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Whistleblower uncovers London police hacking of journalists and protestors

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Re: Whistleblower uncovers London police hacking of journalists and protestors

#231

Post by kbenson »

rhizome wrote: post #224
retube wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No comments needed Except that, you know, not sure how impartial the World Socialist Web Site is likely to be!!

Do you have any specific criticisms of the partiality of the story, or are you just throwing bombs? Who is your favorite "impartial" reporter? Publication?

It's entirely acceptable to raise the question of the quality of the source if it's unknown. I, for one, know nothing about the World Socialist Web Site, or whether they have a habit of pushing stories with glaring omissions, unfounded additions or in the worst case, plain falsehoods. I do know to some degree about a fair number of larger news organizations, and while none are perfect, I trust a number of them to not completely violate the faith many people have in them (as that would be counterproductive to their business).

If the WSWS is respectable, presumably it will have a history of handling stories responsibly, and someone here can vouch for that. If nobody here knows, then it is useful to note that so people can investigate before assuming truth.

Re: Whistleblower uncovers London police hacking of journalists and protestors

#232

Post by dragonwriter »

52-6F-62 wrote: post #198
ue_ wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is partly why I am an anarcho-Communist, in favour of decentralised planning or to a lesser extent market Socialism. I'm not sure what to do about giving the vote to people; arguably democracy is very good, but I would rather have per-commune direct democracy (with instantly recallable delegates or without) rather than a representative democracy. In short, I want to do away with voting for masters, as it will be…

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the traditional nomenclature is anarcho-syndicalist. Or are you marking a difference in your beliefs from those. Am I just hung up on semantics, or are you espousing there will somehow be no competition between communes/factions without some central oversight body. I would wager that's highly unlikely.

Anarcho-syndicalism is not the same thing as anarcho-communism, though they overlap significantly both in terms of ideological content and as non-exclusive identities.

Re: Whistleblower uncovers London police hacking of journalists and protestors

#233

Post by kbenson »

cies wrote: post #225
retube wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No comments needed Except that, you know, not sure how impartial the World Socialist Web Site is likely to be!!

Impartial or not: let's count the MSM-sources that do not report on this matter; or only report late (because it would otherwise become weird if they wouldn't). I did not see this yet in any of the MSM sites I sometimes poll on these matters. Nothing yet! If this news if true, which I believe at this point, then it is a BIG story (proven total failure of democracy, high up officials in charge have to step down becaus…

> let's count the MSM-sources that do not report on this matter

It originated in the Guardian. That is a MSM outlet. That said, it originated in an opinion piece. What you have is something that the Guardian didn't have enough facts for to make a real story yet, and you are expecting other MSM sources to report on it, which means they would be reporting on a Guardian opinion piece, since that's all the evidence they have.

I find it much more likely that multiple investigative divisions are looking into this and trying to find something factual to report. In the end, that is still one of the major differences between MSM outlets and random small news sites - one of them is actually expected to be accountable for what they report.

Re: Whistleblower uncovers London police hacking of journalists and protestors

#234

Post by kbenson »

balthamael wrote: post #208
BearGoesChirp wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given how easy a group can be swayed and controlled given our current centralization of media/culture, our technology, and our understanding of psychology, is it possible for there to ever again be a people's democracy? Giving the vote to the people seems to be inherently giving the vote to those who control the information being fed to the people, be that an oligarchy or the government.

The only viable forms of government i see now is a benevolent enlightened dictator or a scientocracy. The only way to remove manipulation is to remove emotion from politics. So you either need someone who knows what needs to be done and can't be influenced otherwise, or a system that is not easy to influence, like one based on facts and evidence. Enlightened dictator is a high risk high reward type of deal though, ev…

> The only way to remove manipulation is to remove emotion from politics.

I don't think that's the only way. At least, I think there's a few things to try first.

If information dissemination is being exploited due to new technology, first we should try to fix that in various ways. There are various other problems that might or might not have full or partial solutions as well.

When you have a hole in the henhouse that lets a fox in, the first step is to try to close the hole and possibly trap or kill the fox, not to stop raising chickens. Even if new holes are occasionally dug, as long as it's still worth it to grow chickens, you don't just give up.

Re: Whistleblower uncovers London police hacking of journalists and protestors

#235

Post by Silhouette »

simonh wrote: post #222
gjjrfcbugxbhf wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol that an election in the UK will change the direction of the country in terms of civil liberties. No one with a remote chance of winning will do that. (and the upcoming election send like it will just give Theresa May a free hand to do what she wants)

Perhaps that's because most of the electorate think recent governments have struck a good balance between civil liberties and security. I happen to believe that trade off has gone a bit far and I'm worried that significant further erosion of civil liberties would start causing some serious issues, but lets face it if we believe that we have to argue the case before the public. Whining about living in a police state i…

Perhaps that's because most of the electorate think recent governments have struck a good balance between civil liberties and security.

The results of surveys on this issue are interesting.

A clear majority of people in the UK do typically back some of the stronger surveillance and security measures, when (as is almost always the case) they are presented as giving the police and security services greater powers to prevent serious crime and terrorism. I mean, who doesn't want to prevent serious crime and terrorism?

