odds with reality. The rise of people being against something as obviously beneficial as the polio vaccine is an indication of just how powerful disinformation campaigns can be.
The reactance of those against vaccines had completely different sources. It wasn't China or Russia that are responsible here, far from it.
They of course noticed and certainly tried to reinforce that message, because they indeed became aware of the split. But the initial reason was a lack of trust in media and domestic politics and not some external propaganda channel.
And expect this to get much worse if you now increase surveillance. That said, NPR just suspended a journalist that did notice some form of propaganda from domestic sources, which might explain why people were distrustful in the first place.
In fact, you might be a victim of propaganda. Maybe read up on it.
The effectiveness of the polio vaccine has been demonstrated for many decades. That now polio is on the rise and the number of morons who are opposed to that vaccine is due to “propaganda”. State sponsored information warfare has taken what was once kooky ideas and spread them in such a way that a significant portion of the population buys into them.
It is wise for you too to read up on state sponsored disinformation campaigns. Obviously the U.S. and others are involved in such campaigns. Obviously the U.S. government and institutions like the NYT have collaborated to sell a version of events. For instance the NYT endorsing the invasion of Iraq.
The polio vaccine in particular had some hiccups where people got infected with polio due to insufficiently neutered pathogens in the past. Today the vaccine is created differently and this isn't a problem anymore. But still this is a reason why the vaccine might have a bad reputation in some places in the world.
That is has returned to developed countries has probably other issues instead of propaganda. But there aren't any propaganda campaigns in western nations that disincentive vaccination that would create the need for government to spy on your devices. These alleged propaganda campaigns would be easy to find, no? Since they target a broad audience?
You just can’t agree that being opposed to the polio vaccine is entirely idiotic. It’s amazing. It’s been an effective vaccine for over 50 years. There is overwhelming scientific and statistical evidence that it is a good thing and that it should be required. Being opposed to it is entirely moronic.
That people like you are willing to rationalize anti-vaccine sentiments on the polio vaccine is quite illuminating. And you suggest of me that I’m the victim of propaganda!
I have made no such argument. My original comment above was a response to someone saying that Russia/China don’t need to engage in what I call information warfare. My response was that they do engage in it.
And your first paragraph above was to rationalize why some people are opposed to the polio vaccine. You just couldn’t equivocally state that this is an example of people being duped into believing something that is entirely idiotic. It’s not the main point you are trying to get across but it’s worth addressing this since you suggested I might be a victim of propaganda. I think, in our exchange, you are more likely to be a victim of propaganda since you can’t just say, “yeah those people are being duped”.
China and Russia are not responsible despite actively enforcing the lack of trust of the people for their governments and authorities with disinformation. Got it, got any more gems to drop on us plebs?
No external force created the John Birch society that transformed into modern Trumpers. Its purely an American thing.
And, the investigations into election meddling ended with finding out that external forces spent some $100,000 on bad Facebook ads before the 2016 election. Not even a drop in a bucket. A simple blog network that the American conservative capital funds among the tens of thousands that they fund has more reach than such an ad.
What is even worse, even non-conservatives do it for money and make millions out of such activities:
Trump openly asked for Russia to hack the DNC. And they did so. Cleary Russia interfered in our election. I don’t blame them for doing so. We interfere in other nations’ elections but one should not deny the obvious.
> Trump openly asked for Russia to hack the DNC. And they did so.
Says the Democratic side. They are a party in the political fight in the US and they cannot be taken as an objective source. This includes all the 'inquiry committees' that are propped up in the congress and senate whenever the party that wants to persecute the other side has enough majority.
>A <$insert hyper emotional disparagement>. Dictatorships need hardly interfere with the "stability" of a society which <$insert random example some democratic failure>.
And yet they do interfere. We've seen plenty of evidence, from Russia, Iran, China and (I still can't believe how they got competent at this, but there you go) North Korea.
And in some cases they've been successful at destabilizing formerly fairly sane and stable democratic countries. The social divisions that the UK And US currently find themselves in could be attributed in part to this steady drip of caustic interference.
However, as a "short term pessimist, but long term optimist" (Hitchens), I'm optimistic that we will start to introspect a bit more as societies and begin to be less easily manipulated. It will take a while, but I believe even now the tide is turning.
> "And yet they do interfere. We've seen plenty of evidence, from Russia, Iran, China and (I still can't believe how they got competent at this, but there you go) North Korea." (Emphasis; Mine - To single out the bit I'm replying to specifically.)
I still can't believe how readily so very many people continue to fall for it time and again, despite the lessons of history.
Your answer seems a bit vague to me, so I can't follow what your objection is.
But just to be clear, my surprise at their abilities stems from the fact that their country is so insular, tightly controlled and technologically backward* (look at a night picture of N. Korea, for instance, 80% dark, with no basic streetlighting), that it surprises me that they can allow a portion of their society to roam and participate in the internet freely without infecting the rest of their country.
The Doublethink needed to pull that off must be staggering (thank you Orwell for giving us a vocabulary to express the concepts and experience of living under totalitarianism).
*I know they have ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons, also I'm pretty sure their internal surveillance tech is also top notch.
> the fact that their country is so insular, tightly controlled and technologically backward
A totalitarian country can invest billions of dollars from the federal budget into propaganda in another countries. You don't need technological supremacy to pour money into something. Tight cotroll and insulation makes the task easier, not harder.
> that it surprises me that they can allow a portion of their society to roam and participate in the internet freely without infecting the rest of their country.
Isolation and elimination of infected individuals helps prevent the spread of the disease through hte population
This is certainly an issue, but apart from environmental legislation (e.g. please may I pump raw shit and tonnes of pesticide into public waterways) their main interest is at least in preserving public stability, general wealth and happiness.
Dictatorships though have a more macroscopically sinister agenda against successful democratic rivals.
Foreign interference is almost always bad and against the interests of national security. Lobbying on domestic policy actually has some important uses.
I haven't read much about the domestic capitalists and lobbyists attacking our critical infrastructure with cyber-attacks. Please tell us more about this.
They're the ones that cost-cut the operations of aforementioned critical infrastructure to the point of it being so vulnerable...
Just look at catastrophes caused by PG&E in 2018, ERCOT in 2021, or First Energy in 2003. Not a single one was caused by an attack on critical infrastructure, they're just cutting corners!
They don't have to, they just buy politicians that remove safety laws and break strikes against unsafe working conditions. The Ohio rail disaster was just one example of this happening.
> The social divisions that the UK And US currently find themselves in could be attributed in part to this steady drip of caustic interference.
Please look away from the curtain hiding rising wealth inequality, cost of living, and the financialization of daily needs. There are no material explanation for the rising contradictions. It is simply our boogymen misleading our population.
It is good we as a society make bets on housing! Who needs to sleep under a roof when you can own shares!
I agree with you that things are currently quite bad, and need to get better. From my UK centric viewpoint, over the last decade Brexit, climate change and the pandemic have proven fertile ground for diverting peoples' attention away from societal issues that have not been addressed, or have even exacerbated by wilful neglect of basic services by Government.
But I have the feeling that that well of constant culture wars has run dry, and people are becoming more wary of being drawn into endless fruitless debates about these things. And after looking up form their smartphones they've finally seen all of the signs for Food Banks, noticed that the weather has gone insane and that the price of biscuits is inhumane and asked themselves 'how did we get here?' 'how do we get back to a better place?' and will hopefully agitate again for a better society.
