I am happy for all those that voted Tory. The country would have been a complete shambles had Labour got in. Do you people have short memories of the last Labour Goverment?
There was no money left.
Immigration was out of control.
There were musings of ditching the pound and having the euro as the currency.
Giving more powers to the EU.
Complete madness. Labour would not have been more happier if the UK was sold off like Greece.
Now under a Tory parliament, the UK has a chance of being great again. Being fiscally responsible and fostering a climate for more jobs for people and better wages. Last I heard the UK was outpacing Germany!
It's funny, where will you go. Yeah, no-where IS perfect.
You are being downvoted (and probably me to follow) because you said something 'unpopular' in a context of a quite lefty post. To be honest I think the British public voted for the better candidate out of the existing options. They were not presented with stellar choices, so they had to make do. Online privacy, I believe was not why most people voted or did not vote Tory.
Yes, apps like Aral's (which good on him, I support it), have a chance of being affected. Maybe. Its just as likely that it won't be. Who knows? The whole world is snooping and listening so it might as well be happening wherever he goes.
However, had Labour won you'd see the exact same post created by someone else, leaving the country because Labour had won, stating his/hers reasons and telling the public to be ashamed of themselves. This is how democracy works. half the people will be unhappy.
Labour is increasingly right wing, but you're wrong about Tory's being a good option.
Tories now have majority rule in the house of commons for 5 years, which means they can push whatever they want as long as they're aligned without being reigned in. Last time this happened the gap between rich and poor deepened massively, benefits were slashed, our rail system was privatised and Libraries closed- oh, and Miners went on strike due to terrible conditions.
38% is not a Majority vote, in my mind, and leveraging young voters because they "don't know better" and have very little consideration to other issues that do not affect young fit workers is a very American thing to do.
honestly, growing up poor has taught me to respect socialist ideals such as public free healthcare and benefits for the unable. - But there was a time in my teen years where even I would have voted conservative because "these issues" wouldn't have affected me as a young worker- but they will one day and people should be quick to recognise that.
Tories scare the life out of me, they have a history of being self-serving. :\ and you're right about the choices not being stellar.
I'd suggest creating another party- but we have so many!
There is never a "majority" vote. It would take the majority actually going out to vote.
There is a silver lining there as well for the Tory-disappointed. Keep in mind that most likely a lot of the votes that gave Cameroon his win, came from people who might have voted UKIP and changed their mind in the last minute.
I'd like to believe the Conservative of today are not those from the 80s and that today, all parties except the extremists, start from the centre and lean from there.
Edit:
let me drop this here: The majority vote that gave the win was actually a lot smaller than people think. The deciding factor was in the hands of about 1000 people:
The miners didn't go on strike due to terrible conditions… the miners went on strike to try to prevent the closure of their pits which were unprofitable at the time.
The miners strike is always blamed on Thatcher but Scargill has a lot to answer for - previous strike ballots had rejected strike action so the union decided to call a strike without a ballot.
I think Thatcher took the wrong approach but given with the way the unions in the 70's had tried to bring down governments I don't think she had much choice but to face them down.
Thatcher's government failure was to repair the communities after pit closures but encourage new business etc to set up there.
Scargill's hubris and ego led the miners on a journey of suffering, remember this is the man who was still claiming the union had an obligation to house him long after he had retired.
Also don't forget the striking miners killed a man by throwing a concrete block through the windscreen of the truck(?) he was driving.
The miners strike has become a popular myth of how Thatcher destroyed the workers but the NUM has a lot to answer for.
By the way, I don't' see myself as left or right wing. I look at an issue, and sometimes the left has a good solution, sometimes the right does. What we need is not a new party - we need a new way of governance which is issue based, not 'time' based. Maybe one day technology will be advanced and easy enough to allow safe referendums from your mobile device. Continuous referendums...
What we need is a way to link policy with its desired effects. Call it evidence-based lawmaking if you like. If you make a new policy, that policy should have a falsifiable goal embedded into itself. If that policy doesn't achieve its own goal, it is overturned - no courts, no appeals, etc., it simply winks out of existence.
Doing this would require creating new institutions with size and scope equal to current justice systems, albeit with different, if related, goals. It may be worth the work, though.
We would also like that the "consent of the governed" be unanimous. Or at least very high.
Just because %60 of the population, for instance, wants to ban gay marriage, they should't be able to. IT should take %95 or something like that.
We no longer have the multi-week latency between our hometown and washington. Votes can be instantaneous-- and in the 1990s MIT made software that would allow anyone to audit an election and prove it was legitimate, and prove that their vote was counted, electronically. Everyone could do a recount in a few minutes. Things like the blockchain might even be a better way to do the same thing.
So we no longer need "representatives" that don't even represent us-- because they are picked by the two party heads in a system that keeps any other party out, structurally with "election rules"-- not even getting into the shenanigans that keep them out of debates, and off the ballots in many cases.
Frankly, I think our election system is deeply compromised (whoever controls the software controls the outcome) and representational government is no longer necessary.
I don't think you can say that. Libertarians are not a single group with a single dogma or something.
I've seen some libertarians making a good case for a Monarch-like figure as well. Instead of having elected representatives who basically have no responsibility since they change every 5-10 years, having someone for life embodying the State may be something more reliable for the Country in the longer term, and who would have to listen to the people since they would not be going anywhere a few years later.
I can't say I really agree with the idea, but I can't really condone democracy as it is right now, where people who have no education, who can't reason with logic, and don't care about anything except their own situation have as much voting power as people who are trying to make reasonable, structured decisions based on principles or a good understanding of the country's situation. "Democracy" as we call it is not perfect indeed, and it actually sounds like the worst compromise of all options we have out there. That's the lowest denominator, and we can see how it keeps failing us over and over again no matter how we hope it can work.
Your democracy can only be as good as your people, and that says a lot about the quality of what we have right now.
> Just because %60 of the population, for instance, wants to ban gay marriage, they should't be able to. IT should take %95 or something like that.
If you want no decisions to be made, then setting thresholds like that is the best way for statu-quo. Or you know, you can actually have a constitution for things to be prevented to change in the first place.
