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Oppose the Earn IT Act

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Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#281

Post by esrauch »

shay_ker wrote: post #244
apeace wrote: post #208

If you want to convince your friends they should support encryption, here's how I like to get past the "nothing to hide" argument. Imagine we're sitting at a bar, chatting. None of us have anything to hide. Then the government passes a law that all conversations must be streamed on Youtube Live, so an agent comes in, sets up a camera at our table, and starts streaming. We still don't "have anything to hide". We're ju…

I like the speeding analogy. "I have nothing to hide" "Have you ever sped on the highway?" "Well, yes" "Imagine if the government reveals it's been tracking everyone's speed, and has decided to write everyone tickets for speeding." "That's insane, the government can't do that!" "Exactly"

I don't know, tracking everyone's speed to issue tickets doesn't sound nearly as bad as having a recording of 100% of all remote conversations.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#282

Post by andrepd »

apeace wrote: post #208

If you want to convince your friends they should support encryption, here's how I like to get past the "nothing to hide" argument. Imagine we're sitting at a bar, chatting. None of us have anything to hide. Then the government passes a law that all conversations must be streamed on Youtube Live, so an agent comes in, sets up a camera at our table, and starts streaming. We still don't "have anything to hide". We're ju…

There's other ways. Ask them for their passwords, ask them to hand their phone and riffle through their conversations and photos. If I know they won't be offended them I'll ask them to send me nudes or if they would let me put a camera in their shower.

After all, if you're have nothing wrong you have nothing to hide, so why should you close your shower curtain?

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#283

Post by jrumbut »

tribeca18 wrote: post #262
jrumbut wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the key here isn't broadcasting, it's storage. In the future (?) we might think we can detect Parkinson's or MS very early through voice/video/typing characteristics. Your conversations were recorded, the data leaked to or purchased by a fly by night company hired by your bank, and now suddenly despite your excellent credit history you can't get a 30 year mortgage, you try to find a new job but companies are…

Oddly specific, but this is such a great plausible example that I'm going to use from now on.

Thanks, just to be clear I made it up after clicking reply!

If you want to make more of them I just combined a plausible data analysis project with some of the creepiest insitutional aspects from previous surveillance scandals.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#284

Post by godelski »

dcow wrote: post #263
godelski wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mentioned something about this yesterday in another thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23693298 Basically it isn't about having anything to hide but the instability of democracy and what power bad actors have. Do I have anything to hide from Google? Not really. But do I want that same data that Google has to be in the hands of someone like Putin? No. I don't even want it in the hands of the NSA. The issue…

Sadly I've come to the conclusion that people don't really actually care about the stability of democracy so long as they have food on the table and a warm bed at night. No matter the fact that a stable democracy free from the tyrannical rule of a monarch is what gave rise to their entire lifestyle as they know it. But people forget so quickly what we sacrifice for democracy. It's almost irrelevant, though. Our once…

I believe you are right. In fact, I think China serves as a perfect example of this (so does 1930's Germany, but I don't want to draw too much parallelism there). When there's massive growth and you're substantially better off than your parents, who cares what the government does? Clearly you're doing better, so they must be doing good. Right?

I think part of the unrest we have is that we're NOT better off than our parents. But another key component is that covid made it so that we have to worry about food on our table and we have an abundant amount of time to worry.

At the same time this is a great opportunity to talk about democratic stability. Discussing things like why privacy matters and not just to bad guys or with the silly "you wear clothes" analogies. It is also a great time to talk about structural reforms like switching to better voting methods, such as STAR (see my comments for rants on why you should not use IRV/"RCV"). At this time people have the time to think and research, but there is also the drawback that it is hard to think when you are worried about food and future. But this time to also talk about solving problems while they are small. If the Great Depression taught us anything it is that those people learned a lot about frugality but their children forgot. Luckily it appears that each time we do this we get slightly better (think like a damped harmonic oscillator). So don't give up hope, help the dampening coefficient.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#285

Post by mindslight »

newacct583 wrote: post #279
mindslight wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling a democrat that won't even pretend to support blue team freedoms the "worst democrat" makes a lot of sense. What is called "centrist" is nowhere near the center, but is actually straight up authoritarianism . If you look at both the blue team's and red team's grassroots messages, individuals are not happy with how much control the government exerts over us. Each political team markets a half-libertarian messa…

I don't necessarily disagree with any of that. In general, a "centrist", in common usage, is a person who broadly supports existing social structures. So yes, they're going to support law enforcement over privacy, the media industry over public access concerns, etc... So to anyone who cares deeply about some issue of social change, a centrist is going to look "just as bad as" the "other side". But calling them (sigh)…

> a person who broadly supports existing social structures. So yes, they're going to support law enforcement over privacy, the media industry over public access concerns

We already have a word for this - conservative. And I do agree that conservatives have consistent and valid points, even if I do not agree.

I don't know what other word to use besides "authoritarian" as in the two-dimensional political space with red-blue on one axis, and authoritarian-libertarian on the other.