I'm confused by your comment. First you call climate change a distraction; then you list it as something people are finally becoming aware of? The endless debates were to try and stop it. The population not being able to is just a reflection of the majority.
It's odd how people are trying to divide politics into "culture war" and real problems; it wasn't that long ago climate change was considered a culture war. Labeling something a "culture war" is just the first kneejerk reaction from the right when they appose something.
Creating a culture war is often the first reaction of the right to things they don't like in order to blunt their effect.
"loonie lentil eating lefties", "greenies", "mad Greta" (I'm making these up, but I'm sure I'm sure there's plenty of similar examples). People used to be comforted by these ad-hominems, and it allowed them to continue buying aspirational 4x4 off-road vehicles and 3 flights abroad a year without touching their conscious. They could laugh, share memes, ignore news stories about forest fires in Canada in December or massive loss of ice shelves in Antarctica and carry on as usual.
But as the pot starts to boil harder I get the feeling people are looking away from these distractions and beginning to look more critically at the information they're getting, and beginning to wonder if it's not such a funny joke after all.
>But I have the feeling that that well of constant culture wars has run dry,
Honestly, I don't believe that statement. I think many people equate the culture war issues to the issues later in that second paragraph with the economy and climate (if they even see an issue there). If our leaders are failing at [insert culture war issue here], then that explains why they're failing at [insert economic issue here].
So the culture wars are very interesting. The core of the the idea of a culture war is that class is divided by culture, rather than position in society.
You can look to old propaganda from the early 20th century in Italy and Germany where characters would speak to this. They would deny class lines based on wealth or capital holdings and insist the true class was defined by in and out cultural identifiers.
These culture wars we've been seeing are not organic. They're seeded by orgs that can make money off the outrage. It might be dramatic sounding to say, but the increasing prevalence of culture wars is indicative of the rising tide of fascism. Our societies have done a lot to weaken unions and redefine the meaning of class.
Because we redefined class boundaries to be cultural, we've created an artificial alignment, where say a working class queer urbanite and and a working class non-queer rural worker get shafted by many of the same mechanisms, but are seen to be in different stations because one has access to a bus and the other drives a pickup.
At the end of the day, material issues are what hurt people, but now the rural working class will blame the urbanite, rather than the capitalist that has strip-mined their town, and the urbanite will blame the backwards bumpkin rather than the capitalist that has strip-mined their city.
While I wont argue pointlessly, I am curious what the median values look like for these stats.
In the US, averaging falls short due to said inequality. A smaller group of people have vastly increased wealth, while others stay stagnant. This moves the needle for certain statistics that don't give a full view of the issue.
Its easy to say "hey the average is fine" when you're talking about NYC where stock brokers and high end real estate really drags up that average.
From the 2020 census, the average income was 107k, where the median income was 67k.
Can you give a tangible example where disinformation from China impacted any domestic topic in the US?
Sure, there is propaganda and attempts to influence certain topics, but I wouldn't want to give up privacy because I don't like some content on TikTok.
I think the divisions are of domestic origin and this argument is more or less FUD.
And no, you will hardly ever get rid of surveillance powers once established without serious political shifts.
Propaganda messages are quite easy and public. And yet I don't think you can name a single instance where such a message would have influenced the beliefs of a significant portion of the domestic population. If so, which message, what topic and who was targeted?
I think an example of propaganda is that you need to give up your freedoms for security because of "disinformation". A wrong statement on the internet became a threat to democracy.
>I think the divisions are of domestic origin and this argument is more or less FUD.
I agree, many divisions are definitely of domestic origin. However we definitely know that foreign interference has been at play to identify and amplify those divisions.
>If so, which message, what topic and who was targeted?
5G - weird one I know, but agitators gonna agitate.
Climate - Russia was a massive oil exporter, de-carbonizing efforts threatened that.
Atomic power in Germany - Russia definitely didn't want Germany achieving independence from their gas imports.
BRICS - China would love to de-dollarize the world.
>And no, you will hardly ever get rid of surveillance powers once established without serious political shifts.
And this is the advantage of democracies, big shifts can happen. With Dictatorships however it usually takes violence. A lot of violence.
5g? why would china be anti-5g? how is the whole BRICS thing propaganda or foreign interference (is NATO propaganda or just an association, don't even get your point since BRICS isn't even that organized)? I was on the fence but this response put me super firmly into the "this argument is FUD" camp
The true problem started with the promise of western lifestyle with a planet that can not support such a lifestyle, and it cant be taken back. And due to the assymetric destabilizing effects of advanced technology, we can not science our way out of this trap. So, we walk the middle road, augmenting society to better the angles of our nature with panopticons etc. while the planet still can carry us.
Planet could have easily supported this lifestyle for everyone on the planet in 50s but everyone else but developed nations started a mass reproduction race where population didn't just double but increased tenfold.
Sorry, you obviously don't live in a totalitarian country.
Democracy is never ideal, it's always full of crooks, lies, hypocrisy. Especially when most people have more interesting things to do than participating in politics. But it's not even close to anything totalitarian. I've lived in both, and have the perspective.
"Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
The person above didn't claim that? It's just the difference between ideal democracy where the interests of most people are reflected in policy and US democracy (and most others, to different degrees) where choice is limited and corporate interests weigh much more heavy, it's hard to tell if it's closer to a more openly top-down form of government than it is from the ideal.
Yet the person above didn't get arrested and tortured for that comment. Or for a wrong "like" on Facebook. I'm not exaggerating, it really happens every day.
Try posting more than a short line of dismissive cynicism that can be interpreted any number of ways next time. And in the context of the comment you're replying to, "drawing an equivalence between totalitarianism and Western democracy (whether that's "democracy" or not)" is very much the common meaning.
If you intended to say something else with more nuance then you should have said something else with more nuance. I do my best to give the best possible interpretations to what people are saying, but don't expect people to bend over backwards to tease out a good faith interpretation of such brief and dismissive comments. You reap what you sow.
I'm still not sure what point your trying to make. Are you arguing that the US is a republic but not a democracy? That it's controlled by corporations and therefore shouldn't be called a democracy? That first past the post voting and the two party system prevent a "true" democracy from flourishing?
You made a very contrarian statement (totally fine!) but left all the work to figure out what you meant up to the reader. Your response is full of as hominem (ironically what you're complaining about), and it still doesn't explain anything about your position
The word “democracy” has a colloquial meaning that is used in common speech. In the U.S. we have a “democracy” as that term is used by most people. You sound like the people who say communism has never been tried.
I'd say he's illustrating the nuance intended by people who say communism has never been tried. On paper, both democracy and communism have been tried. In reality, both have been ham-strung by human greed, corruption, propaganda and good-old apathy.
In an academic setting where people are using precise terminology these nuances are worth debating and are important. But in a forum such as this one where it is clear what one means by “democracies” this is not appropriate. Clearly there is a distinction between Russia/China and the U.S./most of Europe in terms of freedom/elected representation where one side is called “democratic” and the other authoritarian. Pedantically quibbling over precise definitions is useless in this context.
Explain how you can have snowdens discussion and this thread in public? Doing the same critique of government policy in russia or china would get you disappeared real fast.