The German Pirate Party had a system called "liquid democracy" which allowed you to vote yourself, or revocably delegate your vote to others. Interesting idea. IIRC it didn't work.
IMHO, continuous referendums are a mindblowing idea... mindblowingly bad. Politics, like any other skilled job, requires commitment and expertise. The "wisdom of crowds" is not a substitute: while it may aggregate information successfully, it cannot create information. For example, figuring out Putin's intentions, or doing a cost-benefit analysis of TTIP, is difficult and time-consuming. If nobody has the incentives and responsibility to do that, it will not get done: political expertise will be a public good, and will be undersupplied for the standard reasons. Representative democracy leads to candidates and parties who have reasonably strong incentives to demonstrate their competence. Direct democracy does not.
Noone knows if it would have worked, because they never implemented it (except for some local levels).
There was much party-internal warfare about it.
One faction saw Liquid Democracy as the solution to all problems.
The other faction insisted on "Datenschutz" (privacy extreme), which to them evidently meant that having your real identity tied to any election is unacceptable. They would rather have people vote twice or three hundred times on the same ballot than introduce any kind of identifier.
It's a great demonstration of why the German Pirate Party doesn't even get enough votes anymore to have the listed by name in TV when election results come in.
It's actually got it's own problems though. Everyone will vote yes to lower taxes, but also vote yes to spending more on schools, welfare, etc. Referendums are best if fiscally neutral, but that makes them hard to use for lots of issues.
I doubt the equilibrium would be perfect.
Even if the balance tips only 2 or 3 percent towards less tax / more spending, it would still represent the citizens opinion better than the decision making models of modern day democracies do.
I think that can happen only if we had an absolute single identity identifier. One issues to every citizen and is not mutable or shareable. One you cannot falsify or duplicate, lend to your friend or use after you die. There were many attempts to create such identities but I'm not sure any had that goal and neither worked anyway. There is a privacy concern with 'true identity' token like that, but that is something we'll have to live with. Until that happens, continuous referendums are not attainable, I don't think. Maybe a future generation of the blockchain?
Having said that, should I copyright the term? just in case ;)
I don't know, how bad Labour is, but what I know is, that this kind of spying on everybody reminds me very much to that what the former DDR did, what was greatly criticized in Western Germany, after the fall of the wall. With one distinction: What they did, was a joke compared to what is going on today in many western countries.
The other thing is, that in my opinion, what ruined the country most in the long term was the reign of Miss Thatcher. The total sale of the state and the rise of the banks stripped the country from any other options (all other industry is in ruins today or sold to foreign (e.g. German) corporations) -- GB must give the banks a free hand, or crash. And when they do, we all in Europe loose (also GB).
I also read a statement from a Economist, who largely criticized Camerons idea of further reducing the states spending (as much I understood, by privatization). This makes the country even more vulnerable to crisis and I also see some very good examples in GB, how privatization can make public services worse.
There may well be similar agencies operating clandestinely in regimes today. It probably wouldn't be hard to methodically push critics (or communities) just enough into the twilight zone to kill their credibility with targeted information campaigns. Pummel them with careful half-truths and convincing sources, then routinely expose their drifting worldview.
Total speculation of course, but I would be surprised if our governments didn't spend at least some of their time and energy sabotaging critics and hacking the public consciousness. Order is hard to maintain in a sprawling democracy.
I don't know, how many people "disappeared" in the night. I don't think, that it where that many, but please correct me, when you have exact numbers. I know that many went to prison, but I just don't think, that to many "people just disappeared" -- the DDR was a bad state, but I just don't think that it was as bad, how some south american dictatorships where (where at times hundreds dissipated and where buried in mass graves).
I wrote that it was a joke, because what they used where paper folders of information, typed with typewriters. So they may have stored some GB of data about the people -- the NSA and other agencies store how much data? Petabytes? Or some magnitudes higher?
So the number of people spying may be less (and the methods still better -- remember: there are already cases, where ordinary people become victim of snatch squads in the US, because of some misunderstood Google searches), but the shear magnitude of data is much higher.
The comment is satire, in case you didn't get it. Not even David Cameron himself is that on-message.
Obviously the UK can't "run out of money", the Tories missed their own immigration target by a factor of 10, and joining the Euro was always a Conservative ambition (remember Black Wednesday?).
Austerity is a tool to prevent a sovereign default. It has never in history worked to reduce deficit and increase growth except for a few of the post-soviet countries who had huge governments.
I agree that the choices weren't that great but I'd rather see labour in charge.
Sorry, I am German, but still I must say that, because it is right. Don't believe in what your politicians tell you, I don't believe what our politicians are telling me! (many statistics are basically on the verge to lies, I know that, because our government is falsifying so many).
Outpaced most EU countries financially. My income has quadrupled since the tories got in office, but I still very much prefer the old days where the next guy actually gave a shit about you.
Seriously? I'm a German and I'm simply surprised no one is out on the streets or that there is no nationwide strike after the revelation that our current government has:
- blatantly lied to us wrt NSA "no-spy deal"
- the BND tries to conceal just how deep they were up the NSA's butthole
- Heckler&Koch tried to get MAD (the military's (counter)-espionage agency) to silence the press over the G36 scandal.
As soon as I got some money together, I'm out. That's not what I consider an acceptable environment here, and I honestly don't see any political force trying to change the way things run (or those who try have no serious hope of ever gaining power).
Where are you going to go, though... all of the western countries seem to have this exact same problem. My home, Australia, is just as secretive if not worse, the UK is bust, and more and more info is coming out showing that no government is immune. It's really disheartening.
The worst part is, the Australian government really did foil a possible terrorist attack. Guess where the info on the perp came from? Mass surveillance? Their new metadata retention laws (okay, that's a cheap shot as it hasn't been implemented yet)?
Nope. It was a tip-off to the national security hotline.
Same here in Germany: Police also did foil an attack lately. The information just came from a shop assistant in a hardware store. And what: Again they want get into more surveillance.
Of course! A tip off is real information, spoken as a truth by someone who cares, and who is being present. That truth translates directly into a trusted communications channel when instantiated. We've used this 'neighborhood watch' thing for years in the U.S., and it simply works without anyone being in charge.
