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Oppose the Earn IT Act

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Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#511

Post by a1369209993 »

_pmf_ wrote: post #479
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…

Woke cancel culture is a bigger threat to honest people than most governments.

That might be technically true if you consider woke cancel culture as a single entity and compare it individually to each of the 200-ish less-than-median-size countries (and is definitely (technically) true if you count each state/province/city/county/etc government), but we don't actually care about the average government, we care about the governments that are the biggest threat to honest people, like America, Russia, and China.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#512

Post by pwdisswordfish2 »

a1369209993 wrote: post #510
pwdisswordfish2 wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless this bill's critics are mistaken, if your friends are using "file encryption", i.e, encrypting the contents of the communications themselves before sending, then this bill has no effect on that. IMO, your friends, unless they are nerds, are never going to place much value on encryption when they never actually use it themselves. When some third party tech company is doing the "end-to-end encryption" for them t…

> "We have made it technically impossible to see your messages." That one's not actually a "promise"; it's either true and sufficient (although it's hard to imagine how if the software supports automatic updates), or a direct lie because they have not in fact made it impossible.

Seems like it is impossible to verify whether it is true because we cannot see exactly what they are doing. We are just taking their word for it. It can be nothing more than a "promise" because we are not the ones responsible for carrying out the encryption. We have to trust both (a) the encryption software, which we can examine, and (b) the third person doing the encryption, who is unfortunately operating outside our view. Even if the third person is trustworthy, if they make a mistake, they are not liable for anything. They are not even obligated to tell us they made a mistake. Usually when we trust people to do something important for us, we have some recourse against them if things go south. It is more than just a promise. They have skin in the game.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#513

Post by a1369209993 »

pwdisswordfish2 wrote: post #512
a1369209993 wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "We have made it technically impossible to see your messages." That one's not actually a "promise"; it's either true and sufficient (although it's hard to imagine how if the software supports automatic updates), or a direct lie because they have not in fact made it impossible.

Seems like it is impossible to verify whether it is true because we cannot see exactly what they are doing. We are just taking their word for it. It can be nothing more than a "promise" because we are not the ones responsible for carrying out the encryption. We have to trust both (a) the encryption software, which we can examine, and (b) the third person doing the encryption, who is unfortunately operating outside ou…

"Promise" generally means a statement about someone's future behaviour; they're lying (or theoretically not) about something they already did (write the software in such a way that they are literally incapable of retrieving the plaintext of messages). If I say I'm not going to steal and eat your cookies, that's a promise, which I might reneg on or never have intended to keep in the first place, but ultimately it depends on future events; if I say I didn't eat your cookies, that's a statement of fact, true or false.

Edit: Er, obviously you should never trust tech companies about anything, promise or otherwise; I was making a distinction about what kind of deceit they were engaging in.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#514

Post by ocdtrekkie »

manuelabeledo wrote: post #489
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Repealing section 230 _without_ a reasonable alternative would indeed held Google for a higher level of accountability than, say, Fox News. Under what law? Section 230 is a special exemption for tech companies. Without it, Google is indeed subject to the same laws as Fox News. Now, it's possible those laws aren't strong enough... but they'd be equally not strong enough upon both Google and Fox News. Currently, Fox…

Section 230 protects companies by not making them responsible for what third party actors publish in their platforms. Name a single US based TV station prosecuted because some of their guests made false or hateful comments on air. Heck, it is in fact easier for the FCC to nail a broadcast company for "indecency", rather than hate speech.

I am going to stop here and not reply further, because I think we're going in circles. Again: Section 230 is an exception for tech companies. It allows them less accountability than other businesses. There is no law enforcing stricter responsibility for tech companies than broadcast companies.

Which means, if Fox News isn't held accountable enough, you shouldn't see any reason for Section 230 to exist: It's not protecting tech companies from any effective law as it is, so removing it won't harm anyone.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#515

Post by el_dev_hell »

teddyh wrote: post #474
el_dev_hell wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?".

“ My problem with quips like these – as right as they are – is that they accept the premise that privacy is about hiding a wrong. It's not. Privacy is an inherent human right, and a requirement for maintaining the human condition with dignity and respect. ” — Bruce Schneier, The Eternal Value of Privacy , https://www.wired.com/2006/05/the-eternal-value-of-privacy/

I completely agree with that. However, it's not always possible to go down the rabbit hole of inherent human rights during a casual lunchroom conversation while you're making a coffee.

These "quips" have their place. Hopefully, they make people think and at least consider the importance of privacy.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#516

Post by kulahan »

jason0597 wrote: post #277
kulahan wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best argument I ever heard was: "Would you give up your right to free speech just because you have nothing important to say? No? Then why would you give up your right to privacy just because you have nothing to hide?"

If I'm not mistaken, it was Edward Snowden who said this.

That's correct!

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#517

Post by ClayShentrup »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #213
lukifer wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's probably the case. Nonetheless, I would claim "lesser evilism" would be greatly reduced due to RCV (and Approval) being better at capturing preferences: you get to vote for your favorite option, and against your least favorite option. I think there's a strong argument that RCV/Approval would shift the incentives and game-theoretic landscape away from polarization and turnout, and towards big-tent coali…

> would be greatly reduced due to RCV (and Approval) being better at capturing preferences The problem is that IRV/RCV doesn't capture your preferences, because it ignores all your preferences except your top choice, until your top choice is eliminated. IRV is reasonably good at making sure that third-parties can't prevent first-parties from being elected, but very bad at actually allowing third parties to actually b…

Here's a good example of ignoring preferences.

scorevoting.net/IrvIgnoreExample.html

I would disagree about Condorcet. Score voting and variants, such as STAR voting and approval voting, are vastly simpler than any ranked method, and perform better in voter satisfaction efficiency calculations, and plausibly make better Condorcet methods than real Condorcet methods.

https://www.rangevoting.org/AppCW

The biggest moral of social choice theory is: avoid ranked voting methods.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#519

Post by JAlexoid »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #451
JAlexoid wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU doesn't have the authority to deal with things like encryption. American federal government is much more powerful and much less dependent on the states. Also Germany is very, very, pro privacy. Germans would probably lynch any government official that suggested anything resembling Stazi surveillance programs.

> EU doesn't have the authority to deal with things like encryption. It most certainly does. Security and Justice are very clearly established as areas of “shared responsibilities” in the EU, granting the EU parliament has full authority legislate. > Also Germany is very, very, pro privacy. Germans would probably lynch any government official that suggested anything resembling Stazi surveillance programs. Sorry to di…

It literally doesn't. EU authority over the national security is very limited and the treaties only state that member states should cooperate amongst themselves.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#520

Post by [deleted] »

lovelyviking wrote: post #356
manfredo wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Yes there are people who should be under surveillance. When I read this as you put it . It comes to me something we tend to forget that surveillance is a form of attack on a person's freedom obviously. The fact of it presence is already an insult actually.

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