It's funny that you mention Snowden, a person who exposed a whole lot of anti-democratic stuff going on in his own country and became a widely celebrated patriotic hero for his courageous work. I guess the people guilty of anti-democratic behavior went to justice, while Snowden himself was offered protection and a well-deserved respectable position to continue his fight for human rights. Just like other notorious human-rights activists like Manning, Swartz or Assange.
> became a widely celebrated patriotic hero for his courageous work
When leaks happened, traditional opinion polls seemed to show a 1:1 split on support vs. disapproval. Online polls seemed to show a 2:1 split, favoring support.
One possibility: You are allowed to have such discussions because these will be ineffective and forgotten within half a day while bringing about zero policy change. Most of us around the world do not know how to bring about a change in policy. Intellectual exchanges over such forums are certainly not the way.
Increasingly, the word "democracy" seems like the word "terrorist" - both words have lost any distinct meaning they used to have, because of the way they have been abused in political rhetoric.
Re. your handle: did you snag it from the Borges short story?
Every time someone disagrees with laws passed by a democracy, this argument comes back.
Did you ever speak with someone out of tech about internet spying? I did, no normie gives a shit.
This is 100% the will of the people. Just take the L for what it is and accept that this is democracy working as intended.
Western democracies had no interest in supporting democracies in other places they have been complicit in bringing down fledging democracies all over the the world the latest example is Pakistan. Democracy and Justice is only for themselves it also shows how Israel can commit the worse war crimes and atrocities and most western politicians and media defend it.
That is false propaganda. He was allowed to get into power by the army but his government hobbled. He would have been in power in 2013 if clean elections had been held let alone 2018 he was not brought into power. He was not elected by the army and the latest elections has shown it
Reality: 's/Democracies thought that/Western techno-utopians believed, and feel-good politicians promised, that/'
I never got the sense that real grown-ups, who knew history, believed any such "the internet will topple" twaddle. Carefully-delivered truths (think Voice of America) can annoy and mildly undermine totalitarian regimes. If you want to do more - well, in WWII, British and American bombers dropped vastly more high explosives than information leaflets on the Axis powers.
It's gotta be both because if you don't know who to brutalize you can have all the brutalizers in the world but not know how to use em. Look at how the Stasi operated, intel is crucial for maintaining control of a state.
I disagree, it is far from inevitable. I think this is a huge mirage. People believe others fall for propaganda en masse and fail to account for their own lack of critical thinking.
This is a typical fear reaction. "Disinformation" threatens our democracies, so we need to give up X and Y and allow government access to our most private devices and information.
It is wrong of course. And if we would ask for an example of a case of disinformation that did threaten democracy, we can wait a long, long time.
The capitalist West was not 'totalitarian' only because up until recently, it was possible to condition or distract the public through the corporate-controlled media. When the people gained the means to share information and organize and the corporate media was not enough to keep them down anymore, the system showed its true nature and stomped down the Occupy movement on the pavement. Sure, they did not jail them for their 'free speech', but they fined tens of thousands of dollars each for 'trespassing on PUBLIC property', effectively bankrupting many students, working-class activists etc, and sending a message to everyone else who 'had ideas'.
Some say that 'Angloamerican democracies are flawed of course'. The above is not flawed. Americans say that neither their vote nor their opinion has any effect on policy (~70%+ on polls each) leaving aside the recent research that shows it to be so, and when they try to change anything, they get what was done to Occupy done to them. Its not democratic
And for those who think that there is more freedom in Europe:
Please. PLEASE. can't we stop pretending that random russian/chinese bot do influence us? On twitter??? it's bullshit. Our media and friends are much more powerful.
It's NOT inevitable. Let's not be jaded. This law is terrible.
Being a racist and having racist beliefs is not a crime that should be punished by law. You'd be fully in the territory of thought crime at that point.
To my knowledge, Trump has not actually taken discriminatory actions nor proposed any legislature to systematically oppress people again.
the term racism is getting thrown around so much nowadays it hardly has any meaning anymore...
"If the bill becomes law, any company or individual that provides ANY service whatsoever may be forced to assist in NSA surveillance, as long as they have access to equipment on which communications are transmitted or stored—such as routers, servers, cell towers, etc."
We have the tech (and have had for some time) to prevent this happening. I don't know why some intrepid coder hasn't released an easy to deploy, self-hosted, p2p encrypted platform allowing limited sharing of files, comms, sites etc. I was involved in the development of something like this, and local government (AU) regulation made it untenable, but there are countries where this could be doable without repercussions.
The vast majority of traffic I care about on the internet is related to my close peers and friends. This could all be completely private. The intersections between other communities could be done with ACLs, the largely public stuff can still be hosted on servers.
The 2 main problems this faces are that it's adversarial to advertising and analysis, and that it doesn't involve payment to a 3rd party for hosting / processing. Both of these are positives in my view.
> I don't know why some intrepid coder hasn't released an easy to deploy, self-hosted, p2p encrypted platform allowing limited sharing of files, comms, sites etc.
I tried this once. When I was almost ready to release something my government started to illegally persecute companies that provided privacy on the internet, and the heads of the Judiciary power started to comment that hiding your data is criminal.
That's discouraging to hear. This is why the U.S. Constitution's 4th amendment is so important. The right to privacy isn't only to give citizens peace of mind, but also to prevent governments from tyranizing freely using dissenting information to fuel their persecution.
Unfortunately we've demonstrated a willingness and ability to throw the 4th amendment out the window (see the Patriot Act) if you can reference a scary enough boogeyman.
Normally the Supreme Court as an institution works to keep the other branches in check, but it feels like we're in a new phase of the judicial branch, nowadays, at least from a 4th Amendment perspective.
> an easy to deploy, self-hosted, p2p encrypted platform allowing limited sharing of files
They have: Freenet, I2P, Tor... none have ever really taken off, _because_ they can be used to circumvent government monitoring. At the end of the day, we'll submit to panopticon censorship because most of us _want_ panopticon censorship.
None of them have taken off because the UX sucks. Say what you will about open source development, Tor, P2P, IPFS, etc, it's an amazing achievement, but without great design and UX it will never take off. It needs to work cross platform, be designed beautifully, be consistent in speed, responsiveness, etc; have support and documentation; guaranteed uptime; work cross-device; integrate with modern services, etc etc.
A long tail of features that users care about. Devs will ship 1/10th of the total package as free, open source and scratch their heads at why the users don't come to enjoy the freedom. As Steve Jobs said, "Design is how it works." And most of these solutions don't work for the average user.
Agreed. Although I think the other side to this you touched on is building a stable, competitive business around this, that cannot be bought and paid for by corrupt government officials, and resistant to acquisitions by corporations that are already beholden to intelligence agencies to comply with their BS.
I don't have any hard evidence but anecdotally I can say that when Snowden, Cambridge Analytica, and really anything else in this space happens nobody I talk to outside of tech workers really cares. Most responses I get are jokes along the line of "of you mean they'll see the $15 in my bank account and offer to pay my electric?".
Yep, that's what I was getting at. Whenever I mention censorship-resistant file sharing tools on here, somebody comes along and says, "bah, those are useless, they're full of nazis and child molesters". It's an endless catch-22: if really bad people can't evade surveillance, neither can you. And if you can, then they can, too. When most people hit that realization, they say, "yeah, ok, whatever, 24/7 surveillance is fine as long as it catches bad people too."
