Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Oppose the Earn IT Act

foundation.mozilla.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

531–540 of 570 posts

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#531

Post by Tainnor »

kube-system wrote: post #505
Tainnor wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition, hackers from the US probably tend to lean more libertarian than the general US population. By contrast, the hacker scene in e.g. Germany, while of course being government-critical, tends to lean more traditionally left

I consider my politics left-leaning and not libertarian. I'm making an engineering argument about risk and blame, not a political argument about freedom. I am not arguing that we shouldn't have speed limits. Speed limits are like democracy. It's a terrible system... except for all of the others. Ideally we'd have a better measure of unsafe movement -- We could much better measure risk if the speed limit was set to an…

Fair enough, I was just adding to the parent's comment about different cultural viewpoints, but I failed to consider your own perspective on its own. I think your point of view is valid.

That said, to get back to one of your original examples: at least where I live, even if there is a general speed limit of, say, 80km/h, you could still get in trouble for driving that speed under adverse condition, like ice, heavy rain, heavy fog or darkness. I think the rule is that you have to guarantee to be able to stop within half of the visible distance So it's not like the law is completely static either.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#532

Post by wirespot »

chillacy wrote: post #204
surround wrote: post #121

“A Parable” by Perry E. Metzger (1993) > There was once a far away land called Ruritania, and in Ruritania there was a strange phenonmenon -- all the trees that grew in Ruritainia were transparent. Now, in the days when people had lived in mud huts, this had not been a problem, but now high-tech wood technology had been developed, and in the new age of wood, everyone in Ruritania found that their homes were all 100%…

> This would be equivalent to a town with no locks on the front doors, or where the sheriff has a copy of every door key (just in case he has to search the house). To be accurate though that's not exactly true. The sheriff doesn't even need a key to enter your house, he can get a warrant and bust your door down. This is a town where your house is indestructible and un-enterable without a key.

> The sheriff doesn't even need a key to enter your house, he can get a warrant and bust your door down.

That requires following due process, the presumption of innocence, and observing the right to privacy. You have to convince a judge, in the context of the existing laws, that a certain individual or group are suspicious enough to call for (specific) further investigation.

Mass surveillance and forcing weak encryption bypass or overturn all that. It's a radically different view when you assume everybody is guilty of something by default and that they have no right to privacy.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#533

Post by ryan-allen »

incompatible wrote: post #403
whatshisface wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That argument doesn't work because some people are so conformist that every detail about their personal lives would be considered 100% unobjectionable to anyone they know or work for. (This is impossible when you know or work for diverse groups, but inside of a monoculture it's possible.)

Somebody thinking they are "safe", inside a monoculture, could easily get caught out saying or doing something that turns out (now, or in a few years) to be racist, sexist, homophobic etc., (or overly politically correct, for that matter), even as a joke, slip of the tongue, or ignorance.

Which we have witnessed with celebrities having 10 year old tweets dug up when twitter was just a stupid little website.

The safest bet is to say as little as possible when it comes to the internet.

Yet there are millions of kids who cannot legally consent uploading to Tiktok et al. I'm so glad this didn't exist when I was 9 years old. I'm not sure how 2020 9 year olds re going to feel about it in 20 years time.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#534

Post by jejeyyy77 »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #301
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 think this misses the point. When people say "nothing to hide" they mean nothing to hide _from Law Enforcement_. I think the only counter argument is to demonstrate how close many of our western democracies are to becoming fascist dictatorships. We need privacy because if ever laws are passed that we don't agree with, we need to be able to break them until we can have the law changed. For example, if it was against…

The funny thing is, the reason I support surveillance and legislation against encrypted messaging (or at least a backdoor for law enforcement) is extremist groups like ANTIFA

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#535

Post by jejeyyy77 »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #319
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…

In the US, this argument is even easier to debunk, especially when it comes from middle-class adults who've been working for a while. "I have nothing to hide" "What's your salary and your spouse's salary?" The huge amount of secrecy around salaries in the US is proof that a lot of people have perfectly innocuous secrets that they very much like to hide.

The IRS already knows that information...

The question is not whether you have anything to hide, it’s about whether you have anything to hide from law enforcement.

HUGE diffeeence.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#536

Post by alchemism »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #205
treis wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>as horrible as this is do you think that banning encryption will put an end to the abuse itself? No, but there's a huge excluded middle between the level of abuse with easy E2E encryption and no abuse. >prevent the greater evil which is that of normalization of mass-surveillance within society (any more than it is already) which will ultimately destroy more lives. Facebook has been around for 15 years now without E2…

> No, but there's a huge excluded middle between the level of abuse with easy E2E encryption and no abuse. call me old fashioned but every time I look at porn (which is very rare these days) I am disgusted by the meta-data that is added to these videos. It shows that people love to click on videos that read "stepdad and stepdaughter ..." and similar taglines. America has a problem with the whole "call me daddy" fetis…

I’ve actually heard some things about the Albanian cannabis mafias. (They aren’t Dutch growers, let’s say ;)) Not to detract from your larger point.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#537

Post by jancsika »

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…

The correct response to, "I've got nothing to hide," is a smug, "You definitely have something to hide."

Then the person responds, "What are you talking about?" you say:

"I can post it on Reddit tomorrow if you're serious about this."

Wait a few seconds, then change the subject.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#538

Post by marta_morena_23 »

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…

This analogy is quite weak though. I mean in all honesty: Who in the world would be okay with streaming is drunken bar ramblings on youtube? Of course you have something to hide.

There was a Movie "Circle", which kinda was spot on. Privacy is about being able to be yourself. Exploring things. Doing things other people might find creepy. Things that might get you fired, if your co-workers or employer knew about it. By removing privacy, you remove the ability to be yourself. You need to be exactly as society demands it, at all times.

The effects of that are catastrophic on humanity. China being a world leader in demonstrating what this does to people and societies, but even China allows for some measure of privacy, as long as you don't do it online and do it at home. Take that away, and society is done. There is only the borg collective left.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#539

Post by mzakharo1 »

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…

Strong encryption is another tool of the rich and powerful to help evade public oversight and scrutiny. Unpopular thought here, cuz, well, most people commenting here are the top wealthy 5-10%, the rich and powerful. It would be a cognitive dissonance to blieve otherwise.
Post reply on HN