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Oppose the Earn IT Act

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Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#491

Post by annoyingnoob »

djsumdog wrote: post #25
annoyingnoob wrote: post #2

We need to vote out the people pushing for backdoors. They seem to want backdoors at any cost, without any technical understanding of why its a terrible idea. Vote them out!

In American politics, voting really doesn't make a difference as much as just having opinions alighted with those of the top 10% of income earners[0]. Making noise and protests are more effective in some ways, but the sad reality is that most of senate/congress is not beholden to the selectorate of all voters, but rather the smaller selectorate of influences that control the advertising and narrative that allows them…

The video there talks about a study about how people feel about a policy and whether the policy gets passed or not. Then it goes on to extrapolate that to electing humans. The video is right that we have less influence over policy, policy that citizens do not vote on directly. We do directly vote for humans and those votes do count - electoral college is a special case.

Also, I'd bet there are a lot of folks that read HN that are already in the top 10% of income earners. So maybe I'm speaking directly to some of the 10% now.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#492

Post by kube-system »

MaximumYComb wrote: post #455
kube-system wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, from a physics perspective, lower speeds means less force in an accident. To take an extreme example, if we set a nationwide speed limit at 1 mph (1.6 km/h in kangaroo units) and enforce it completely, we might not have any traffic fatalities. What if at a 5 mph speed limit, one person dies in total across the entire country? Do you say that driving at 1 mph is safe and driving at 5 mph is putting lives at…

Higher speed makes all road behaviours riskier. I'm also from the Kangaroo states and while I know of not a single person who likes getting a speed fine I think the vast majority agree that having some speed limits makes things safer. Australia doesn't have the same cultural views as America with regard to freedom. We have high taxes, virtually no guns, heavily enforced traffic policing, etc. On the Wikipedia page fo…

I’m not arguing that speed doesn’t increase risk, nor that we shouldn’t have speed limits.

I’m arguing that they’re approximations of safe behavior. Prevailing traffic science suggests safe traveling speeds are heavily dependent on conditions, yet most speed limits are static.

I’m okay with the idea that people should not exceed the speed limit because we’ve chosen it as a reasonable compromise. I’m less okay with saying that those who break the speed limit are unsafe by default, or that those who follow the speed limit are driving at a safe speed.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#493

Post by [deleted] »

jeffparsons wrote: post #351
slavik81 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The TSA used essentially this system for luggage locks. You could have a lock on your luggage, but the TSA had a master key that could open any luggage lock. The master keys became available on 3D printing sites after the TSA allowed a photo of them to be published in a news article: https://www.wired.com/2015/09/lockpickers-3-d-print-tsa-lugg...

This is an apt reminder that the question is not "how likely is it that backdoor keys will be leaked/stolen?", but rather "how soon until the first backdoor keys are leaked/stolen, and how frequently after that?" And to make it much worse, we would now also have to ask "how soon until the required systemic weaknesses themselves are used an attack vector for a mass breach?". Just for a moment, ignore all arguments abo…

[deleted]

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#494

Post by taylus »

el_dev_hell wrote: post #302
cortic wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My nothing to hide argument is a little different; Nothing to hide is an incomplete sentence. Nothing to hide from who? Surly you want to hide your children from abusers and predators? Don't you want to hide your banking details from con artists and fraudsters? Your identity from identity thieves.. Your location from burglars, your car keys from car thieves or your blood type from some rich mobsters with kidney probl…

I like this argument. My normal response to "I have nothing to hide" is: "Cool, can I take a look at your browser search/reddit history?".

They just say “sure” and pretend they don’t care.

Or they actually don’t, because they do nothing of consequence on a computer.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#495

Post by newacct583 »

qppo wrote: post #267
newacct583 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting to the point you were responding to: in fact Feinstein won on the back of a bunch of "republican" votes, cast strategically in a "blue" state where a traditional candidate wasn't likely to win. Which is to say: nonpartisan voting did exactly what it was advertised to do and resulted in the election of a centrist candidate. Obviously there are other externalities to consider (Feinstein is very senior), etc...…

> fact Feinstein won on the back of a bunch of "republican" votes, cast strategically in a "blue" state where a traditional candidate wasn't likely to win Except de Leon carried the red districts. Not Feinstein.

