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

Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU

mullvad.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 534 posts

Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU

#361

Post by alphazard »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #329
alphazard wrote: post #76

For all of the software engineers here, you would have a much larger impact by tackling this problem at a technical level, or contributing financially to groups that lobby against this sort of thing. Going out and protesting, or even helping to circulate a petition is going to be less impactful, and an inefficient use of your time and skillset. Your vote is worth 1, maybe your influence is worth a dozen or so. You co…

That piece of software still needs to be legal. If it's illegal much fewer people will actually use it, and those who use it anyway can arbitrarily be punished for it.

Detecting whether someone is using a particular piece of software is just part of the threat model, another technical problem, with a technical solution.

Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU

#362

Post by O__________O »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #354
O__________O wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One where majority of citizens actively participate in matters impacting the majority of citizens, understand all significant views on a topic, and no entities are allowed have power beyond their own personal independent interests. As is, to me, America, Russian, China, EU, etc are all plutocratic — because the average person doesn’t want the responsibility of dealing that comes with running a society.

So what is an example then?

There is no example, especially if you’re limiting to significant global powers.

Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU

#363

Post by r3trohack3r »

posterboy wrote: post #359
elpool2 wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are people who would like the government to outlaw racism/hate speech on social media. The first amendment prevents that. I think r3trohack3r's point is that eroding those 1st amendment rights to outlaw hate speech would be worse than the actual hate speech.

I believe the general concensus is that it doesn't because private media companies aren't public spaces, so the company rules. How far the company enjoys freespeech, whether it extenda to their users and who gets to define hate speech I don't know, but lible is criminalized already and further analogies aren't impossible. I mean, I could call a hackernews a punk ass neoliberal cunt and wait what happens next.

This stops being true when U.S. government officials (including publicly elected officials and folks in 3 letter agencies) get involved with those moderation policies.

I think it’s still an open question whether it’s acceptable for government officials to be involved in any way with the moderation policies of a company outside of the 1st amendment including:

* asking for changes to moderation policies

* asking for enforcement of existing policies

* passing lists of users to be watched for policy violations

* etc.

Which has happened, is happening, and will continue to happen until the courts figure out whether or not the U.S. government is allowed to launder away 1st amendment protections through collaboration with private companies.

Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU

#364

Post by supercheetah »

r3trohack3r wrote: post #163
throwrqX wrote: post #133

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…

> 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. Speaking from a U.S. perspective here. A pedophile with a cameraphone is terrible. But law enforcement without the 4th amendment is worse. A racist with a social media account is terrible. But a president without the 1st amendment is worse. There are people who do…

> There are darker things down the path of eroding our protections from our government than whatever evil they’re asking us to yield for.

I agree with you, but this illustrates part of the problem of our messaging. These policies are still just tools which don't have an inherent moral value. The evil comes from their abuse on a mass scale, and the huge temptation to abuse them, with the emphasis on how easily the powerful can be corrupted.

This is prone to being called out for being a slippery slope fallacy, but we need to just back it up with historical precedent, like how similar policies were abused in the US as revealed by Snowden.

Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU

#365

Post by ethbr0 »

macrolocal wrote: post #319
ethbr0 wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure Eternal September is an apt ad hom, when the parent you're responding to has been bitching about government overreach since the original meaning of the phrase.

Gadflies play a critical role in the ecosystem! :)

Mhmm. And what separates a gadfly from not-gadfly?

Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU

#366

Post by BeFlatXIII »

systemvoltage wrote: post #235
O__________O wrote: post #179

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.

Pandering is the only way to feed and house the journalists.

Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU

#367

Post by BeFlatXIII »

throwrqX wrote: post #133

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…

That’s why you let people vote how they want and then give them the Truman Show.

Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU

#368

Post by ethbr0 »

oauea wrote: post #327
ethbr0 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In goriest form, I think of this as the drone argument. Is it better to put boots on the ground, some of whom may die and who may cause collateral casualties in executing their mission, or a (hypothetically idealized) drone that kills only the target? Still haven't decided if I have, or there even exists, a good answer to that.

The answer is yes. Murdering other humans who have no way to see it coming and no way to defend themselves is deeply evil. Especially when you factor in the murder of innocents (also referred to as collateral damage), and the facts that mistakes happen.

But people are people. They get nervous/scared in situations. Maybe the boots on the ground snap and murder a bunch of civilians they thought were threatening.

A perfect drone wouldn't do that.

But on the other hand, a perfect drone has no cost of use, other than monetary. Which seems far too low a bar to set for the seriousness of taking a life.

Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU

#369

Post by Clubber »

posterboy wrote: post #359
elpool2 wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are people who would like the government to outlaw racism/hate speech on social media. The first amendment prevents that. I think r3trohack3r's point is that eroding those 1st amendment rights to outlaw hate speech would be worse than the actual hate speech.

I believe the general concensus is that it doesn't because private media companies aren't public spaces, so the company rules. How far the company enjoys freespeech, whether it extenda to their users and who gets to define hate speech I don't know, but lible is criminalized already and further analogies aren't impossible. I mean, I could call a hackernews a punk ass neoliberal cunt and wait what happens next.

This is true, but the first amendment should also prevent the government from pressuring said companies to censor speech as well. This would be the government using it's power and coercion to violate people's 1st amendment rights via a third party. Think "hiring someone to murder someone is still murder for the person hiring," or a police soliciting a trespass.

The recent "Twitter files" showed that the government is/was working directly with Twitter and probably all the media companies to censor speech. The government, on multiple occasions, provided specific tweets and people to censor and Twitter complied. I believe they had weekly meetings to do just that.

Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU

#370

Post by thelamest »

lo_zamoyski wrote: post #347
mjburgess wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nationalism is such an ubiquitous and powerful ideology, we don't realise that pretty much everyone today is an extreme nationalist. Before "nations" people didnt regard borders, states, etc. as they do today. "citizenship" of a "nation" is a relatively recent phenomenon. Most today think it's a good-and-fitting thing to defend "one's country". And this impulse is vastly more powerful than defending "democracy". Who…

> Before "nations" people didnt regard borders, states, etc. as they do today. "citizenship" of a "nation" is a relatively recent phenomenon. "Nationalism" had more to do with the relationship between the state and the nation, not the existence of nations. The word "nation" is very old. Nation comes from the Latin "natio" meaning "birth, origin; breed, stock, kind, species; race of people, tribe"[0]. Thus, the essent…

To expand just a bit more, the map is very blurry. Nation states tap into some real and old sentiments, but are not just a translation of those to a modern political language. They are their own new political projects, with a shape that is a result of historical happenstance and personal ambitions of specific people. It is surprisingly malleable – depending on what common enemies appear, what leaders and writers become popular, etc.
Post reply on HN