Regardless of how much knowledge it represents, mass surveillance by central agencies is just them pretending to know the truth. The reason why is because the information used to 'know' is based on simulations of bad actors doing bad things, usually in the past, applied to the present moment. This 'simulated truth' translates into multiple communications channels of unknown quality when instantiated (because there are multiple futures) and fails to represent the present state of bad actor's actions.
In short, it's a low trust channel which is always ripe for a misuse of power!
As John Steinbeck put it best, “Up ahead they's a thousan' lives we might live, but when it comes it'll on'y be one.”
I dunno, I'm as skeptical as anyone else I know but this time I don't see why it'd be worth lying about -- considering it was the tip-off not the other surveillance programs that led them to him, and it's public knowledge.
It's not a new phenomenon - successive managements go through a cycle where they think ELINT and COMINT can make HUMINT obsolete, and then some bad thing happens and they realize they were wrong (but never admit it).
The theory is that - much as the decentralised panopticon of Van Vogt's "Anarchistic Colossus" - we'll eventually be able to parse everything everybody ever says and preemptively stop bad things. The practice is that humans are pretty good at it and computers aren't yet (that we publicly know of).
Reading about Eagle Claw [1], I was surprised at how few human assets the US had in Iran, due to both post-Vietnam cuts and an increased belief in computer magic. It's been a while but I remember they had something like a couple of cooks in the embassy, and nobody outside... contrast this with General Kalugin's assertion in his biography that almost 2/3 of Soviet staff in the US was KGB!
More recently, Charlie Hebdo was followed by a few leaks from the DGSE complaining of budget cuts targeting human assets and "street" operations, and a reorg that definitely did not prioritize the man on the street (no link - I read it in French papers).
Pete Blaber, at the time commander of Delta Force, recently complained [2] that Operation Anaconda was plagued by generals who managed it from the comfort of their AC rooms in Washington, basing their decision on drone and satellite feeds, unwilling to trust the men on the ground (and even cutting the Delta Force team out of comms when they objected).
The sad thing is that HUMINT takes a long time to develop, and requires a lot of experience (which is partly why the Allied won the intelligence war over the freshly purged German apparatus). Firing those with that experience can lead to years of underperformance as the expertise is slowly rebuilt.
This is one of the reasons the CIA was happy to use former Nazis to hunt Soviet spies in Germany [3] - justified both by these men's extensive experience operating in the territory and the fact that the Stasi was doing the same. I think not enough has been said about how the recent (returning) obsession with electronic surveillance is potentially damaging that side of (genuine, needed) counter-terrorist capability.
[2] http://www.amazon.com/The-Mission-Men-Me-Commander/dp/042523... - what is most interesting was Delta Force's insistance on reading everything they could from previous defenders of the Shahi-Kot, thereby anticipating the exact way in which the enemy took down the helicopters later sent in by Washington, which was the way the locals used to shoot down Soviet helicopters.
I am also outraged, what our government is doing and how they get away with it.
I think, political disinterest has just risen so much, that most people just ignore everything. 30-40 years ago, chancellors stumbled upon much less, but today they just keep on lying.
I even heard, that only 15% or so of the German population is interested in the lying and spying scandals. Everybody seems to be more interested in the price of bananas or if the government promises lower taxes.
We train our politicians, that they can be corrupt, that they can lie and do anything that is for their profit and get away with it. Consequently what we will get is an even more corrupted system in the future.
I fear that we will again reach the state of the 1930s years. And what will happen than, nobody can say. Maybe a new dictator or even the world wide dictatorship of the big corporations. In Italy we saw, how much might just one media mogul can unfold.
I agree that Germany has problems, too. However, I don't think the points you listed are the most important problems.
Some in the MAD tried to start intelligence activity against the press, but the responsible official denied their motion.
The BND is not properly supervised, but the government already acknowledged that and said that they are going to solve it.
What I found to be the most outrageous thing is that chancellor Merkel said that her goal is to enforce german law on german ground, and that they are working towards that. This doesn't sound like she is really convinced to be able to do so. I expect the government to say that german law will be enforced and that they will fight any activity not adhering to them.
> Some in the MAD tried to start intelligence activity against the press, but the responsible official denied their motion.
The fact alone that high-up army officials and H&K managers even attempted such behaviour is telling enough about the respect to the constitution of those involved.
The fact that this behaviour has not warranted immediate consequences (at least resignation/discharge of the involved AND a criminal investigation by the Bundesanwalt) is telling lengths about the Bundesanwalt, too.
> The BND is not properly supervised, but the government already acknowledged that and said that they are going to solve it.
Honestly, you're believing in that? A secret agency is by definition secret, and I don't see the amount of change needed for proper surveillance of the spies coming anytime soon.
> What I found to be the most outrageous thing is that chancellor Merkel said that her goal is to enforce german law on german ground, and that they are working towards that. This doesn't sound like she is really convinced to be able to do so. I expect the government to say that german law will be enforced and that they will fight any activity not adhering to them.
I don't see that much of a problem in this regard, though. The US embassies and military bases in Germany have historically been dealt with as foreign territory, even though they were not de jure. In a certain way, what we allow the US to do in "their" bases and what we get in exchange from the US, is a reasonable amount of discretionary power of the politicians. However, this needs trust and at least "private" (i.e. knowledge on level of ministers/heads of state) transparency on both sides that no cheating takes place.
It's a broad overview the current state of the internet as seen through a cyberpunk, pro- freedom, human rights, and privacy perspective. Aral is a dynamic speaker and delivers it with a delightfully dark and sardonic voice. Really one of the best talks I've seen on the topic.
You know... the kind of talks that don't constantly disparage audience members for being white, or religious... or those who have slightly political views.
No one but the White man can bring the Internet to you.
Dude, I'm not even white and I find it disparaging. The talk is terrible. It is politically charged when it really shouldn't be. The issue is simple: Privacy concerns are not being respected by Facebook or Google.
I don't know why he keeps bringing up "White People" conquering nations, or "The White Dude who lives in a Cloud and watches over Us" , or any of the other disparaging remarks. What the hell? How many times does he call Mark Zuckerberg white? Why have any emphasis there at all?