To me "centrist" implies some middle of the road. I do not agree that someone who supports (this bill, the patriot act, elective wars, drone strikes, etc) deserves the label centrist, as they're nowhere near the entire libertarian half of the political spectrum. Allowing this to be called centrism is privileging and cloaking authoritarianism.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#286

Post by golem14 »

shay_ker wrote: post #244
apeace wrote: post #208

If you want to convince your friends they should support encryption, here's how I like to get past the "nothing to hide" argument. Imagine we're sitting at a bar, chatting. None of us have anything to hide. Then the government passes a law that all conversations must be streamed on Youtube Live, so an agent comes in, sets up a camera at our table, and starts streaming. We still don't "have anything to hide". We're ju…

I like the speeding analogy. "I have nothing to hide" "Have you ever sped on the highway?" "Well, yes" "Imagine if the government reveals it's been tracking everyone's speed, and has decided to write everyone tickets for speeding." "That's insane, the government can't do that!" "Exactly"

I say, no need to look at hypotheticals. Just sit back and watch what the Chinese government likely has done with the social media posts from people in Hong Kong, who are now in a desperate rush to obliterate them. Tough look, those have already been crawled and indexed. It's not quite the same, because these social media posts weren't meant to be private at the time, but it illustrates the point what can happen when 'data is out there'.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#287

Post by manfredo »

apeace wrote: post #208

If you want to convince your friends they should support encryption, here's how I like to get past the "nothing to hide" argument. Imagine we're sitting at a bar, chatting. None of us have anything to hide. Then the government passes a law that all conversations must be streamed on Youtube Live, so an agent comes in, sets up a camera at our table, and starts streaming. We still don't "have anything to hide". We're ju…

While this is on the right track, one would point out that these conversations wouldn't be public they would only be visible to government authorities.

I think the due process argument is more compelling. Part of preventing abuses and corruption by law enforcement is ensuring they can only surveil people with reasonable suspicion. Yes there are people who should be under surveillance. But it's crucial that this gets approval from the courts to prevent agencies from snooping on people not for law enforcement but to gain leverage and power. Your privacy helps us prevent the next J Edgar Hoover even if you have nothing to hide.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#288

Post by bcassedy »

krapp wrote: post #214
bcassedy wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Child porn is a serious problem in that it is abhorrent. I have not seen any evidence that it is a serious problem in that it has significant impact at a societal level. These bills are not being introduced to significantly reduce child porn. They're meant to further enhance surveillance powers or earn easy political points. Any actual effect on crime is a side benefit. Let's not forget that the same people that prop…

>I have not seen any evidence that it is a serious problem in that it has significant impact at a societal level. >Let's not forget that the same people that propose these bills are the ones hanging out at Epstein's private island. The implication in the last sentence of your comment would seem to contradict your initial premise.

There are only a few hundred people in Congress. Even if all of them were partaking this still wouldn't be a societal impact level issue.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#289

Post by sgillen »

markkanof wrote: post #248
zelly wrote: post #229

This is the consequence of companies like Discord letting child predators run rampant on their platform and doing nothing about it. There are two sides to every story. You can imagine how the government would react after seeing hundreds and hundreds of cases coming out of Discord, Snap, even FB. Reading the actual bill[1] rather than sensational headlines, you can see this is mostly about creating a tip line and bure…

I initially thought you couldn't possibly be right about this, but what you stated does seem to be the case. After skimming through the full text, the main point of this seems to be about setting up a committee that will come up with "best practices" that online service providers can follow to reduce/eliminate the exploitation of children on their platform. Can someone explain how this "creates a threat to strong enc…

The bill also offers legal protections for companies that follow those best practices. It’s not hard to imagine that 1. The best practices include not using strong encryption, 2. An environment with lots of lawsuits directed at companies not following those practices .

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#290

Post by godelski »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #264
godelski wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm basically agreeing with literally everything you are saying, I just want to expand on certain things. > RV vs RCV These terms are too similar and really just confuse people, which is why I push back against it. I try to use "ordinal" a lot, but it is best for places like HN but not when I'm discussing with family. RCV makes people think that this is the only way you can rank people. > STAR Anyone who is advocatin…

> I'm certain everyone in the Condorcet camp would vote for STAR and everyone in the STAR/Score/Approval camp would vote for Condorcet (specifically RP) if given the chance. Eh... I'm in the STAR/Score/Approval camp and I would be somewhat inclined to vote strategically against Condorcet, because it's worse than what I want and once it was implemented it would be even harder to dislodge in favor of STAR/Score/Approva…

> Eh...

This is fair and I won't really push back against it. This is the reason I push so hard against IRV. Because once IRV is the status quo it will be hard to continue moving forward. After all, we already have the capabilities. If you have to chose to eat acid, plain oatmeal, or chocolate pudding you don't eat the oatmeal then the pudding, you just jump straight to the pudding.

> It's also a false compromise because the opponents aren't generally people who benefit from the worse voting method, only people who haven't yet understood why it's worse.

While I'm in this camp I do think it is unfair to completely rule out Condorcet methods. The interview I linked to with Dr. Arrow I think expands on this well. If asked to advocate for a system, advocate for score (STAR). But that isn't to recognize that there's so much uncertainty in Social Choice Theory that we can trust theory alone. There's smaller experiments that have been done, but nothing on the scale we are advocating for. Of course we expect the theory and experiments to be relatively accurate, but we must acknowledge the lack of empirical large scale data. Frankly, you can only get that by doing it.

> Of course, if we were using STAR/Score/Approval to vote on which voting system to use then I could express my preferences more accurately.

;) For me

STAR 5, Score: 4 (4.5), Approval: 4, RP: 3 (3.8), Schulze: 3, IRV: 1 Plurality: 0

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