311–320 of 494 posts
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So 1984 style listening devices and cameras in every home is the obvious solution right? Houses are where a lot of abuse happens. Scanning doesn’t even stop abuse from happening, just the possession and distribution of it.
Thank you for illustrating my point about the poisoned well. Say "Don't participate in crimes" and it gets morphed into 1984.
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This comes from not knowing what organizations are likely to do with it. Would they be okay with the data being used to overcharge them whenever they're in a hurry because the organization knows when they don't have time to comparison shop? How about maximizing their tax burden by using the data to calculate the highest tax rates each area would tolerate before moving or changing their vote? Suppose the government fa…
And it doesn't even have to be an organization. How often do you hear of cops or civil employees poking around in records they have no business to poke around in?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOVEINT
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEXINT
But I find the sort of people who believe in "nothing to hide" tend to believe in the efficacy of bureaucratic systems set up to prevent that sort of thing. A belief (ironically) bolstered by the privacy those organizations secure for themselves, so that those kinds of individual abuses are rarely discovered. Who watches the watchers?
Whereas it's easy to understand that if you don't have a high opinion of the opposing party's most recent President, you might very well not want their administration knowing everything about everyone.
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"Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age. Privacy is not secrecy. A private matter is something one doesn't want the whole world to know, but a secret matter is something one doesn't want anybody to know. Privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world." -- excerpt from A Cypherpunk's Manifesto, Eric Hughes, March 9, 1993
By that definition I would say secrecy is also necessary for an open society. For example my bank password is something I don’t want anyone to know.
A better example would be encryption keys.
A reminder that "you have nothing to hide" argument is a fallacy because people abuse their power: Some first hits as reminders of places where their powers are abused [1]: "NSA staff used spy tools on spouses, ex-lovers: watchdog" https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-surveillance-watchdog... [2]: https://reason.com/2022/07/26/police-can-access-your-ring-ca... [3]: https://reason.com/2021/04/26/warrantless-border-s…
"What level of trust do you think you've earned?"
"What do you want to do with all this information?"
"How will this make things better?'
"Don't you have more important things to spend time and money on?"
"Is this really the best thing the government should be working on right now?"
"How does this help any of society's ills?"
"Will taxes need to be increased to manage, store, and analyse the mountains of information that will be created?"
"How long will you store messages between me and my daughter about her contemplating suicide, and will those messages prevent her from getting a government job later in life?"
"Does the storing of all this data come with a responsibility to make it accessible to defend people who have been accused of a crime?"
"My wife works in law enforcement, will she have access to this trove of data?"
"Will there be a process to remove data from this trove that may be libelous or cause undue harm to an individual or company?"
"Is the government responsible for the complete chain of access to this data, or are there private companies involved that have to be trusted not to sneak a peek?"
"What specific issue, currently facing today's society, does this solve?"
I’m reminded by a speech by Frederick Douglass [1] that >This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these w…
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By that definition I would say secrecy is also necessary for an open society. For example my bank password is something I don’t want anyone to know.
I agree, but I don't think that's a good example. The only reason for the existence of a bank password is to enable private interactions between yourself and the bank (and the government through their financial surveillance). A better example would be encryption keys.
A reminder that "you have nothing to hide" argument is a fallacy because people abuse their power: Some first hits as reminders of places where their powers are abused [1]: "NSA staff used spy tools on spouses, ex-lovers: watchdog" https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-surveillance-watchdog... [2]: https://reason.com/2022/07/26/police-can-access-your-ring-ca... [3]: https://reason.com/2021/04/26/warrantless-border-s…
I think "why do you have the right to know?" is a decent answer. "What level of trust do you think you've earned?" "What do you want to do with all this information?" "How will this make things better?' "Don't you have more important things to spend time and money on?" "Is this really the best thing the government should be working on right now?" "How does this help any of society's ills?" "Will taxes need to be incr…
Surveillance isn't some harmless thing, because you can tell a million lies with a drop of the truth in them for any reason you want.
Imagine you get established in life and decide to run for local politics only to have the fact that you've gone to Vegas 4 times in your life somehow turned into a completely untrue "drug use and prostitution" scandal that destroys your credibility and political career before it even started.
Imagine having your grandkids' college scholarships revoked because you ran an incredibly unprofitable and short lived onlyfans for 3 months in your late teens.
Maybe the results won't be as overt as this. Maybe it will be worse.
Either way, it is invasive and gives complete strangers power over your future and your children's future that they simply should not have and have no reason to ever have.
It's morally repugnant and abhorrent to any person who takes the time to think not of what information will be collected but of what that information will be used for and by whom.
The children of the people who as of today are still talking about how great trump is and how he "brought peace to the middle east" and how "evil demoncrats are running a global cabal to turn humans into monkeys" are the people who at best will be the parents and friends and neighbors of the people who will have finely grained and exacting data of everything you have done from well before the day of the passing of a bill like this.
This bill would make America the equivalent of living in an overly nosy HOA city everywhere for everyone. The people who fit in and don't make waves will get the 1950's nuclear family treatment, and those that don't will get the April 26, 1986 Pripyat nuclear treatment.
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> March 9, 1993 It's funny (not haha-funny) how political policy in 2023 is still trying to catch up to morality understood 30 years ago. I remember being annoyed at newscasters abusing the term "hackers" in the late 90s and extremely broad definitions of "hacking" being applied in court-rulings. It must still be really difficult to comprehend tech and the consequences of these kinds of policies for policy makers. Ei…
Oh, politics understands that alright, don't you worry about that. Politicians are the enemies of privacy for the masses, because a transparent population is a population that is easier controlled and manipulated. That's also why terms are being used deliberately incorrectly, to move legitimate positions nearer to criminal activity. Just ask anyone interested in hobbyist chemistry.
I'm so tired. I wish we didn't have to keep going through constant attacks on our privacy. I know they're hoping that people will give up after a point out of weariness, and I'm afraid when it comes to many people they're right.
I just keep wondering what the hell is wrong with the people who think junk like this is a good idea. And why there are any. Theory: They're child-molesters themselves?
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Hahahahaha Of course. Of course Cruz and Hawley are actually angels that are a victim of circumstances. Collins? Fucking immaculate. I don't know how many times we have to "fight back" when they come uo with this BS. They should just cut it out and serve the people that elected them. PS: Mandatory "Think about the children!"
They are serving lots of constituents. There's no absolute block across all the people in a state. People have different ideas. I hate all these "spy on you and disable encryption". But it's not like there's a uniform view of how to approach this. Plenty of people respond to "think of the children".