If it were a black man in charge of Facebook violating our privacy, it'd be just as bad. Why did he have to bring Mark Zuckerberg's race into this?
Its one thing to be against the system, or to expose the system's flaws to the world. But disparaging the audience is not the answer. His harmful speech is going to hurt the cause in the long term.
"I don't know why he keeps bringing up "White People" conquering nations, or "The White Dude who lives in a Cloud and watches over Us" , or any of the other disparaging remarks. What the hell? How many times does he call Mark Zuckerberg white? Why have any emphasis there at all?"
You obviously don't understand the main point he is driving at. It's about colonialism. And throughout history, the White Man is typically the colonizer. He's just furthering his point.
> You obviously don't understand the main point he is driving at. It's about colonialism. And throughout history, the White Man is typically the colonizer. He's just furthering his point.
When Google starts to suck the blood out of southeast Asian coolies (to make it harder for them to run away) and furthers the Opium trade to establish economic dominance over China, then he can start comparing modern companies to 1800s-style century colonialism.
Mind you, the East India Company was a privately owned enterprise. And as far as I can tell, that's what he's implicitly comparing Google to.
And as he compares Google to 1800s colonialism, he is making a _complete_ mockery of history. Are you freaking serious? Free Internet offered on balloons is equivalent to EIC-style Imperialism / Colonialism ?
It's equivalent to murdering hundreds-of-thousands of Zulu spearmen with Gatling Guns to establish South Africa Diamond Trade?
His arguments are a mockery of history, and anyone who knows the brutal history of colonialism can only shake their head at the comparison. You are a FOOL to even attempt to draw an equivalency here.
Again, I agree with the point he is _trying_ to make. The problem is that he's an absolutely horrible speaker and horrible arguer. I told you, I refuse to use Facebook or Twitter on privacy grounds. And I've switched my search engine to DDG.gg. I'm living the practice dude, I take online privacy very seriously.
But the hyperbolic elitist aura eminated from Aral Balkan is going to harm the privacy cause in the long run. I prefer to see people on my side of the argument making solid points. Again: Search Bubble. Search privacy. Metadata collection. It is pretty easy to point out the issues of the modern internet: you don't need to make a mockery of history to make good points here.
> "And as he compares Google to 1800s colonialism, he is making a _complete_ mockery of history. Are you freaking serious? Free Internet offered on balloons is equivalent to EIC-style Imperialism / Colonialism ?"
Colonialism comes in many forms. Sure, there are obvious forms such as enslaving a population and making them mine ore from a mountain so that the colonist can get physical goods. Then there are less obvious forms, cultural imperialism as an example (or as Aral calls it, Digital Imperialism).
Open your mind a bit and criticize him for what he's really saying. You're fighting a straw-man here.
The talk was about much more than tracking and search bubbles.
This is like comparing a complaint of a little girl about wanting to have candy and the complaint of income-bringers of households about their jobs and thus their families being threatened.
He argues that the very business model of Google, Facebook and co are a fundamental threat to democracy.
But the _way_ he states it is stuck-up, disparaging and elitist. He's a horrible speaker who is only able to "preach to the choir". Anyone who disagrees with _any_ of his minor viewpoints will end up hating this point of view.
I wrote what I wrote not because I thought you'd disagree with it, but to make understandable why he is so energetic.
He speaks about dangers a lot of people ignore unwillingly and some willingly because they get rich by doing so. [1]
If you see a fundamental threat in doing a thing and everybody is ignoring your warnings, then it's natural to start to speak more drastic and alarming.
Having this in mind, I think he is a terrific speaker.
He speaks fluently and easily understandable. The presentation was creative and informative. He seemed to speak what he thinks, honestly and openly.
I didn't agree with all of what he said. For example, the connotation of the word "start-up" he suggested is non-existent to me.
His talk was still one of the most interesting I listened to in a long while. And, I don't see why it was elitist or disparaging.
He complained about dangerous power imbalances in the world. About the fact that mostly white people try to bring their vision of a modern society into other cultures.
Can you quote problematic parts?
[1] This needs to called out, and he did. People are ridiculously blind to injustice and dangers when they profit by it.
Rather disparaging to owners of Nexus phones. He's pretty much calling you a dumb-fuck at this point for buying into Android.
On the contrary, if you wish to "Red Pill" a Nexus user, you don't start off the argument by calling them a dumb fuck. In fact, you need to be sure to NEVER call them a dumb fuck throughout the entire presentation.
And yes, he is calling members of the audience who disagrees with him, dumb fucks.
Lets be frank here, his point is "If you disagree with me, you're a Dumb Fuck".
That is about as disparaging as you can get.
Imagine if you will, you were a normal person who didn't care about this privacy stuff. None of the above techniques would win you over. In fact, I'm probably going to have to apologize on behalf of privacy advocates for this guy's disparaging remarks. Again, I fully agree with what he's _trying_ to do. But he's so disparaging and elitist it is very hard to actually recommend this video to anyone I know.
Tell me, would you really have your Grandmother watch this guy, to try and win her vote over to the privacy conscious? These disparaging remarks are fine for rallying up a crowd or preaching to the choir, but as soon as you start splitting the crowd up on Religious or "WHITE POWER!!!?!?!?" grounds, it becomes harder and harder to find the subset of people who actually agree with him throughout the whole video.
> I wrote what I wrote not because I thought you'd disagree with it, but to make understandable why he is so energetic.
<start persona>
He's not "energetic". He is a disparaging douchebag on stage who is getting high off of insulting the audience who is dumb enough to listen to him all the way through. If you're the "dumb fuck" who can't see the insults he's constantly slinging towards you, I guess you deserve such a crappy speaker.
</end persona>
Get the point? If I start disparaging YOU for disagreeing with me, does that make me a better debater? Or does that just piss you off and shut off your mind? Do you really want to argue against the above persona?
> He complained about dangerous power imbalances in the world. About the fact that mostly white people try to bring their vision of a modern society into other cultures.
