Live data from Hacker News

Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU

mullvad.net

231–240 of 534 posts

Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU

#231

Every time this comes up people talk about protecting privacy and anonymity and what not and while luckily for us most of the time the laws die out they still do pass on occasion. The fundamental issue to me is that society still wants to protect against pedophiles or drug dealers or whatever other group more than protect privacy. As an example, how many people here could go on television onto some talk program or ne…

Conflating privacy stripping laws with paedophilia protection is something I'd happily deconstruct, whether in front of a camera or otherwise. It's not difficult to show with logic how one doesn't help the other, and I could even go as far as showing how the laws make things worse.

Don't bring feelings to a logic fight.

Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU

#233
post #177
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m always skeptical of phrases like “true motives”. Sometimes people can do the wrong thing for the right reasons, or totally amorally. There doesn’t have to be a secret agenda. Framing things in terms of shadowy cabals that hide their secret motivations weakens the argument and reduces odds of successful resistance to these programs by misunderstanding the opposition.

I’m truly astonished that there are people who refuse to believe that the people in power are constantly conspiring. It’s like you are completely ignoring all evidence, or discounting it as one-offs. Sure, maybe it’s not NWO or the illuminati, but you can’t possibly dismiss all the behavior we see and impacts we experience?

It's like being biten by an unknown insect and refusing to acknowledge the fact for the lack of a correct binomial nomenclature for that insect. No name = no entity, that's their motto.

Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU

#234
>"The politicians proposing this legislation claim to be doing it for the sake of the children."

For the sake of those children having an actual future rather than political GULAG I propose to fire those politicians, never let them close to any position of power again and have them monitored 24x7 as offenders.

Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU

#235

Strangest thing to me about the topic is that it’s obvious vast percentage of citizens within democracies wish they lived in an authoritarian country, yet choose to live in a democracy and use the liberties they’re provided to actively destabilize and destroy it. To me this is the largest issue, not a given topic that results from it. Yes, I am aware current authoritarian countries wage propaganda campaigns, but in m…

Well, I think we had a solid bipartisan support for classical-liberism up until 2015. It's worth going back to it with the lessons learned. It was the bedrock that allowed limited centralization and most importantly, accountability.

We need new journalism that keeps powers in check and hold them accountable, not pander to their readers in an ever resonating echo chambers.

Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU

#236
post #62
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even though something has a benevolent rationalization, it doesn’t mean the true motives are benevolent. It doesn’t need any New World Order conspiracy either. People in ruling positions often enjoy power, and they may be clueless as to how this desire is affecting their decisionmaking.

I’m always skeptical of phrases like “true motives”. Sometimes people can do the wrong thing for the right reasons, or totally amorally. There doesn’t have to be a secret agenda. Framing things in terms of shadowy cabals that hide their secret motivations weakens the argument and reduces odds of successful resistance to these programs by misunderstanding the opposition.

Yeah - also sometimes there are legitimate tradeoffs and the answer is non-obvious!

Stuff like Google’s CSAM detection really does detect abuse. It also can cause problems for a parent if there’s a false positive.

The reason these things are hard is because it’s a discussion of what’s better on net and it’s not the case that there is no tradeoff.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PeSzc9JTBxhaYRp9b/policy-deb...

If OP can’t acknowledge that he’s just ideologically partisan and won’t be persuasive to anyone who doesn’t already agree. Deeply understanding the opposite position requires accepting that there are smart reasonable people that hold it (for good reasons!), not that they’re all some “shadowy cabal” lying and hiding bad intent.

Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU

#237
post #41

We certainly need decentralized systems that cannot be controlled by EU, US, or any government/entity. Privacy is a human right. We probably all know that they will show reasons like "fighting terrorism", "preventing national threats" or "hunting down child pornography" etc, whereas the real motivation is to control people's freedom of speech and communication even though they will 100% deny it. Anyone who is really…

> We probably all know that they will show reasons [...], whereas the real motivation is to control people's freedom of speech and communication even though they will 100% deny it. I don't think this is how it works, absent an already existent police state. In democracies, it really is pushed for {good reasons}. Once built, it's then used by law enforcement, because it exists and gets the job done. Pretending there's…

This is just such an ignorant take with no regard for real history. The PATRIOT act in America was quickly used to facilitate mass surveillance, and it reflects a greater pattern of government behavior. While there are "useful idiots" who embody the technically clueless bureaucrats you describe, there is absolutely collectives of nefarious actors aiming to control populations.

Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU

#238
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intelligence and law enforcement aren't typically empowered voters in democratic legislative bodies.

And yet, they tend to be very successful on getting any proposal they want from those bodies. You can wonder why.

Same reason every parliament in the world, including congress, has their own separate police force protecting them rather than relying on the real one?

Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU

#239
post #214

Every time this comes up people talk about protecting privacy and anonymity and what not and while luckily for us most of the time the laws die out they still do pass on occasion. The fundamental issue to me is that society still wants to protect against pedophiles or drug dealers or whatever other group more than protect privacy. As an example, how many people here could go on television onto some talk program or ne…

I'd just point out that the TSA is known for exploitatively using it's naked scans of people. Ensuring that the government has access to everyone's nudes includes children's nudes. Pedophile police officers is worse than pedophile non-police, since the pedophile police would have the law on their side

Ah. I’m going to need a source to back this one up.

I steadfastly refused to use the mm wave scanners for years until DHS went through the proper comment period. I have no love for those things.

Initially, the device produced revealing images. Now the images are more or less anonymous white figures with private areas even more obscured.

If you have data to the contrary, Im interested.

Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU

#240
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even though something has a benevolent rationalization, it doesn’t mean the true motives are benevolent. It doesn’t need any New World Order conspiracy either. People in ruling positions often enjoy power, and they may be clueless as to how this desire is affecting their decisionmaking.

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity

[dead]
Post reply on HN