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

SOPA sponsors return: "think of the children"

slashgear.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 58 posts

Re: SOPA sponsors return: "think of the children"

#41

Post by skymt »

> Each time you use a credit card, each time you read your bank statement, all of your IP information and your search history will be required by your ISP to be stored for 18 months at all times.

Where did the author get that idea? I just read the bill, and the only part relating to ISP record-keeping is the section requiring ISPs to keep a log of what IP address is assigned to a customer. There's nothing about tracking searches or financial transactions, or any traffic monitoring at all.

Re: SOPA sponsors return: "think of the children"

#42

Post by ori_b »

vidarh wrote: post #38
esteth wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might be revealing my stupidity here, but surely your ISP can MITM the HTTPS handshake and decrypt all of your traffic? Unless you have a pre-arranged key that hasn't travelled through their network.

SSL is designed so that only the server with the private key for a specific certificate can complete the handshake correctly for that certificate, and the certificate is tied to the domain name. The ISP can MITM the handshake and return a different certificate, but unless a certificate authority supported by your browser is complicit, they can't get that certificate signed for the domain you're trying to visit, and t…

I would expect that if the US government is requiring this, they'd also be able to get at least a few US based certificate authorities to play along.

Re: SOPA sponsors return: "think of the children"

#43

Post by vidarh »

graphene wrote: post #35
wisty wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(a) Virtually no-one ever admits their country's system is flawed. The Brits don't realise that the House of Lords is a really crappy substitute for a senate. The Americans don't realise that proportional representation, compulsory voting, and instant runoff voting is a much better system. They say stuff like "you'll just get a candidate that nobody hates, not someone who a few extremists really love, and if voting i…

The Americans don't realise that proportional representation, compulsory voting, and instant runoff voting is a much better system I can't comment on instant runoff voting, but my impression from following politics in Europe is that proportional representation creates a situation where all legislators toe the party line, as opposed to still having some degree of independence, as in Britain or the US. This gives an un…

Coming from a country with proportional voting (Norway), I can't say I agree it makes people toe the party line - in Norway all the big parties have factions with varying level of parliamentary support.

But even if it did, it makes it sufficiently easy to establish new parties and get representation in parliament that the parties are careful about not letting too big conflicts arise these days (one of the current coalition partners in government, for example, started out as a large chunk of the youth organization of the other, which broke away as they were far more left wing than the parent party)

Norway has regularly had 10+ parties represented in parliament (with 169 seats).

If done well, this results in an environment where everyone are interested in compromises because it's the only way of getting anything done - anyone who just tries being obstructionist like the current crop of Republicns would end up with no influence, as it just makes the other parties go elsewhere to find someone to cooperate with to establish majorities.

The current government is a coalition of three parties, and coalition governments have become the rule rather than the exception in Norway over the last few decades.

Re: SOPA sponsors return: "think of the children"

#44

Post by Symmetry »

graphene wrote: post #35
wisty wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(a) Virtually no-one ever admits their country's system is flawed. The Brits don't realise that the House of Lords is a really crappy substitute for a senate. The Americans don't realise that proportional representation, compulsory voting, and instant runoff voting is a much better system. They say stuff like "you'll just get a candidate that nobody hates, not someone who a few extremists really love, and if voting i…

The Americans don't realise that proportional representation, compulsory voting, and instant runoff voting is a much better system I can't comment on instant runoff voting, but my impression from following politics in Europe is that proportional representation creates a situation where all legislators toe the party line, as opposed to still having some degree of independence, as in Britain or the US. This gives an un…

I'd tend to think the "toeing the party line" would tend to be a feature rather than a bug, to the extent that most people inform themselves about politics simply by watching the national news. If parties are more homogeneous people can make meaningful votes without having to know who in particular is representing their district. I do agree about compulsory voting, though.

Re: SOPA sponsors return: "think of the children"

#45

Post by vidarh »

ori_b wrote: post #42
vidarh wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SSL is designed so that only the server with the private key for a specific certificate can complete the handshake correctly for that certificate, and the certificate is tied to the domain name. The ISP can MITM the handshake and return a different certificate, but unless a certificate authority supported by your browser is complicit, they can't get that certificate signed for the domain you're trying to visit, and t…

I would expect that if the US government is requiring this, they'd also be able to get at least a few US based certificate authorities to play along.

If they did, we'd get versions of Firefox and Chromium at least with the US certificate authorities root certs yanked out within a day, and companies scrambling to replace their SSL certs with certs that'd still be trusted by users.

Unless they made it illegal to, I'm sure we'd see all the major browsers work to deprecate those certificate authorities pretty quickly - not doing so would make SSL useless.

Re: SOPA sponsors return: "think of the children"

#46

Post by iamgilesbowkett »

Y Combinator is right to be mad, but wrong about the target.

Smith also attempted to expand the DMCA in 2006, again pushing for new wiretapping privileges for police. It's a question whether this guy is trying harder to destroy the Internet or the Fourth Amendment, but imagine how awesome it would be if that was just an academic question about a guy who didn't have a career in politics any more.

