541–550 of 663 posts
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In the saga period of Iceland, 1/3rd of the laws had to be recited orally each year in a public assembly. If we had something like that then our legal code would be a lot slimmer.
Slim is not always better once people find exploits and loopholes which helps them but hurts society at large. Sunsetting is better.
This is a reminder to curate and prune all your past social media contribution, because when this goes thru, you KNOW they will apply it retroactively. You'd loathe to lose your cushy job over a moment of lucid honesty back in 2011.
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Freedom of expression is inseparable from the right to privacy. Should journalists be forced to reveal their sources if the subject of a claim sues for defamation?
Freedom of expression is not absolute and never was. Should everyone just shrug off anonymous hoaxes and hate speech?
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The problem is that "the authoritarians" (read: almost every politician at every level of government, but a drastically increasing percentage the higher you go) only need to get something passed once then it is there forever. Every law should have an automatic sunset period of 1-10 years that requires it to pass the entire legislative process again, or at least both full chambers + signing.
Increasingly wishing for this from a fictional constitutional convention: > I note one proposal to make this Congress a two-house body. Excellent — the more impediments to legislation the better. But, instead of following tradition, I suggest one house of legislators, another whose single duty is to repeal laws . Let the legislators pass laws only with a two-thirds majority... while the repealers are able to cancel a…
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This is what I fear the most. It is gas lighting and just manipulation. The idea of privacy will become associated with crime. Further down the line technical solutions that are private will become illegal and in general not being pro survailance will get you in trouble
Do you acknowledge that for many people and practically e2ee and crime are connected? e2ee is a very useful tool for crime and combined with crypto useful tool for monetizing crime. Criminals used to speak in code, meet clandestine, use burner phones and websites were easy to shut down. Now they don't need to. The solution to privacy problem is not to shout while closing your ears but to make it clear that you see th…
Discord recently introduced e2ee for voice chat. Apple has iMessage and Facetime. Whatsapp and to a lesser extent Signal are massively popular.
If you asked and ordinary person "Should the government be able to retroactively access your voice and written communications?" most people would probably react negatively.
Sure, in the pre-computer world, the US could possibly intercept letters and phone calls, but the complexity of that was high enough that it meant it could only happen with really strong cause and cost. With the barrier to scraping up unencrypted communications at near-zero (for governments and hyperscalers), the need for everyday citizens to have protected communications is higher.
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Well, here's a case when police did their work. A massive international bust happened because the police was able to trick gangs to use an app that was not actually e2ee. And chances that it happens again are almost zero.
And yet another notorious international bust just didn't happen recently despite the fact that the island loungers not only didn't use e2ee but actively made their crimes abundantly obvious to the public.
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> And none of these things were ever made illegal. Those things are barriers that make it more difficult to be criminal. We're talking about a factor that removes those barriers and makes it easier.
Not sure it's ever been particularly difficult to be a criminal. If anything, the tricky part has always been establishing who you can and can't trust.
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> And none of these things were ever made illegal. Those things are barriers that make it more difficult to be criminal. We're talking about a factor that removes those barriers and makes it easier.
What are you talking about? Thieves' cant, burner phone, clandestine meetings--these are all things that make crime easier, and none of them are illegal. We ban crime, not things that allow crime.
The term "social media" as used here means a third party website, e.g., Mark Zuckerberg's website, Elon Musk's website, Larry Page's website, etc., encouraging internet users to communicate and/or share files with other internet users via the website, allowing the third party to intermediate, collect data, perform surveillance and provide ad services to other third parties who want to target the "social media" user