On the other hand, when presented with more complete information about the actual laws that have been passed, such as the much wider range of government departments who have been given such powers, or when questioned in a way that demonstrates they themselves are subject to the same intrusions, many more people express concern and a lot object strongly.

Surveys also show pretty consistently that the vast majority of people don't know even roughly what the actual situation is, and assume it is more the former than the latter. For example, many people didn't even know about the increased surveillance powers granted a few months ago. Popular support is based on trust in our government and public services, rather than knowing the facts.

lets face it if we believe that we have to argue the case before the public

Unfortunately, the political party with the most credible basis for arguing in favour of stronger civil liberties seems to have decided they want this election to be about exactly one issue, Brexit. Whether or not that strategy works out for them over the next couple of months, it makes it highly unlikely that other important issues like this will even make it into the public debate at all.

Re: Whistleblower uncovers London police hacking of journalists and protestors

#236

Post by kbenson »

grzm wrote: post #229
ue_ wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is partly why I am an anarcho-Communist, in favour of decentralised planning or to a lesser extent market Socialism. I'm not sure what to do about giving the vote to people; arguably democracy is very good, but I would rather have per-commune direct democracy (with instantly recallable delegates or without) rather than a representative democracy. In short, I want to do away with voting for masters, as it will be…

Please don't take discussions further into general ideological territory. This rarely begets good discussion and is strongly discouraged on HN.

Submissions are mostly discouraged, but a civil discussion has no reason to be. It can easily go off the rails, but a lot of that is also based on how it's originally framed. This seems fairly open to discussion in a positive way, so I take the stance the mods seem to lately, which is "wait and see". We all have the tools to try to suppress the flames (or fan them, but that's where a little personal responsibility comes in) as needed.

Re: Whistleblower uncovers London police hacking of journalists and protestors

#237

Post by ethics_gradient »

forgotpwtomain wrote: post #165
ethics_gradient wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To get that data, governments may need a bunch of things: the company being under their jurisdiction in some legally relevant sense, laws allowing for such requests (those may or may not be needed, sadly), the company keeping the data. If the company doesn't keep the data, they could try to compel it to or hack it, but those may be more difficult. So that's a lot of steps. For this reason Signal is hardly comparable…

The server implementation is not open-source. I have a lot of respect for what OWS is doing but let's not peddle in false assurances.

Oh, I was thinking about this upon typing my message for the first time, but then forgot it upon retyping (my browser was being erratic). Thanks for the note.

At least parts of the server are open for a long time though[1], and they also recently exchanged some stuff into WebRTC. Could anybody clarify what part of it is still nonfree?

[1] https://github.com/whispersystems/Signal-Server/

Re: Whistleblower uncovers London police hacking of journalists and protestors

#238

Post by lithos »

sambe wrote: post #104
lithos wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it is. Anyone who works in a classified/borderline field signs multiple documents that skirt around this, limit rights, and especially allow some form of nonjudicial prosecution. As for that being right or wrong on either side, that is a long and frustrating argument.

Not really. There can be whistleblower protections that supercede other laws and contracts. There can be illegal contracts, which are not valid regardless of whether you sign them. Do you believe every issue is governed by a single law that is set in stone for eternity?

Whistleblower laws haven't been working well. A wrong step could get you excluded from protections, put you in a situation where you can't defend yourself, you could be in a field where other organizations can bully their way in making everything more complex, if you're lucky you could just get kicked out with black marks on your records (with any information related sealed), if you do everything right it could end up pretty much ignored (or lost in paperwork) and similar.

Re: Whistleblower uncovers London police hacking of journalists and protestors

#239

Post by lithos »

sambe wrote: post #104
lithos wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it is. Anyone who works in a classified/borderline field signs multiple documents that skirt around this, limit rights, and especially allow some form of nonjudicial prosecution. As for that being right or wrong on either side, that is a long and frustrating argument.

Not really. There can be whistleblower protections that supercede other laws and contracts. There can be illegal contracts, which are not valid regardless of whether you sign them. Do you believe every issue is governed by a single law that is set in stone for eternity?

Whistleblower laws haven't been working well. A wrong step could get you excluded from protections, put you in a situation where you can't defend yourself, you could be in a field where other organizations can bully their way in making everything more complex, if you're lucky you could just get kicked out with black marks on your records (with any information related sealed) and similar.

Re: Whistleblower uncovers London police hacking of journalists and protestors

#240

Post by sqeaky »

simonh wrote: post #180
candiodari wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. That's why, after the "brexit election" a second election needs to be held. You know, to make sure the populace really meant it. Of course, that's an improvement over the rest of Europe. Last time Europe got voted out of parliament they didn't even bother with redoing the election. They just went directly against the election results, like in Greece. Why does anyone still pretend at this point ?

>to make sure the populace really meant it Bizarre comment. Do you really think the election has a credible chance of overturning the result of the referendum? Or that this is the reason it's being held? Every time an elected government does something random poster on HN or elsewhere doesn't like, it's the end of democracy and a conspiracy of the elite. I voted Remain and still believe leaving the EU will harm Britai…

> The electorate are all grown-ups that had access to the same information that I do

I am not sure I have ever heard such trust in the electorate. Isn't an uninformed electorate a huge problem in most western democracies?

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