The bad news is he's been in office since 1987 and has won his most recent elections with crushing victories. The good news is he's a Republican, and SOPA is wildly anti-business; the other bad news is it may be tough to make that stick, because it's only obvious to the technologically literate. Fortunately, he also he has motivated, successful enemies on his home turf; his district includes parts of staunchly Democratic Austin, and that's because the Supreme Court ordered his Congressional district redrawn after the League of United Latin American Citizens won a gerrymandering lawsuit against then-governor Rick Perry. This probably also means he's extremely corrupt, but it's hard to imagine SOPA coming from anybody who wasn't extremely corrupt in the first place.

Let's all form a political action committee called the Coalition To Defend The Internet From Ignorant, Corrupt Assholes and get contributions from every millionaire in Silicon Valley so we can deep-six this guy so completely "Lamar Smith" becomes a synonym for "no career in politics ever again."

We can use a two-pronged attack; fund his Republican competitors, and find ways that they can show how pro-Hollywood and anti-business SOPA was (Republicans hate Hollywood), while at the same time also funding his liberal opponents. A Democratic victory in Smith's district is very unlikely, but his Democratic opponents probably hate him enough to make some noise, and I think it's extremely likely that Texas is full of younger Republicans who would love to take his place. There's got to be at least one who understands the Internet.

If you want context, I also posted nearly exactly this same thing on my blog, plus a bunch of links (mostly to Wikipedia) providing factual backdrop:

http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2012/01/lets-end-lamar-smit...

Re: SOPA sponsors return: "think of the children"

#47

Post by graphene »

vidarh wrote: post #43
graphene wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Americans don't realise that proportional representation, compulsory voting, and instant runoff voting is a much better system I can't comment on instant runoff voting, but my impression from following politics in Europe is that proportional representation creates a situation where all legislators toe the party line, as opposed to still having some degree of independence, as in Britain or the US. This gives an un…

Coming from a country with proportional voting (Norway), I can't say I agree it makes people toe the party line - in Norway all the big parties have factions with varying level of parliamentary support. But even if it did, it makes it sufficiently easy to establish new parties and get representation in parliament that the parties are careful about not letting too big conflicts arise these days (one of the current coa…

I meant that members of parliament toe the party line in PR systems -- are you saying that members of parliament in Norway commonly vote against their party faction or even switch factions when they feel like it? If so, I'm impressed :-)

I fully agree about it being important that parties can be esatblished and elected easily; again in Belgium, there is a rule (initially devised to keep out the increasingly popular Flemish nationalists) that parties need to get 5% in elections to gain any seats at all.. It's good to hear not all countries have this!

I'm not so sure about the spirit of compromise being so positive; again relating to Belgium, decades of compromise agreements between Flemish and Waloon, and left- and right-leaning parties has created an institutional structure that is very complicated and obtuse (google the term "Belgian compromise"), and indeed its complexity and inflexibility have been at the heart of the recent problems.

It might be a bit unfair of me to base all my argument on the example of a single country, but I guess my main point is that it is not so much the choice of political system which determinces how messed up things get, but much more the polititians themselves. I'm not surprised that you as a Norwegian seem quite satisfied with your political system, because Scandinavians have a reputation for being prudent and reasonable, and I would bet that it wouldn't make all that much difference if the rules there were more like in the US for example.

Re: SOPA sponsors return: "think of the children"

#48

Post by tszyn »

iamgilesbowkett wrote: post #46

Y Combinator is right to be mad, but wrong about the target. Smith also attempted to expand the DMCA in 2006, again pushing for new wiretapping privileges for police. It's a question whether this guy is trying harder to destroy the Internet or the Fourth Amendment, but imagine how awesome it would be if that was just an academic question about a guy who didn't have a career in politics any more. The bad news is he's…

Let me just point out that, according to the research done by Steven Levitt, author of Freakonomics, money does not win elections, so if you agree with Levitt's conclusions, financing Smith's opponents is not the best way to proceed.

Re: SOPA sponsors return: "think of the children"

#49

Post by krakensden »

graphene wrote: post #35
wisty wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(a) Virtually no-one ever admits their country's system is flawed. The Brits don't realise that the House of Lords is a really crappy substitute for a senate. The Americans don't realise that proportional representation, compulsory voting, and instant runoff voting is a much better system. They say stuff like "you'll just get a candidate that nobody hates, not someone who a few extremists really love, and if voting i…

The Americans don't realise that proportional representation, compulsory voting, and instant runoff voting is a much better system I can't comment on instant runoff voting, but my impression from following politics in Europe is that proportional representation creates a situation where all legislators toe the party line, as opposed to still having some degree of independence, as in Britain or the US. This gives an un…

> I can't comment on instant runoff voting, but my impression from following politics in Europe is that proportional representation creates a situation where all legislators toe the party line, as opposed to still having some degree of independence, as in Britain or the US. This gives an undue amount of influence to a small number of party bigwigs, and the inevitable mess results.

You know, if you'd said that fifty years ago, I think you'd be right. But have you paid much attention to US politics over the last ten years? The Republicans have engaged in strong campaign against "Republicans In Name Only", and have enjoyed enormous party discipline as a result, even when it seems like they shouldn't.

I suspect the future of congressional politics in America looks like European-style parties only with no European-style party diversity.

Post reply on HN