Yes, this is a common criticism of 1800s colonialism. As I stated elsewhere in this thread... when Google starts to literally suck the blood out of Coolies and spreads the Opium over other countries to establish economic dominance over the drug-filled populace, we can start comparing Google to the East India Company.
Until then, he's hyperbolic and his points make a mockery of history. 1800s Imperialism was horrible. I don't exactly see the equivalency between 1800s Colonialism / Slave Trade / Zulu Genocide and Google Internet Balloon projects however.
Thanks for taking your time to look up these points.
> A lot of us already subscribe to the mass psychosis of a all seeing White Man
in the cloud watching over us.
Erm... really? He wants to bring Religion into this? This isn't the only time
he references Religion either, but its the most noticeable.
I think this specific connection to religion is spot-on and therefore appropriate. He indirectly highlights the strong connection between humans feeling being watched and their behaviour, and thus why privacy is important.
> Like these _beautiful_ Nexus phones
Rather disparaging to owners of Nexus phones. He's pretty much calling you a
dumb-fuck at this point for buying into Android.
He says these phones are beautiful, and he means it. They are.
But the way he says it is to warn us that their beauty is deceiving us. Basically, he says: "Ignore for a moment how beautiful they are and think about the problem I'm describing."
This seems to be standard rhetoric to me.
I'm an owner of a Nexus phone and I don't feel disparaged. At least not by him.
On the contrary, if you wish to "Red Pill" a Nexus user, you don't start off
the argument by calling them a dumb fuck.
In fact, you need to be sure to NEVER call them a dumb fuck throughout the
entire presentation.
And yes, he is calling members of the audience who disagrees with him,
dumb fucks.
> Dumb Fucks. And maybe we deserve it.
Lets be frank here, his point is "If you disagree with me, you're a Dumb Fuck".
These disgusting words are not Aral Balkan's, but Mark Zuckerberg's. He cynically repeats them to make it as clear as possible how the people in power at these companies think about you. They see you as dumb fucks if you entrust them with your data. This is extremely noteworthy.
I think you misunderstand him in that he is calling you a dumb fuck, but in fact the tells you what they are thinking about you.
But he's so disparaging and elitist it is very hard to actually recommend
this video to anyone I know.
So, I seriously do not see why he would be disparaging or elitist.
as soon as you start splitting the crowd up on Religious or
"WHITE POWER!!!?!?!?" grounds
He was criticizing the huge amount of power a small group of mostly white people have. This is criticism of the current society and neither disparaging nor elitist, quite the opposite.
I think this specific connection to religion is spot-on
and therefore appropriate. He indirectly highlights the
strong connection between humans feeling being watched
and their behaviour, and thus why privacy is important.
I can't say I have traveled the world. In fact, I've only traveled to three countries in my lifetime... two of which are the USA and Canada.
But I have traveled to North Carolina as well as Southern Virginia. I've traveled to Texas and have participated in Methodist Weddings. I have entered said churches and have (accidentally) insulted them by refusing to partake in their rites. (I seriously was just there to see a friend, lol. Gosh... that was awkward).
I have been to multiple Churches, Cathedrals, and Synagogues across this country and have talked to Priests, Ministers, Rabbis. I have devout Muslims who have married into my extended family who would take huge offense at the statement as well. (Depictions of Allah / God are not welcome in that culture... the cartoon is immediately offensive to them)
I can tell you that they in general will find the above comment unnecessarily disparaging, and a non-starter for the start of the talk. I've met people who would have walked out of the talk as soon as that line would have come up.
Which is a shame, because southern conservatism / libertarianism (Rand Paul) is a strong ally in the fight for online privacy. They're a touch religious though, so you definitely need to be cognizant of their viewpoints.
Aral Balkan's opening words immediately isolate our otherwise allies and turn them against us. This is a non-starter in my book. The cause of online privacy is too important for religious politics / bickering to get in the way of things.
These disgusting words are not Aral Balkan's, but Mark
Zuckerberg's. He cynically repeats them to make it as
clear as possible how the people in power at these
companies think about you. They see you as dumb fucks
if you entrust them with your data. This is extremely
noteworthy.
I appreciate your trust in Aral Balkan. But show the talk to someone who disagrees with us on these privacy grounds. "Red Pill" your mom, or just a friend who isn't into these privacy rights politics.
I understand that is what he's _trying_ to say. But he says it in such a way that it is easy to misinterpret.
You aren't misinterpreting it because you agree with him. But if you start off hostile (ie: if an especially religious man was sitting in the audience at the beginning), they'll interpret these words as hostile later in the speech.
A speech is communication. And good communication requires you to understand different perspectives. The fact remains: Aral Balkan's speech is one-sided. It preaches to the choir. The only people who will find him agreeable are the people who already agree with him before he started his speech!
Which makes his speech useless in my perspective. A good speech brings together different people, unites the cause with unlikely allies and provides us a constituency for change. We live in a Democracy, if we can convince enough other people to agree with our privacy concerns, the Politicians will be forced to change the laws towards our favor.
I think I can say that Aral Balkan's speech is decent at rallying the base. But my standards are higher than that: almost anyone can rally the base. The mark of a good speech is one that gains allies to the cause.
I think you misunderstand him.
I understand him perfectly. I'm trying to argue that he's easy to misunderstand.
Aral Balkan's opening words immediately isolate our otherwise allies
and turn them against us. This is a non-starter in my book. The cause
of online privacy is too important for religious politics / bickering
to get in the way of things.
I can understand your standpoint of viewing others as potential "allies", but I don't share it.
People have different opinions in different topics. In some topics they may share my opinion, in others they maybe don't.
I don't like stop representing my opinion in one topic just so others help me with another topic. It'd be selling part of my opinions to buy other peoples support. That's Realpolitik and I consider it as a kind of dishonesty.
Aral Balkan chose to state his opinion in more than just one topic in the same talk. He could have hidden his convictions about religion, but he did not. It may not be the most pragmatic approach to solve this one specific problem of online privacy, but maybe it advances us in other ways. Even if it was of less value overall, I value his honesty a lot.
You aren't misinterpreting it because you agree with him. But if
you start off hostile (ie: if an especially religious man was
sitting in the audience at the beginning), they'll interpret these
words as hostile later in the speech.
