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The US’s Stance on Surveillance Needs a Hard Reset

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Re: The US’s Stance on Surveillance Needs a Hard Reset

#51

Post by majormajor »

hedora wrote: post #29
rayiner wrote: post #13

Between the inauguration and living in DC, all anyone can talk about lately is politics. So I've had the opportunity to probe a bunch of mainstream Democrats on this issue. The overwhelming response has been not caring (though many are more worried now that Trump is in the charge of the surveillance apparatus rather than Obama). Even to the extent people care, nobody cares enough to want to spend limited political ca…

Wow. That has not been my experience at all. People on most sides of me are afraid of being rounded up, or are afraid someone they know will be rounded up. (They are not worried about it happening this year, but are extrapolating 5 years.) This is amongst mid-westerners and west coast types. East coast liberals I talked to years ago were part of the DC or military machine, and think 100% surveillance is just a natura…

> "You have to live inside DC norms since birth or will be blacklisted, even if it is just a joint in high school... Otherwise, how will the ruling class keep running things?"

Politics and positions aside, a refreshing thing about this year was seeing that someone flaunting almost all those norms can still get mass voter appeal.

(Though at the same time, the establishment on both side has reasons to love Trump: Democrats can point at his violations of norms and out-there ideas instead of addressing their own issues, and Republicans can let him soak up the media attention to reduce attention on their passing more of their generally-not-that-popular agenda.)

Re: The US’s Stance on Surveillance Needs a Hard Reset

#52

Post by hedora »

woofyman wrote: post #32
hedora wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. That has not been my experience at all. People on most sides of me are afraid of being rounded up, or are afraid someone they know will be rounded up. (They are not worried about it happening this year, but are extrapolating 5 years.) This is amongst mid-westerners and west coast types. East coast liberals I talked to years ago were part of the DC or military machine, and think 100% surveillance is just a natura…

>People on most sides of me are afraid of being rounded up Rounded up for what? No one I know has that fear.

Being from china, eastern europe, south/central america, the middle east or being black. There's also persecution for being a single mom or lgbtq, but that doesn't fall under "rounded up".

I haven't talked to any climate scientists recently, but I suppose living in antarctica for a year gets you on the "maybe losing your job" list.

The "america first" chant on Friday didn't help. Neither did the "for americans" rhetoric.

Re: The US’s Stance on Surveillance Needs a Hard Reset

#53

Post by saycheese »

Mendenhall wrote: post #34

The average citizen doesnt know or care, and in this day and age many would trade "freedom" for what they think will give them "security". This story is already over.

Saying changing is not possible is unreasonable; see this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13459166

Re: The US’s Stance on Surveillance Needs a Hard Reset

#55

Post by WalterBright »

rayiner wrote: post #13

Between the inauguration and living in DC, all anyone can talk about lately is politics. So I've had the opportunity to probe a bunch of mainstream Democrats on this issue. The overwhelming response has been not caring (though many are more worried now that Trump is in the charge of the surveillance apparatus rather than Obama). Even to the extent people care, nobody cares enough to want to spend limited political ca…

The irony in all this passivity towards surveillance is the leaking of Hillary's and the DNC's emails and the damage that did to her campaign.

Re: The US’s Stance on Surveillance Needs a Hard Reset

#56

Post by nine_k »

roastbeef wrote: post #46
rayiner wrote: post #13

Between the inauguration and living in DC, all anyone can talk about lately is politics. So I've had the opportunity to probe a bunch of mainstream Democrats on this issue. The overwhelming response has been not caring (though many are more worried now that Trump is in the charge of the surveillance apparatus rather than Obama). Even to the extent people care, nobody cares enough to want to spend limited political ca…

What about Republicans? Libertarians? Why do you assume that Democrats are the majority or that their opinion has any more weight than anyone else? As the darling President of the Democrats, Obama has increased the surveillance state more than anyone before him.

Many Republicans don't mind big government. I wish more Libertarians were in Congress or otherwise existed %)

Democrats are not only the main,opposition to the president; they are the force that kept adding surveillance.

Re: The US’s Stance on Surveillance Needs a Hard Reset

#57

Post by lisper »

woofyman wrote: post #42
cmurf wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DACA: whether ther 1/4 million approved or the 2 million eligble, it is unknown whether they will be targeted for deportation. Undocumented workers: past Republican administrations have engaged in work place raids as an enforcement action on workers themselves, rather than on employers engaging in illegal hiring. Muslims? It's not unreasonable for them to debate in their own mind whether the president is sincere, and…

DACA and the undocumented: that's a legitimate fear. Muslin Americans and Muslins here legally: that's legitimate but I'm confident our institutions are strong enough to prevent something that blatantly unconstitutional from happening.

Many Germans said that in 1933. I know because I interviewed my grandparents before they died, and they told me so. They fled to Palestine, but many of their friends stayed behind saying, "It can't possibly get that bad." None of their friends survived.

Re: The US’s Stance on Surveillance Needs a Hard Reset

#59

Post by mc32 »

hedora wrote: post #52
woofyman wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>People on most sides of me are afraid of being rounded up Rounded up for what? No one I know has that fear.

Being from china, eastern europe, south/central america, the middle east or being black. There's also persecution for being a single mom or lgbtq, but that doesn't fall under "rounded up". I haven't talked to any climate scientists recently, but I suppose living in antarctica for a year gets you on the "maybe losing your job" list. The "america first" chant on Friday didn't help. Neither did the "for americans" rheto…

Thinking that only the "Trump voters" are safe is a kind of thinking that borders on hysteria and is hard to take seriously. Undocumented immigrants are the only people who should have a reasonable concern of being deported.

It's not like other countries don't deport undocumented immigrants either whether leftist or rightist so I don't see how when the US does it it's especially denouceable. [keep in mind, that Obama deported more than W].

I've lived in other countries [China as well as Eastern Europe], and it's not uncommon for regular police to either enforce immigration themselves or cooperate with the immigration office when people overstay their visas or sneak in.

Re: The US’s Stance on Surveillance Needs a Hard Reset

#60

Post by EGreg »

Once again, why do we need to store these files "in the cloud"? Why do signals need to go to California so that two people in an Indian village can talk to each other? Email, IRC, the Web, Git, IPFS and many others don't have to work that way. The world of always-on broadband ruined what was a great software ecosystem that didn't assume you were either "online" or "offline", but cared whether one machine was reachable from another machine. Broadband led to centralized platforms like facebook.

Now that the bulk of our most valuable “papers and effects” are online, they are vulnerable to being tracked and searched by the NSA without the agency ever securing a warrant, asking our permission, or leaving a trace.

That can to a great extent be mitigated if there was software for communities to host their own private networks, and only send signals out when necessary. The way the original telephone switching worked.

Communities would be more resilient, too, and could help each other in the event of a disaster. We should decentralize cellphone signals and power generation eventually too.

Our platform is an attempt to make a standard platform for such decentralized social networks: https://qbix.com/platform

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