> When most people hit that realization, they say ...
I have to say this is not my experience at all. In fact I can say I've probably never met anybody who came to that conclusion.
In my experience, most people recognize that, yes, bad people should be caught, but also that widespread surveillance and erosion of privacy is both bad for them and society. The problem arises with the fact that people often have more pressing matters to them - such as feeding their family - so they don't have time or energy to worry about fighting the myriad systemic issues that is needed to fix things on the necessary societal level.
I do not blame people for this, and nor should you; all that does is antagonize people and increases their reticence about politics in general.
> they say, "yeah, ok, whatever, 24/7 surveillance is fine as long as it catches bad people too."
So you should continue the discussion like this: those bad people after 24/7 surveillance have no other option to infiltrate the surveillance caste. That's where things will get really hellish.
It comes back to the argument: "Why are you opposed to this? Do you have something to hide?" It's easy to paint this as an easy way to catch pedophiles. It doesn't matter if this is actually true or if these arguments really hold up, by they are easy quips that can be thrown out that aren't easily dismissed with an as easy to reply quip.
Basically, the position comes down to: do you want to stop pedophiles, or do you want to make it easier for them to hide?
And yes, you can rationalize all day long about how that's not accurate and this and that, but then your arguing that most people are willing to sift through al the data instead of just going with something that at first glance seems reasonable.
Children's safety online has been an excuse for excessive surveillance for a long time. Not so long ago Apple was going to scan every file on your device for this reason.
If Freenet was as fast and as easy as browsing over regular internet and had just as much relevant content, I think everyone would use it. It's slow, sparse, and requires more effort to install and use, so people don't.
Suppose the political party you dislike is in power and starts using their surveillance capabilities to crack down on dissenting opinions shared on the Internet, and you spend time discussing those opinions because it's your right as a citizen to exercise your freedom of thought and speech, but they catch you and penalize you for what you dared to share (which would be a benign opinion), would you start opposing it?
If it prevented your ability to speak freely about (and with) the candidates who represent your's and many others' wishes in a democracy, leading you to fear, would it become important to you?
What are you saying is the actual mechanism of causality for people making personal software choices based on "wanting" panopticon censorship? I don't think it's "I'll be a good citizen and prefer software that allows surveillance". Unless by "most of us" you mean everyone taking home bags of money working for the surveillance industry in Surveillance Valley?
The way I see it, centralized surveillable services promise lucrative investment returns based on monetizing user data, which attracts capital from the everything bubble seeking anywhere to go, which pays for an overwhelming amount of advertising that fakes social proof. And now that users have been trained to wantonly trust web browsers and shy away from native software, and the surveillance industry business model has been proven out, the situation is quite sticky.
You can’t use tech to solve a legal issue like this because you’re either breaking a law, or just kicking the problem a few years into the future, waiting for a new law that takes your tech into consideration. The best response is to fight it hard at the public opinion level, and then the legislation becomes untenable
But if that fails, tech workarounds might be a lot better than nothing
The X thread says even service providers who come into your house can be forced to steal data from your computer, e.g. plumbers. So storing your data locally won't be sufficient, it also needs to be tamperproof against physical attackers.
If the government can force a plumber to that, can they force the plumber to show up to the job on time? Will I be charged for the extra time? ("Hey honey, the plumber picked up my call on the first ring. Is that suspicious?")
Hell, I remember a proposal to encourage that during the GWB administration for “terrorism”. I wish I could find it, but Google is incapable of returning anything from before 2023 any more.
Streisand sets up a new server running your choice of WireGuard, OpenConnect, OpenSSH, OpenVPN, Shadowsocks, sslh, Stunnel, or a Tor bridge. It also generates custom instructions for all of these services. At the end of the run you are given an HTML file with instructions that can be shared with friends, family members, and fellow activists.
> I don't know why some intrepid coder hasn't released an easy to deploy, self-hosted, p2p encrypted platform allowing limited sharing of files, comms, sites etc.
Isn't this already effectively the case - not just in the US but universally? If the government 'lawfully' requests access to investigate a crime, there are only a few carveouts that are available to dispute the request (journalists with 1st amendment privileges, etc...). That's why Apple and others just architect so they do not have visibility into much of the data - so the answer is 'no' not because they're declining the request but 'no' because they have no path to get the data (because they designed it that way).
> That's why Apple and others just architect so they do not have visibility into much of the data
No, that is not why. Yes, they architect so they do not have visibility into much of the data, but not (primarily) because they want to protect their users. It's because they want to save costs spent on lawyers debating whether the subpoena is indeed applicable and lawful and doesn't invade constitutional right to privacy or violate some state or international law or even a third party EULA.
By shutting themselves out Apple weaponizes technology into some legalism that carves the right to privacy or freedom of speech into stone. That's great, but it doesn't magically solve all legal problems; it just makes sure it's not Apple's problem anymore.
The question is which is a greater societal power, Apple's desire to minimize lawyer costs or the US government's desire to be able to surveil everyone who owns an Apple device? I believe it's the latter, in which case Apple is simply lying that they provide privacy. Room 641A existed.
> The question is which is a greater societal power, Apple's desire to minimize lawyer costs or the US government's desire to be able to surveil everyone who owns an Apple device?
For sure. But to broaden the picture, this isn't the only for coming from governments. While right hand might be pushing for surveillance, the left hand might mandate that companies put reasonable effort into protecting the privacy (and other constitutional rights) of its users; be transparent about data handling etc. Companies don't want to be caught in the middle, especially if doing that right gets prohibitively expensive. See also WhatsApp adopting OWS' Signal protocol and Telegram moving from Russia to UAE to escape "the hassle".
I think what Apple intends to do with end-to-end encryption is hide their responsibility behind unbreakable math that say: look, don't ask us because we're not in the loop. Ultimately, that cannot be true unless Apple's soft- and hardware were completely open and transparent — which they won't do for commercial reasons. So some level of trust is always involved. So trust is what Apple sells to end users — warranted or not — but the profit margins are mostly in not needing to be involved in moderation between users mutually or between customers and law enforcement. I think "hassle" and IP are Apple's primary motive for security, selling trust is a second and doing good to the world is an afterthought.
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.
The US Consititution is set out as definitive of "democracy", but it's vague, it's 200 years old, and apparently even eminent jurists can't agree on what it means. Oh - and it's irrelevant for anyone who isn't a US citizen (it doesn't apply to visitors or overseas residents).
The US Constitution is set out as an iteration of a "republic", and the things you list are arguably strengths rather than weaknesses.
> Oh - and it's irrelevant for anyone who isn't a US citizen (it doesn't apply to visitors or overseas residents).
What country does this successfully? And making the bill of rights relevant to the entire world means violent adversaries are apparently not a concern.
There is also a type of worry that if cyber surveillance suddenly doesn't need a warrant than any group that is targeted by whatever party is in power (ie. whoever they don't like) suddenly are being surveilled, possibly for private speech/thought crimes, the definition of which could change every 2-4 years. I'm not saying that is true, but that would be the slippery slope version of this.
Who does? Europeans are mostly happy giving more power to their government including surveillance (they're tried to make end-to-end encryption illegal how many times now?). Australians allow the government to force companies to build backdoors.