I didn't say she carried all the republicans, just that she carried enough of them to put her above any of the more "typical" democratic candidates you'd expect to see from a state with the demographics of California. You can't feasibly elect a progressive with a non-partisan election, even in California.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#496

Post by esrauch »

webmaven wrote: post #374
esrauch wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What if they issue retroactive speeding tickets all at once for the last 10 years?

I mean, up to the legal statute of limitations they can do that right (eg if they had speed camera recordings that they realized were accidentally unreviewed, they could use those and issue tickets without it being much of a morality issue).

It is maybe unfair because of a sudden burden and no ability to change your behavior before it added up to a huge sum, but it doesn't seem to have anything to do with privacy.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#497

Post by jcwayne »

webmaven wrote: post #374
esrauch wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What if they issue retroactive speeding tickets all at once for the last 10 years?

With failure to pay eventually landing you in jail.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#498

Post by smolder »

jeffparsons wrote: post #351
slavik81 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The TSA used essentially this system for luggage locks. You could have a lock on your luggage, but the TSA had a master key that could open any luggage lock. The master keys became available on 3D printing sites after the TSA allowed a photo of them to be published in a news article: https://www.wired.com/2015/09/lockpickers-3-d-print-tsa-lugg...

This is an apt reminder that the question is not "how likely is it that backdoor keys will be leaked/stolen?", but rather "how soon until the first backdoor keys are leaked/stolen, and how frequently after that?" And to make it much worse, we would now also have to ask "how soon until the required systemic weaknesses themselves are used an attack vector for a mass breach?". Just for a moment, ignore all arguments abo…

You're completely correct. I think the deeper issue is that the people responsible for directing US policy right now (and for the last few decades by varying amounts) generally do not care about the welfare of the country or the rights of an average person relative to how much they care about preserving and increasing their own power and advancing an ideological agenda to the same end.

The game is different than it once was; They aren't out murdering like Genghis Khan, but they are no less indifferent towards the people they harm in their conquest. The extent of their love for their country and it's people is the extent to which they can control it all. I've gotten to know this kind of sociopathic power-obsessed personality up close, and have no doubt certain mega-rich assholes out there influencing the political sphere have the same "defect".

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#499

Post by morganvachon »

cortic wrote: post #269
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…

My nothing to hide argument is a little different; Nothing to hide is an incomplete sentence. Nothing to hide from who? Surly you want to hide your children from abusers and predators? Don't you want to hide your banking details from con artists and fraudsters? Your identity from identity thieves.. Your location from burglars, your car keys from car thieves or your blood type from some rich mobsters with kidney probl…

No offense to apeace but this is the far better argument. A conversation in a bar is public already; you have no idea if the person sitting across the room might have a microphone trained on you and recording the conversation, because you are speaking in a group within a larger group with no protections. There is no expectation of privacy so there is no argument for privacy in that analogy.

It's far better to ask why we should have encryption (for our safety, our security, and yes, our personal privacy) rather than whether we should have it. The government, with this bill, is debating whether we should have it, when it's obvious to the people that we definitely should. Turn that around on the senators proposing it; ask them if they want to build in back doors into our digital lives, can we as their employers and electors do the same thing to them?

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#500

Post by lukifer »

pdonis wrote: post #427
lukifer wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for your post, I'll dig into your links. I hadn't heard of STAR in particular. Two counterpoints: - I'm aware of Arrow, but I file it under "perfect being the enemy of the good". :) Whatever the flaws of IRV, it still represents an order of magnitude improvement over FPTP at capturing political preferences. (We suffer so much status quo bias, it takes a lot of activation energy just to communicate to the avera…

> in a perfect world, a blank ballot would be counted as a meta-vote for "None of the Above"; and if it wins, a whole new election of all-new candidates must be held I think this, all by itself, would be a great thing to have in elections. If this had existed in every election in which I have voted, I think I would have used it at least half the time, quite possibly more.

I think the argument against would be pragmatic: the cost and time it takes to run a new election, and the mad scramble for new candidates, presumably leaving the incumbent in office in the interim. (For more local elections, where running unopposed is not uncommon, there's also an interesting conundrum: should that candidate be rejected if they only receive a plurality, ie under 50%? What if literally no one else wants the job?)

At any rate, I'm very much in agreement, I think it's a sound policy across the board, even in the context of FPTP. One thing our election system fails to do is disambiguate between voter apathy, and the implicit protest vote of staying home (Australia's mandatory voting being another solution, albeit lacking the teeth of a "None of the Above" reboot).

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