I consider strong religious belief a psychological condition, though, it often doesn't require treatment. If you'd consider me hostile and we couldn't rationally and constructively discuss anymore another topic because I stated this last sentence, then I believe we'd have bigger problems than online privacy to solve first.
I genuinely doubt that people would not get that Aral Balkan is cynically repeating the words of Mark Zuckerberg as a warning. Therefore, besides the critique of religion, I don't see why his talk would be considered disparaging.
If his talk was disparaging for someone, then maybe the problem is with that person, not the talk.
Looking at the goal of online privacy, this debate (apart from the question whether he was hostile or others are too sensitive) boils down to pragmatism versus idealism. Are you willing to silence other maybe even more important
critique you have to advance one point? I am not.
> I don't like stop representing my opinion in one topic just so others help me with another topic. It'd be selling part of my opinions to buy other peoples support. That's Realpolitik and I consider it as a kind of dishonesty.
I can tell you're young and ideologically pure. I'd suggest you go out to the world and meet lots of people: people you disagree with, people with vastly different cultures than you, and people that you deride as having "psychological conditions".
You probably have something to learn from them. And they have something to learn from you.
If you're unable to work with others because of these (virtually) irrelevant identity politics, then that is your fault as much as theirs.
That's all I'll have to say on the subject, because I definitely don't have a high opinion of this manner of thought. I've come across it plenty of times before, from southern bigots to leftist marxists and militant atheists. Its all the same to me: bigotry and identity politics that get in the way of real workers who are looking to make the world a better place to live in.
Its a big world out there dude, lots of people are going to disagree with you and live their lives in ways you despise. Yet, it will prove beneficial if you learned to work with them. And one point is to ignore the irrelevant identity politics that only serve to divide us.
Sigh, the obligatory personal judgment about the other. Though, this one was one of the kinder ones. Some things you concluded are right, others not so.
Text-based communication is too prone to misunderstandings. I didn't do identity politics, and I certainly didn't mean to.
I guess I'm just more critic towards religion than you, and thus I favored - in contrast to you - Aral's attack at the Abhramistic revelation-based religions.
I'm really curious about what you think about Carl Sagan's, Richard Feynman's, Richard Dawkins' and Richard Lawrence's view towards religion. Their attitudes went from derision over serious and aggressive critique to not putting up to talk to them. Do you think they did identity politics?
I didn't do identity politics, and I certainly didn't mean to.
I guess I'm just more critic towards religion than you,
and thus I favored - in contrast to you - Aral's attack
towards the Abhramistic revelation-based religions.
By supporting Aral's attack on Abrahamic religions, you are participating in identity politics. Indeed, by making them the entire point of your last post, you are participating in identity politics right now.
I appreciate that you're trying to work with me here, but there's a distinct irony that our conversation has left the realm of online privacy (which IMO, was the thesis of Aral's topic), and into the realm of identity politics.
My point is that these identity politics issues are distracting, and take focus away from the primary point of Aral's speech. Do you not agree with me, that our current discussion is completely irrelevant with respect to Aral's primary point?
And why have we moved into this absurd direction? Was it my fault? Yours? Frankly, I blame neither of us. I blame Aral for bringing up the unnecessary attack, dividing you and I on the subject.
Worst part? You and I agree with each other. We agree that online privacy need to be reformed. And yet, here we are, bickering and wasting time with each other because we disagree on some minor identity politics issue. Do you not understand how the words Aral used are unnecessary, divisive, and detrimental to the cause?
I'm really curious what you think about Carl Sagan's,
Richard Feynman's, Richard Dawkins' and Richard
Lawrence's view towards religion. Their attitudes went
from derision over serious and aggressive critique to
not putting up to talk to them. Do you think they did
identity politics?
I don't think their thoughts are relevant to the topic of online privacy. Indeed, their very existence has derailed our discussion about online privacy and has now focused on identity politics.
This thread of discussion has failed. Be it your fault or my fault, it has failed. Because of identity politics. Why are we talking about Abrahamistic religions? Why aren't we talking about the pros and cons of online privacy?
Because Aral's attacks are distracting. They are unnecessarily distracting to his primary point. I hope you at least agree with me about this basic fact.
Aral's discussion would have been better without the attack. And maybe in that other, hypothetical universe where he held back a little bit more... you and I would have instead discussed Aral's "online privacy" argument directly, instead of the manner that we discussed it here today.
But sure, you can go ahead and continue to ask me questions about religion or whatever. But I'm probably going to stop talking to you if this thread continues in that trajectory. I hope I've made it clear that identity politics bore me, and I don't really want to partake in them.
Indeed, I make it a point to understand different cultures and different people. People are prideful of their identity: African Americans, Southern Baptists, NeoNazis, Iranian transfer students, Militant Atheists, Marxists, Libertarians... I have met many different people. And as long as I just have an _ounce_ of understanding of them, I can prevent discussions from becoming useless identity politic squabbles.
You can go ahead and play atheist and assert your right to criticize Abrahamistic Religions. Indeed, it is your right. But excuse me while I sit on the side, deride you for it, and look down upon it as a petty squabble.
I only hope that one day, you will see the futility of that and learn to work together with religious folk. This isn't "Real Politk", this is basic politics frankly. And you're not going to get much accomplished or rally people behind goals unless you learn to work together with people who fundamentally disagree with you.
See, I learned about identity politics, which I've never had heard about before. I think the concept is interesting, so I'm naturally curious. But I have doubts about it. Lets change the roles, assume an atheist said something related to the snooping at Facebook and Google in a speech about atheism, would that be identity politics, too?
Also, this discussion's made me think about "allies" in political movements and compromises. So, at least for me, this discussion was valuable. Thank you.
This discussion did not derail. Mind you, since the start we weren't talking about online privacy because there never was disagreement about the need of it.
We are in totally different mindsets. That's not bad but good, because we could learn from the others perspective. HN is however not a good platform for longer discussions. I invite you to mail me at christian madez de.