Humans inherently care more about tangible past dangers repeating versus new potential dangers.
>Europeans are mostly happy giving more power to their government including surveillance (they're tried to make end-to-end encryption illegal how many times now?)
No, we aren't. And we haven't tried to ban end-to-end encryption. You're conflating the European political ruling class with regular European citizens. Our interests are mostly opposed, and we don't have a say on none of the shit they do. I get what you're trying to say, but until there's a popular vote held on any of those issues so we can blame general stupidity for how they are tackled, if at all, I'm blaming politicians.
If we're talking banning end-to-end encryption specifically, the general population is largely oblivious to it, or electronic privacy in general, or people wouldn't post like 90% of the stuff they put on Instagram.
I've watched a guy on YouTube discuss his experience buying a plot of land and building a house on it, and I think he straight up pointed out exactly where he lives, what car he drives and what not. No need to put effort into doxxing him, he did everything himself.
This might sound insane to you or me, but most people don't even think about it.
So if you seed couple articles and TV documentaries on how end-to-end encryption is bad because terrorists and pedophiles use it, and you as a law abiding citizen have nothing to fear, while not so carefully avoiding the other side of the coin, I think think the general population would vote for it.
This is all part of the freedom/privacy vs security balance discussion, which we don't have a good solution for.
Why is it insane? For example, my address is more or less public record one you know my name since I purchased a piece of property. Keeping your name hidden while being a public figure is hard. So you'd need to use a shell company to buy the land ahead of time. Normal for movie stars probably but not for someone on YouTube. The vast majority of people don't view their own name as highly sensitive information to never give out. They use it every day all the time.
The risk is that the YouTuber pisses of someone and they swat him or try to steal the land or some such. What that really comes down to however is that "knowing my address someone can do an illegal act on me with impunity." Most people would view that as a societal or government problem versus one they should personally tackle by perpetually hiding. Hiding might be a viable short term or stop gap solution but if it's a long term requirement then you're living in a dystopia which most people would prefer not to.
> You're conflating the European political ruling class with regular European citizens.
The exact same thing can be said about "the Americans". In both regions there are more than enough people that want surveillance and banning of encryption, it's not just "the politicians" (because, you know, "think of the children/terrorists").
Yeah; Here in the USA, there's tons of folks you can explain how "Why should I worry? I have nothing to hide." is not a valid way to look at this issue until you're blue in the face, and they'll still "stick to their guns" that you're just bein' paranoid. Doesn't matter how many times throughout history or how many different ways the lesson's been taught; Some folks just don't "get it" until it's literally on their doorstep with weapons and handcuffs over some strange law they never even knew got passed for sayin' or doin' something they didn't even know was illegal or that anyone else even noticed them doin' or sayin'.
Some fail, some succeed. Same as the US. That's my point.
In terms of terrorism, let's look at what France could do for the last almost 20 years:
> The ability of the government to establish “individual monitoring and surveillance measures” against individuals who present a “particularly serious” threat of terrorism.
> Police may access an individual's computer files without a warrant to prevent a terrorist act.
> Internet service providers and Internet cafes are required to retain login and connection data for one year and to provide this data to authorities if requested.
> Authorities may receive telephone and cell phone usage details, without the permission of a judge.
> Increased CCTV surveillance in public
> Identity checks, including on board international trains, are strengthened.
> The Prime Minister or a person qualified in the Interior Ministry may authorize listening devices to record conversations.
I think what's new here is that they could now force Apple to use additional devices and software, not of Apple's choosing, to obtain the data for them.
I think you're using the outside US English understanding of 'government' that means the current majority group in the legislature and typically that group picks the executive.
That's a fine definition, but not the operative one in a discussion of the US NSA.
In the US, the government is the apparatus of state power. That includes legislative, judicial, and executive. Including police, court, schools run by the state (we call them public schools, but that's another term that likely means something else to you), parks deparments, municipal services (if not private businesses), etc.
Separation of legislative / judiciary / executive powers.
Speaking of, I realize that I never really thought (enough) about it, it also matters to which one of these the various espionage and law enforcement organizations report to !
My opinion is that NSA has already done that a long time ago.
My opinion is that Iaws like this are made to provide cover to use that intelligence they have gathered in a less covert manner.
If somebody asks, "where the hell did you get that information"?
They can point to this law as a legal procedure.
I dont think general encryption is a big problem for the NSA either,
thought that is less certain.
The NSO group is able to repeatedly find serious and scary 0 days,
that remain unknown for some period of time.
The NSO grop does not have the manpower, skill, budget and hardware that
the NSA does.
I am convinced the NSA is sitting on an ample collection of useful 0-days,
0 click vulnerabilities and they can access Windows/Linux/MacOS/iOS/Android/Chrome/Edge/Firefox
Dropbox,OneDrive,Box,S3, etc etc at their leisure.
but they cannot use a lot of what they find since it would raise questions.
> I am convinced the NSA is sitting on an ample collection of useful 0-days, 0 click vulnerabilities and they can access Windows/Linux/MacOS/iOS/Android/Chrome/Edge/Firefox Dropbox,OneDrive,Box,S3, etc etc at their leisure. but they cannot use a lot of what they find since it would raise questions.
This seems extremely uncontroversial to me.
Tucker Carlson released an interview yesterday with Telegram's founder, Pavel Durov. The part that I found most interesting was that Durov claims US intelligence tried to secretly work with Telegram engineers to understand, among other things, which open source libraries Telegram uses – I assume because they have back doors into a lot of the popular ones.
If you happen to have access to any relevant infrastructure or item (like the phone of someone else) the new version will change that. You no longer need to be an employee of an ISP or something like this.
I believe that "Trump-stuffed SCOTUS" is referring to the current Supreme Court leaning hard in "conservative" (Republican) political directions / making decisions Trump would probably approve of.
which is odd, because the justice most recently supporting the infringement of individual freedoms was Ketanji Brown, arguing on behalf of the government that there should be more limitations on the 1st amendment.
The case brought by Missouri and Louisiana against the Biden admin concerning government collusion with big tech to censor misinformation during covid. She used the phrase, the first amendment "hamstrings" the government during emergencies. I couldn't find a clip on YouTube that's not padded with commentary, unfortunately. But it is troubling...as a supreme Court justice, one of your priorities is protecting the citizens from the government via the constitution, not the other way around.
You're talking about Murthy vs. Missouri (23-411).
Justice Jackson poses a hypothetical on page 94 about "a new teen challenge that involved teens jumping out of windows at increasing elevations" and then asks respondents' council if "is it your view that the government authorities could not declare those circumstances a public emergency and encourage social media platforms to take down the information that is instigating this problem?"
There are several back and forths on the following pages where respondents respond to the hypothetical and follow up questions are asked. Then Justice Jackson re-broaches the topic on page 116 and continues:
"So my biggest concern is that your view has the First Amendment hamstringing the government in significant ways in the most important time periods. I mean, what would -- what would you have the government do? I've heard you say a couple times that the government can post its own speech. But, in my hypothetical, you know, kids, this is not safe, don't do it, is not going to get it done. And so I guess some might say that the government actually has a duty to take steps to protect the citizens of this country, and you seem to be suggesting that that duty cannot manifest itself in the government encouraging or even pressuring platforms to take down harmful information. So can you help me? Because I'm really -- I'm really worried about that because you've got the First Amendment operating in an environment of threatening circumstances from the government's perspective, and you're saying that the government can't interact with the source of those problems."
