Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same for any legislation piece. A law that costs 100M people $1 and benefits 100 people with $1M. Would be, as you noted, costly to oppose, not worth the $1 nor the time. And at the same time, very profitable for the 100 to spend hundreds of thousands and great effort lobbying for. It's just the power structure of any representative legislature. "In vain do we fly to the many"...
Plato's "republic" (one of the worst books in human history) and every justification in that book and every book citing it is trotted out to argue for how bad direct democracy is. Now we act like it's not good because Athens got its shit pushed in by Sparta during the Peloponnesian war. Direct democracy is good. One person one vote, on all legislation, actually could work. We haven't even tried at scale in thousands…
Many countries that said no to ChatControl in 2024 are now undecided
171–180 of 377 posts
Re: Many countries that said no to ChatControl in 2024 are now undecided
#172They make it really difficult to fight any of this. You have to, individually - find a representative, their contact info, state your case, hope it's the correct person, hope your mail doesn't go unnoticed, hope that it will be properly read, hope it changes their mind. This is "lobbying" by the people in a disorganised way, trying to fight organised lobbying. This is a barrier that puts lots of people off, even if t…
The only way to stop it is to have positive rights written in law, like right to online privacy and privacy of communications.
https://english.www.gov.cn/archive/lawsregulations/201911/20...
Constitutions are just paper. It doesn't matter how they're written if the guys with the guns don't care to respect it.
Re: Many countries that said no to ChatControl in 2024 are now undecided
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
The same game theory that could make a modern constitution so robust could also be used by the bad guys to thoroughly corrupt the drafting of any modern constitution you could get enacted.
I'm of the opinion that our failure (as a society) to prevent this type of attrition of democracy — death by a thousand papercuts — will be lead to catastrophic tipping points. As a ChemEng, I can't help but compare the current coordinated attack on the democratic rule of governments worldwide to having multiple batches of emulsions undergoing phase-inversion [0]: only so much fascism can be added before things colla…
I'm not a fan of democracy. You wouldn't be either, if you thought about it for very long... you just can't help yourself, it was championed as some sort of virtue ever since you were old enough to realize that governments existed. From kindergarten or pre-k.
The things you'd claim you like about democracy aren't even things that make it a democracy. The one (and only) criterion of democracy is "can you vote". And there are better ways to get all the other things than voting... voting/people do not scale. It is the undoing of democracy, people get what they deserve from it. Good and hard.
>That democracy is not robust does not mean it is not good nor something worth aspiring to.
It does not scale. You're aspiring to something that not only does not and cannot work, but you're trying to make it even bigger, true "the beatings will continue until morale improves" style. If I can figure out how to strike out on my own and be a million miles away from you when you rally for your most ambitious attempt yet, that's what I will do.
Re: Many countries that said no to ChatControl in 2024 are now undecided
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, people don't like this.
Most ordinary people don't but they still vote for authoritarian politicians who like it.
Re: Many countries that said no to ChatControl in 2024 are now undecided
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not a solution if it passes with "Client-side scanning". Basically a AI bot watching your screen all day. You're gonna need a whole secure deviant device.
That is not what the law is about. It is client side scanning embedded in the apps themselves. Each app will have to deploy their own mechanism to intercept the messages. This is not (yet) an OS level scan so there is no AI bot watching your moves on your device yet. Furthermore the AI part will run on their own servers, not on the device. Precisely, the way it has been described, is when you hit the send button, it…
Re: Many countries that said no to ChatControl in 2024 are now undecided
#176More money for militarization, 5% NATO tax, money towards buying fossil fuels from the US. More moves towards surveillance of its own people. Europe is starting to look pretty unappealing. I've been fighting for our right to online privacy since the late 90s. And frankly, I feel burnt out. Politicians keep coming up with the same harebrained ideas. Their slippery slope is never as slippery as that of the oppressive r…
Re: Many countries that said no to ChatControl in 2024 are now undecided
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am Danish and I fucking hate my government for this. Nationally, the minister of justice Peter Hummelgaard is also pushing for a law which gives the police intelligence agency (PET) the right to basically do mass surveillance of everyone without prior suspicion of any criminal activity. If passed, they will be allowed to build a database of everyone which correlates social media activity with health care data and a…
> This will be a machine for automatically generating suspects. According to proponents, this is untrue. The intent of that database is that looking into it will still require a warrent, and will thusly require the suspect to already have been identified. I'm no expert, but that sounds reasonably similar to how we treat other investigative means.
Also, this is still nothing like getting a warrant to a wire tap - any suspicion will reveal YEARS of private information about you to the investigators. Furthermore, knowing that this can be used to identify suspects, surely it will have an effect on peoples behaviors.
They propose to include health records! What if you like to read about bomb making out of curiosity, have a relative who is in jail for violence, and you start seeing a psychiatrist? How many boxes have to be ticked before a flag is raised, and how is that going to affect what you tell the psychiatrist about how you really feel?
I also don't trust the police to not make mistakes or behave unethically enough to be comfortable with this. Denmark is not a very corrupt country, but we still see misuse of power. Just recently it was revealed how a police handler explicitly instructed an informant to lie in court and frame someone else, just so the handler could keep his source. Are these the kind of people who should have access to my search history and health data? No fucking thanks.
Re: Many countries that said no to ChatControl in 2024 are now undecided
#178Given that the private malware providers aren't accountable for it, I guess that it will noticeably degrade the average battery life for phones in the EU.
Re: Many countries that said no to ChatControl in 2024 are now undecided
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am Danish and I fucking hate my government for this. Nationally, the minister of justice Peter Hummelgaard is also pushing for a law which gives the police intelligence agency (PET) the right to basically do mass surveillance of everyone without prior suspicion of any criminal activity. If passed, they will be allowed to build a database of everyone which correlates social media activity with health care data and a…
I think that's a great idea. I for one want to enable our governments to track down criminals and punish them for it. If they're not doing everything they can do so in this technological and digital age, then they are breaking their part of that pesky "social contract" I am being upheld to. And to people like you that oppose this and propose even more authoritarian laws that prevent me as a citizen from protecting my…