I do think this is a fairly silly example of throwing your toys out of the pram. Yes, we should be concerned about threats to civil liberties and human rights - which exist under governments of every shade (hi, Obama). A citizen's response to this, as opposed to a globe-trotting metic's, is to fight diligently and patiently to minimize harm and make small improvements. The threat to ind.ie's business model seems remote; presumably whether they might be forced to backdoor their products would depend on whether they sell them in the UK, not where the code was written.
As for "feeling ashamed of myself" and "being held responsible" by these chaps, who "don't want to hear my excuses" for voting Tory: ha ha ha, sorry stranger but why should I give two hoots?
I have long been convinced that people throwing meaningless public temper tantrums like this was an American habit. Nice to see people across the pond slam the door too.
But he has moved before and will move again. Most people don't get beyond posting on facebook. I love this. I think more people should vote with their feet.
Well, I didn't vote you up or down, I'm replying instead-- but SOPA was passed... when they tried again and called it "net neutrality". Everyone was for it, but did you read the 800 pages?
If the FCC's rules are just SOPA in disguise then why did all the republican's cry about it when they heavily supported SOPA until the backlash?
SOPA was killed after threat of veto from the white house but then Obama supports net neutrality rules from the FCC it is now suddenly SOPA 2.0 OH MAH GOD?
So you are wrong on both points, SOPA did not ever pass (PIPA in the senate did not pass either), and net neutrality is not some secret government takeover of the internet. Unless you feel that the first amendment is the government taking over free speech?
Welfare cuts, privatization, etc. "widen the already unsustainable systemic inequality that poses an existential threat for our entire species."? That's insanely hyperbolic, and it makes it difficult for me to take the rest of the article seriously. If our species disappears any time soon, it's not going to be because of welfare cuts.
That's not what Aral is saying, though. He's saying "unsustainable systemic inequality" poses an existential threat, and that welfare cuts contribute to that. He is clearly not talking about welfare cuts alone.
Fortunately, he can work anywhere in the EU. If the UK leaves the EU, it will be too late for UK subjects. (Under this government, "subjects" is more than a historical reference).
His pro-EU argument and the notion of staying in the EU and short listing places like surveillance state Sweden undermines the credibility of most of his arguments.
The corrupt, undemocratic super state the EU, inventors of the data retention law and other shit, strives for is a far worse prospect than a UK that has survived Thatcher and will survive Cameron because at least it's still a democracy.
The possibility of blowing up the EU is the only good thing that might come out of this UK government.
If he wants freedom, democracy and no surveillance state, he should get out of the EU.
Interesting to read--best of luck to Aral. Nationalism seems to be spreading all over Europe, so I can understand why "where to go next" is a tough decision.
As a German with also no patriotism: I think, Germany is starting from a very low point here and particularly my generation (post war, but not so much post) is rather uncommitted to the own nation. But, I see some new nationalism breeding particularly in younger generations and in the less intellectual people. Patriotism was and is always a means of finding some meaning in life and something to be proud about.
When you look, how people are treated from other nations, than I see very much undercover nationalism. Of course, we are still at a low level, because of our history and because the media does not enforce nationalism like in other countries ... but I think, that we can not take our own attitude and think that everybody has it.
I see nationalism rising again in many countries in Europe and in the world today. In the same time, egoism is rising (what partially counteracts to nationalism, partially reinforces patriotism).
I think, we see the age of egoism rising today. What it will end up, who knows?
Thank you, it's good to be aware of how things look to outsides. Personally i'm not very worried about things like that because these people do considerable effort to mark themselves to the rest of the country as inconsequential crazy people, by way of adopting styles of fashion (grooming, clothes) in line with current neo nazis.
But it makes sense that people from other countries would not be able to pick up on such subtle clues.
Maybe I'm just oversensitive or not modern enough. But the way cities look these days e.g. around football (soccer) games scares the shit out of me. A black-red-gold sea of flags. In Germany. Brr.
Less trivial, but Germany is one of the major forces controlling EU's border policies - and that's a wider form of nationalism and protectionism that pretty directly costs lives.
Political forces like AFD and pegida (legida, ...) aren't exactly a sign of receding nationalism either.
I've always thought of football as a safety valve for European nationalism, particularly in Germany, where there aren't a lot of opportunities to wave the flag and get tribal without creeping everybody out. Having those displays (mostly) demoted from politics to sport has been a huge cultural victory for the older EU members.
>Where do you see nationalism increasing in germany?
In Germany's behavior within the E.U. and open desire to rule Europe?
In their characterizing of Southern countries (even in popular media read by millions, etc) with terms used in the past to describe Jews? (from "lazy" and "pests" to "traitors" and "PIIGS").
In the frequent verbal attacks immigrants from Greece (for example) face in Germany, in shops and public spaces?
> In Germany's behavior within the E.U. and open desire to rule Europe?
Citation needed. It's Germany's money that's bankrolling the bailouts, and as far as I can tell (from quite some distance away, mind you), the public opinion is less "We need Lebensraum! Let's take over southern Europe!" and more "Fund Greece & co with my tax money? NOPE NOPE NOPE."
>Citation needed.It's Germany's money that's bankrolling the bailouts, and as far as I can tell (from quite some distance away, mind you)
First, it's not just about the current bailout. It's a pattern of behavior going back to the eighties, and especially evident after the re-union with East Germany, and it has to do with control of EU directives and policies (including, but not limited to, monetary policies).
(Or rather, one could say, it's a pattern of behavior going back to the first and second world wars, as the whole European Union, as an initiative was thought up to constrain future German foul-play ( http://www.amazon.com/The-New-World-Perry-Anderson/dp/184467... )).
>It's Germany's money that's bankrolling the bailouts, and as far as I can tell
Not really. In fact they could care less about Greece or the South in general, it's about saving their banks and using tax-payer money to siphon it to the German (and French etc) equivalent of Wall Street:
Yes but the bailout of Greece wasn't a bailout of Greece but a bailout of German, French etc. banks so German money was just recycled into it's own banks
I've had it told to me by several people that migrated during the crisis, and have read several articles on it on Greek media.
Here's an example from an older article on similar issue (but with a happy ending):
Elsa Athanasiou, owner of Athos, complained to authorities that she has started receiving letters and phone calls saying things like “Go back to your stinking country!” or “Pigs, go home!”