His response continues to page 119.
Someone is cherry-picking quotes and serving them to you so you will think "liberal Justices are against the first Amendment."
You're making my point for me. You read one sentence she said, and made a determination about the entire context of the argument, which , pointing this out, was the purpose of my original post. The relevant part is the entire oral argument.
Respondents council is in making an argument that suggests the government can NEVER have a compelling interest to suppress speech, which no one on the Supreme Court would agree with, and is what she is asking him to elaborate on. He clarifies this in his response from 115-119 that the government will always have compelling state interests arguments narrowly taylored to specific circumstances "on the back end".
> If the government has the power to override the First Amendment by declaring an emergency, we'll always have "emergencies."
If you simply listened to the oral arguments in this case, you would know that is not what is being discussed or suggested should happen in this case. They are debating what constitutes government coercion. The government can asks, suggest, encourage, etc, but it cannot coerce. Facebook as a private entity can censor posts however it wishes (editorial discretion / freedom of the press). If the government asks Facebook to censor posts it is already censoring anyways, is that coercion? That's what this case is debating. The nuance of this case is being stripped away, and being served to you as "conservative voices are being silenced" and "liberal justices don't want you to have 1st Amendment protections" when nothing could be further from the truth.
> even if state interests are "narrowly tailored," the government will always tailor the situation to match.
The opposite of this is also a perverse incentive: anytime anyone says anything and they receive push back, they can simply claim a 1st amendment violation and ALWAYS win, as though nuance and context somehow don't matter. What if the slight suppression of one persons' 1st amendment rights would alleviate the suppression of millions of other peoples' 1st amendment rights?
> Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
Its interesting that you chose this quote because, the same way that you clearly haven't read the minutes of this case, you probably haven't read 1984 either, but are just cherry-picking quotes from it. Winston remembers being at war with Eurasia and not Eastasia. But if the propaganda machine just gives people short snippets like "Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia" then that becomes truth. Just like if the propaganda machine feeds you that "this is about a pandemic where the government lied and censored people" then you don't have to actually read the minutes of specific court cases.
---
Another point is that you're implying that the pandemic was the "emergency". But the emergency for you is that "the government lied and censored people" during the pandemic. But by your logic, this can be used to "override the first Amendment". Which is what seems to be happening in NetChoice vs Paxton (22-555) and Moody vs NetChoice (22-277). These are being presented in the media that users' 1st Amendment rights on these platforms are being violated but what is really happening is there are interest groups in the government that are trying to force social media companies to host content the companies do not agree with. This is a 1st Amendment violation, namely, a violation of the freedom of the press. You are being convinced to participate in and argue for the thing that you are telling me you are the most worried about.
> If the government asks Facebook to censor posts it is already censoring anyways, is that coercion?
That's an odd thing to say on a case where the government did absolutely coerce Facebook.
> The opposite of this is also a perverse incentive: anytime anyone says anything and they receive push back, they can simply claim a 1st amendment violation and ALWAYS win, as though nuance and context somehow don't matter.
Heh, no. The Supreme Court has already ruled on what speech is legal and illegal.
> What if the slight suppression of one persons' 1st amendment rights would alleviate the suppression of millions of other peoples' 1st amendment rights?
That what if doesn't matter in a case where the government suppressed the truth.
But anyway, that is a valid case, but you'll have to come up with a more specific example than that. The only case I can think of where that might happen is when a government official uses his First Amendment rights to shut down the speech of people, and then it is obvious that the government official is wrong.
> Just like if the propaganda machine feeds you that "this is about a pandemic where the government lied and censored people" then you don't have to actually read the minutes of specific court cases.
Again, I read it.
> These are being presented in the media that users' 1st Amendment rights on these platforms are being violated but what is really happening is there are interest groups in the government that are trying to force social media companies to host content the companies do not agree with. This is a 1st Amendment violation, namely, a violation of the freedom of the press. You are being convinced to participate in and argue for the thing that you are telling me you are the most worried about.
It is only a First Amendment violation if companies are people. IIRC, that's not a good thing.
So "being convinced to participate in and argue for the thing that you are telling me you are the most worried about"? Not at all. I want companies to lose their personhood. Especially these MASSIVE companies that basically control the digital town square.
And I own a company, by the way. Do not assume things about me.
Anyway, wouldn't these companies refusing to post content be the very example you gave earlier?
> What if the slight suppression of one persons' 1st amendment rights would alleviate the suppression of millions of other peoples' 1st amendment rights?
Isn't that the exact situation? The First Amendment rights of one person, a CEO, suppresses the First Amendment rights of millions. So yeah, I agree with you on the example, but it still means you're wrong about the cases.
> That's an odd thing to say on a case where the government did absolutely coerce Facebook.
But that's what this case is about. So "absolutely" is an incorrect word. The Supreme Court is currently deciding this.
> Heh, no. The Supreme Court has already ruled on what speech is legal and illegal.
I don't know how this statement refutes what I said. See NRA vs Vullo. Just claim a 1st Amendment violation to avoid legal investigations. You're also implying that law doesn't change somehow.
> you'll have to come up with a more specific example than that.
Why? You provided a perfect example. Meaning there are scenarios where suppression is justified.
> It is only a First Amendment violation if companies are people.
No. Newspaper companies are not people and have 1st Amendment protections. They have editorial discretion over how and what is printed in their newspapers. This is content curation. Social media companies also have editorial discretion over the content they host and how that content is presented to its users. Again, this is what is being litigated in NetChoice v Paxton and Moody v NetChoice. The government of Texas and Florida are saying that social media sites must host content they find politically distasteful. That would be like the government saying the National Review has to print a pro-Biden op-ed, or that they cannot remove comments written by users at the bottom of articles.
> companies that basically control the digital town square.
They do own the digital town square, in a free marketplace. It's being suggested to you that these ideas are being "censored" but private entities cannot censor, only the government can. What is really happening is that these ideas are unpopular, and are losing in a marketplace of ideas. And so certain groups are appealing to the government to interfere into a free marketplace to force unpopular ideas on people.
> And I own a company, by the way. Do not assume things about me.
No where in my responses did I suggest you don't own a company.
> Isn't that the exact situation?
Again, no. You don't have a constitutional right to make a social media platform host what you say. You have a right to say it if you want to, but they have 1st Amendment freedom of press protections. To be clear, I'm not saying I think this is a good idea, and things should be this way, I think things should largely be un-moderated on the internet, I'm simply stating what I understand to be true about the rules of the game that is currently being played.
One last comment because I'm not sure I articulated it well: You said that if emergencies are used as an excuse to curtail 1st Amendment rights, there will always be emergencies. In your mind, the pandemic was the emergency. And suppression of information about things related to the pandemic online was the curtailing of 1st Amendment rights. If what you're saying is true, then logically, there will always be another "emergency" and what I am asking you is, how do you know that "a pandemic where the government lied and censored people" isn't simply the next emergency? This concept is being fed to people and they are supporting the idea of curtailing freedom of the press' 1st Amendment rights under the disguise that 1st Amendment freedom of speech rights are being infringed. If what I am saying is true, and no such free speech violations are occurring, but instead free press violations are occurring, then you are participating in the very suppression you are telling me you are afraid of because of a contrived "emergency".
They're likely thinking that if someone were to argue against such legislation, they could take it all the way to the supreme court only to be disappointed in the final decision? Thinking they'd end up deciding that this sort of legislation is indeed "necessary and proper"? That's just how I read it, though. They could mean something entirely different for all I know. ;)
Say you have no Xitter account, how would one get any context on this news? apart from some searching of course, just wondering if there is way. (If you're not logged in this link is just to one Xeet.)
How would they even get anything intelligible from encrypted traffic other than source-destination? I mean if you're expending those kind of resources to target some kid that seems like extreme waste. Doesn't everyone use https-everywhere and don't nearly all websites use https?
By compelling one of the endpoints to cooperate - this type of law right here. The first will be bringing non-E2E centralized web services into the fold, roughly sorted by size/prominence and whatever bleeds. Then they will move towards pressuring ever smaller "services" to give up plaintext. Simultaneously the push to censor E2E software will have also progressed (made feasible by centralized app stores). Then, assuming that panopticon for the corporate-mobile-first 90% of the population isn't enough (and it's never enough), they'll move on to criminalizing publishing E2E apps directly, since having long censored the app stores, those will be only something weirdo criminals use.
Sounds like it to me. I contend that Australia was the guinea pig, and with very little furore did that pass, therefore it's also ready for the US public to eat in the face and keep on smiling.
How would you know that you are correctly forced to do such espionage? Couldn't some fake agents knock at your house and tell you to get some data of some CEO's office and turn it over to them?
Of course. Not to mention the NSA is famous for having their tooling leak to malicious 3rd parties, so, once they backdoor everything, nothing will be secure.
That means your bank will be hacked, your medical records captured, all of your DM's on every platform, your advertising ID's, your browser fingerprints, all of your PII exposed, on the internet, for anyone to see.
This is truly the beginning of the end, the inflection point that has long been talked about.
Basically, the US senate legalize spying on foreign users of US company, even if europe (and other countries) forbid these companies to transmit their data on US server...
Unless Europe (and other countries) legalize access by 3 letters American agencies to european servers, american software and social media companies will face an irreconcilable dilemna.
As a Canadian, it terrifies me that it's supposed to be comforting that these powers are only supposed to be used on foreign targets. The US controls so much of the Internet already, and the idea that it's becoming a full-fledged surveillance state beyond my own country's control is horrifying.
We're always talking about China and TikTok. What about America and the rest of the Internet?
The election of Trump in 2024 and the end of the Russia/Ukraine war might be some of the events that could make the EU come out of its denial about their relationship with the US.
Yet again, the US promotes surveillance over the privacy of its citizens. FISA should never have been approved. Coming up for renewal, if not cancelled, it should at least have been rolled back.
But no - instead it is being expanded. Corruption? Blackmail? Or simply clueless politicians listening to the Swamp?
In a really big, bureaucratic organization, there are some basics like "turf" and "squeaky wheels". Creepy spy stuff is 3-letter turf. If those guys keep pestering Congress for creepy powers...well, Congress has all the moral principals of a slave trader, and handing out creepy powers is pretty much free for them, so why not?
lol no, NSA would rather sit and do nothing, like any organization, the reason why they do anything is because they receive orders from the government to do those things.
Increased surveillance powers serve the purpose of doing nothing. Force private entities to do the work of slurping everything thing up. Hire contractors to write the analysis software. Then tie your performance metric to the number of alerts received (not resolved). So, more data in + expanding the scope of "suspicious" activity leads to "more work done". And also lets you go back to Congress and say, "look how dangerous the world is, give us more 'resources' to make it safer." Rinse, repeat.
What part doesn't make sense? Any why this wouldn't make sense unless "personal financial gain" was involved?
Even a true believer three letter agency head, thinking he does something good for his country, could have their team use information to blackmail a politician into giving the agency more power or greenlighting this or that operation. No financial or other personal gain need be involved.
And that's the best case of the "true believer". More cynical types (the type that rise in every organization) would also use it to score points within the agency, expand his teams scope and budget, and so on.
Exactly. There's no point in expanding your team, scope and budget unless you gain something from it, personally. You can't really use that power in the open (it would be conspicuous, and it can't be applied in many practical cases), so it has to be monetary.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” - C.S. Lewis
Some people get off on money, others on influence.
While I find it a tad too dystopian to assume the intelligence services &c control government, surely it isn't too far-fetched to imagine some spook visiting a legislator, putting some dirty laundry on his/her desk and murmuring 'Nice career you've got there, would be a shame if anything happened to it?'
I bet that in practice that happens pretty rarely because it's risky (what if the legislator has cameras you don't know about, etc).
But I think politicians understand that capital and the national security state are very influential, and their careers will go much better if they do their bidding (without anyone ever explicitly asking them to). They'll find it easier to get elected, less interference from courts, great consulting and speaking gigs after they retire, and so on.
House speaker Johnson, once becoming speaker, did a complete 180 on many of his policies, and even cited his closed door SCIF briefing with Intel agencies as to why it became such a huge priority to push through the FISA garbage. This is the same briefing that many other politicians have had, and continue to fight against these 4th amendment violations. Hard to believe that these briefings aren't actually threat sessions when it comes to politicians that are pivotal.
I hardly know anything about the Mormons - I thought they were pretty isolationist, which seems to go completely against what the NSA and especially the CIA does - what would be their agenda ??
Related fun fact. The owner of the website Civit.ai (the huggingface of diffusion models, and also the place where all the AI porn is being made), is a Mormon.
Take that how you will, but in light of your comments, it’s fascinating.
Its not a popular thing to do, but pointing out the influence of religious organizations on modern society is vital to our future as a free, open, and democratic society - if we are ever to become one, again.
Or they could take the easier and less conspiratorial route and control government by controlling intelligence? Governments act based on intelligence. Intelligence determines who we go to war with, what surveillance measures we need and what constitutes national security.
"I was told Epstein 'belonged to intelligence' and to leave it alone." Alexander Acosta
"The court documents unsealed under a US judge in New York sparked suspicions about the pedophile links to Mossad. According to the website Global Village, this revelation is consistent with claims by former Israeli spy Ari Ben Menashe, who argues in his upcoming book that Epstein was also an Israeli spy.
Menashe’s book also mentioned Ghislaine Maxwell, linking her to Mossad, the website reported, stressing: “Ben-Menashe alleges they ran a “honey-trap” operation, providing young girls to politicians for sex and then using the incidents to blackmail them for Israeli intelligence.”
The author notably reveals that Epstein was introduced to Mossad by Maxwell’s father, Robert Maxwell, who worked as an Israeli espionage agent.
The Daily Mail reported similar details, stressing that the unsealed document has “reignited suspicions” about Epstein’s links to Mossad."
At this point, its not really a conspiracy theory to think an intelligence agency controls the US government through blackmail, its elementary common sense.
Curious as to what Signal will say about this, or does money need to change hands with users before an organization is subject to this?
Sad to think it has happened in America.
I shall call, though doubt anything will come of it.