Similar to the things I've heard. But there's other stuff for other ethnicities too, the popular press headlines for people from Southern AND eastern europe, the anti-islam protests that saw thousands of people marching, frequent attacks on Jewish establishments, etc.
Here's another metric:
(...) according to a 2013 study by the Technical University of Berlin, in 14,000 hate-mail letters, emails and faxes sent over 10 years to the Israeli embassy in Berlin and the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Professor Monika Schwarz-Friesel found that 60% were written by educated, middle-class Germans, including professors, lawyers, priests and university and secondary school students. Most, too, were unafraid to give their names and addresses – something she felt few Germans would have done 20 or 30 years ago.
As a french citizen, he has freedom to live and work wherever he wants in the EU without having to deal with getting a visa. I imagine that plays into it somewhat.
It is pretty much the exact same story in NZ (surveillance, secret trade deals, privatization, blindly following others into war). I currently want to leave NZ in the next couple of years, less for political reasons and more for wanting to live somewhere culturally different, just to try it.
Nice if you can do it. I swore I'd leave if the Tories got in in 2010. But I didn't... I have roots in the UK with family and friends, and they are difficult bonds to break. A few hundred miles from some people already feels like it is too wide a gulf.
The author does have a choice as to whether to stay or leave. (They are actually in a very fortunate position if they can just leave the country.) It's also premature to presume that all of the Tory policies will actually be implemented. An alternative course of action would be to stay and campaign against the referenced policies.
>An alternative course of action would be to stay and campaign against the referenced policies.
God forbid people do that and actually try to influence and improve the society they live in. It's all about the individual and their comfort. Their city/country etc either has to be as they want, or they leave.
(Some of them even think that this behavior helps, because their privileged decision to leave they think would somehow register as a specific vocal complaint (e.g. because they put it on a blog)).
I'm not sure what your point is here. Yes, he has a choice and that's a good thing. Why do you bring that up? They are making a choice based off fundamental disagreements with policies that the now-ruling party stands for. Of course it's impossible to work out exactly what policy will be implemented, that's not really the point.
No, the author claims he has no choice: "By voting in a Tory government, you basically did not leave us any other choice." This feels like a dishonest representation of the situation.
Sorry. Here's the dissonance: we're building tools (including secure messaging) that are government snooping safe. We care deeply about the privacy and security of our users.
And the web page that tells us that has mixed content warnings on ssl.
Maybe nitpicking, but security and OPSEC in particular requires insane focus and attention to every little detail. If you can trip up on the small things, I could hardly trust you to get the hard things right.
To be fair, the script is "http://localhost:35729/livereload.js". That shouldn't leak anything to an adversary, if the request doesn't leave the client's computer.
Still should be fixed though, so the HTTPS warning can serve its function and call out real threats.
You're 100% right. It's just that security is so hard to get right. Only (maybe not even) the paranoid survive on that front. All it takes is one tiny detail to screw everything up.
Leaving development artifacts on your live server is not very tranquilizing on that front.
Indeed :) And thanks for the heads up, Arthur. Was a bit of debugging code left in by mistake. Fixed it when I was skimming these comments yesterday but haven’t had a chance to reply and say thanks until now :)
I am not quite sure I understand the ramifications for the indie phone with something like the snoopers charter.
I would hope there was no such thing as an indie cloud (all your address book, call history, online searches etc. tucked away in some silo that is ripe for picking), but rather a decentralised system that was impervious to snooping.
Speaking as a friend of Aral (living abroad) here; Indie Cloud _is_ planned to have a completely decentralized storage infrastructure, which makes it impervious to snooping. However, if Aral remains in the UK there's a pretty big, let's say 100%, chance that the Cameron government will force him or anyone else working on Indie in the UK to either place backdoors in the code or the completely optional hosting services (which can be used while you, as the customer, are still in possession and control of your own data). That's why he's leaving -- if he stays he simply cannot build a organization and service portfolio based on the principles Indie has.
The only way you always get the government want is when you are a dictator in North Korea. Instead of throwing a tantrum that has no real result, spread the word about your beliefs in a non-condescending way. You might even get some people to change their minds.
Every country with the ability has it's citizens under surveillance.
Some of my clients are in counter-terrorism roles in my country ( Western, democratic ) and they confirm that they have extensive extra-judicial surveillance abilities.
Yes, but does UK citizenship / resident-alien status / locality have anything to do with eligibility for .ie TLD registration?
The description of who can use *.ie is slightly vague on Wikipedia, but indicates there has to be a "tie" to Ireland. Moving the company out of the country seems like it might break whatever tie was there if it's based on any of the above criteria.
It's already too complicated to me as an Ugly American to differentiate Ireland, Northern Ireland, the UK, (Great) Britain and/or England, I'm hoping someone with more expertise can comment.
Ireland and Great Britain are islands. On these two islands are two sovereign states: Ireland and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (also known as UK). The UK consists of four parts: England, Wales and Scotland on the island of Great Britain and Northern Ireland on the island of Ireland.
.ie is the domain of the state Ireland.
.uk is the domain of the UK.
Ireland is not part of the UK, but it is part of Britain.
Northern Ireland is part of the UK, but that's a completely different country from Ireland. Being UK born or based gives you no privileges over the .ie domain at all.
> It’s quite possible that all this will backfire spectacularly as England shifts ever further right in its xenophobia and that the British will vote to leave the EU.
New Zealand is part of the 'Five eyes' intelligence network, which also includes Australia, Britain, Canada and the US. I can't imagine things are any better here, despite our government's claim that it does not participate in mass surveillance.
I am happy for all those that voted Tory. The country would have been a complete shambles had Labour got in. Do you people have short memories of the last Labour Goverment?
There was no money left.
Immigration was out of control.
There were musings of ditching the pound and having the euro as the currency.
Giving more powers to the EU.
Complete madness. Labour would not have been more happier if the UK was sold off like Greece.
Now under a Tory parliament, the UK has a chance of being great again. Being fiscally responsible and fostering a climate for more jobs for people and better wages. Last I heard the UK was outpacing Germany!
It's funny, where will you go. Yeah, no-where IS perfect.