I thought it was already the case that the feds could show up to, say, a data center that hosts a VPN with a piece of paper that says "install this logging software and don't tell anybody. Or else."
it's not on the front page of any newspaper - not because no one has noticed - but because nobody cares
The saddest part of the whole Snowden affair is that despite documentaries, movies, books, press etc nobody actually cares. The illegal stuff they got caught doing, they still do. The loose legal authorisation for the rest, reauthorised every year while everyone nods along at how disgusting it is.
Criminals thrive on the indulgence of society's 'understanding'.
Here's the full thread. The answer to your question is in the second tweet, and where external links are used, I've included those links at the end of the tweet in question. All these tweets were posted by @LizaGoitein (who self-describes as "Co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, erstwhile oboist, mom of seriously cute twins. Opinions are my own.") on 2024-04-15:
---------------
> URGENT: Please read thread below. We have just days to convince the Senate NOT to pass a “terrifying” law (@RonWyden) that will force U.S. businesses to serve as NSA spies. CALL YOUR SENATOR NOW using this call tool (click below or call 202-899-8938). 1/25 [https://act.demandprogress.org/call/no-on-section-702-call-p...]
> Buried in the Section 702 reauthorization bill (RISAA) passed by the House on Friday is the biggest expansion of domestic surveillance since the Patriot Act. Senator Wyden calls this power “terrifying,” and he’s right. 2/25 [https://twitter.com/RonWyden/status/1778864936573100445]
> I’ll explain how this new power works. Under current law, the government can compel “electronic communications service providers” that have direct access to communications to assist the NSA in conducting Section 702 surveillance. 3/25
> In practice, that means companies like Verizon and Google must turn over the communications of the targets of Section 702 surveillance. (The targets must be foreigners overseas, although the communications can—and do—include communications with Americans.) 4/25
> Through a seemingly innocuous change to the definition of “electronic communications surveillance provider,” an amendment offered by House intel committee (HPSCI) leaders and passed by the House vastly expands the universe of entities that can be compelled to assist the NSA. 5/25
> If the bill becomes law, any company or individual that provides ANY service whatsoever may be forced to assist in NSA surveillance, as long as they have access to equipment on which communications are transmitted or stored—such as routers, servers, cell towers, etc. 6/25
> That sweeps in an enormous range of U.S. businesses that provide wifi to their customers and therefore have access to equipment on which communications transit. Barber shops, laundromats, fitness centers, hardware stores, dentist’s offices… the list goes on and on. 7/25
> It also includes commercial landlords that rent out the office space where tens of millions of Americans go to work every day—offices of journalists, lawyers, nonprofits, financial advisors, health care providers, and more. 8/25
> When the amendment was first unveiled, one of the FISA Court amici took the highly unusual step of sounding a public alarm. Civil liberties advocates noted that the provision would encompass hotels, libraries, and coffee shops. 9/25 [https://www.zwillgen.com/law-enforcement/fisa-reform-bill-70...]
> The version HPSCI leaders offered Friday therefore exempts… hotels, library shops, and coffee shops, plus a handful of other establishments. But as the FISA Court amicus promptly pointed out, the vast majority of U.S. businesses remain fair game. 10/25 [https://www.zwillgen.com/law-enforcement/fisa-702-reauthoriz...]
> The amendment even extends to service providers who come into our homes. House cleaners, plumbers, people performing repairs, and IT services providers have access to laptops and routers inside our homes and could be forced to serve as surrogate spies. 11/25
> None of these people or businesses would be allowed to tell anyone about the assistance they were compelled to provide. They would be under a gag order, and they would face heavy penalties if they failed to comply with it. 12/25
> That’s not even the worst part. Unlike Google and Verizon, most of these businesses and individuals lack the ability to isolate and turn over a target’s communications. So they would be required to give the NSA access to the equipment itself… 13/25
> …or to use techniques or devices (presumably provided by the NSA) to copy and turn over entire communications streams and/or repositories of stored communications, which would inevitably include vast quantities of wholly domestic communications. 14/25
> The NSA, having wholesale access to domestic communications on an unprecedented scale, would then be on the “honor system” to pull out and retain only the communications of approved foreign targets. (Let that sink in.) 15/25
> HPSCI leaders deny that the administration has any intent to use this provision so broadly. Supposedly, there is a single type of service provider that the government wants to rope in. But they didn’t want anyone to know what that service provider was… 16/25
> …so they hid the real goal by writing the amendment as broadly and vaguely as possible. But no worries, Americans! The administration isn’t actually going to USE all the power it just persuaded the House to give it. 17/25
> I cannot overstate how mindblowingly irresponsible that is. I don’t think any administration should be trusted with an Orwellian power like this one. But even if this administration doesn’t plan to make full use of it… (Go ahead and fill in the blank.) 18/25
> There are certain powers a government should not have in a democracy. The ability to force ordinary businesses and individuals to serve as surrogate spies is one of them. Even if the targets are supposed to be foreigners, a power this sweeping WILL be abused. 19/25
> By the way, when a privacy advocate tried to get @jahimes to engage on this issue, here is the thoughtful and conscientious reply given by the ranking member of HPSCI, a man who clearly cares deeply about civil liberties. 20/25 [https://twitter.com/jahimes/status/1779589040733384862]
> The Senate MUST stop this train before it is too late. The Senate is scheduled to vote on the House-passed bill this week. If there’s an opportunity to remove this provision, senators should remove it. If not, they should vote against the bill. 21/25
> The White House will tell senators they have no choice other than to pass the House bill, because Section 702 expires on April 19, and trying to fix the House bill—or pass different legislation—would take too long. But the April 19 deadline exists only on paper. 22/25
> The administration has already obtained FISA Court approval to continue Section 702 surveillance until April 2025. According to the administration itself, that approval “grandfathers” surveillance for a full year, even if Section 702 expires. 23/25 [https://news.bgov.com/bloomberg-government-news/fisa-court-a...]
> A notional deadline is no reason to create a surveillance state. The Senate must take the time to get this right. It’s not just our civil liberties that are at stake—it’s our democracy.
[rest of thread cut as it's just @-pinging a bunch of senators]
And then people wonder why the EU is deeming US legal entities in violation of GDPR, even if the actual data never leaves the EU. Exactly because of shit like this.
> Compromise happens often, but nobody wants to talk about it, because it's not primary-sexy.
This. If you've ever actually been on the Hill, you'll find that most GOP and DNC politicians and staffers are very cordial with each other and work together very often.
Even the legislation passage rate hasn't change since the 1970s.
Social media has been weaponized. I can't wait for Section 230 to be repealed.
Worked on a congressional campaign and got to peek in on the legislating side. Was surprised by the congeniality as a young ideologue who expected things to be more adversarial.
The real eye opener was how much overlap there was with donors giving to both sides in a campaign. Guess you need to hedge your bets.
When it comes to deep state it's all on board and that's what we are discussing, an abusive FISA that appears to be unconstitutional, and seems to have support from both parties, regardless of what campaign promises were made.
Ad hominums such as MAGAts and Bernie Bros are unbecoming of a non partisan.
This is the report introducing the controversial amendment: https://www.congress.gov/congressional-report/118th-congress...
The amendment is the last item in the report, under this heading:
> 6. An Amendment To Be Offered by Representative Turner of Ohio or His Designee, Debatable for 10 Minutes
This is the transcript of the session where the amendment was discussed and voted on: https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/volume-170/iss...
You can find the discussion within the text using this search term:
> Amendment No. 6 Offered by Mr. Turner