231–240 of 292 posts
I am not convinced they do, they keep voting to give away their privacy every year.
That’s the weakness of most modern “democracies”: people vote once every few years for one or other party who then do largely whatever they want, outside of some immutable manifesto commitments (which are often flexible anyway). So no, people don’t vote for such things - they vote for parties who turn out to do such things at some point.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Democracy is the worst form of government except for all others that have been tried". If the people aren't capable of handling an issue, who is? Bureaucrats who are...elected democratically? Brexit's issue is that it can't be easily reversed, I don't understand why they don't just hold another referendum and undo everything.
> Bureaucrats who are...elected democratically? Actually yes. Some opinions change simply by being required to engage with the topic.
All surveillance should start with ministers first. Their private lives streamed 24/7 over internet for the public to watch. Of course, this is only for national security since humans are corruptible, and these people have vastly most control over a nation's resources, thus, 24/7 monitoring of their private lives, by the public, is super important... for national security ... or else how we can be sure they have not…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe I’m naive: I can believe the e2e encryption happens, but it takes a lot of faith to believe there’s no front-end telemetry that would render that ineffective.
Define "ineffective". Traffic analysis is a thing: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_analysis but message E2EE is generally not designed to solve that. Other layers of the stack would probably have to get involved.
In the US we have tech companies complying with sketchy DHS subpoenas that don’t require warrants. We have DoJ targeting political enemies. We have FISA mass surveillance. It’s naive to think politically motivated surveillance can’t happen in the UK and elsewhere. Or to assume that only the “right people” will be the ones able to break encryption.
> In the US we have tech companies complying with sketchy DHS subpoenas that don’t require warrants. We have DoJ targeting political enemies. We have FISA mass surveillance. You also have a president who has just said he will "report" a journalist to the FCC for "rebuke or punishment". I regret to inform people that fear over people cracking your encryption is quite niche, at this point; you have a looming fascist re…
I'd be more worried about European democracies which don't put a limit on the tenure of a president or prime minister. It was a close call in Hungary and Poland. If Orban had won the elections he could've manipulated Hungarian institutions to such a degree that he'd be president for life with unlimited powers.
The same has already occurred in Turkiye. I chuckle at the Turks protesting against Erdogan. That ship sailed about 15 years ago, there's no way to remove him from power. The only thing they can do is wait until he passes.
Inconsistent with the implicit acceptance of age verification laws (forbidding YouTube to minors, may Diderot and D'Alembert and all the democratizers of knowledge raise from their graves and sneer and taunt). Or was there a large turomoil against keir starmer that did not properly reach the news?
A few people mention EU. Let me remind you: > European Commission Revives Push for Encryption Backdoors in ProtectEU Strategy, Framing Mass Surveillance as “Lawful Access” https://reclaimthenet.org/eu-protecteu-strategy-encryption-b...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s the weakness of most modern “democracies”: people vote once every few years for one or other party who then do largely whatever they want, outside of some immutable manifesto commitments (which are often flexible anyway). So no, people don’t vote for such things - they vote for parties who turn out to do such things at some point.
Dictatorship of the bourgeoisie seems like a salient concept right now.
All surveillance should start with ministers first. Their private lives streamed 24/7 over internet for the public to watch. Of course, this is only for national security since humans are corruptible, and these people have vastly most control over a nation's resources, thus, 24/7 monitoring of their private lives, by the public, is super important... for national security ... or else how we can be sure they have not…
People that are elected by the public and hold the power to define every aspect of our lives, should be held to the absolute highest level of scrutiny possible. Every aspect and every single moment of their lives should be transparent and recorded while they hold office, no exceptions whatsoever.
I will concede that having it broadcasted may be a tad hard to do, but there should be a record of what happened during their time - in fact there should be a way to answer the question "what was minister X doing at 2026-08-29 20:13:14 UTC?"
And for the argument that says "oh then nobody would want to do it", I think that's in favour of this approach. Look around at what we're dealing with, and which people want to win elections and the fervour with which they go about it.
We should be trying to make this kind of "job" as unappealing as possible. It should be a chore, not something to go after.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The UK has the same system with the same problems. It always converges to a two-party system eventually, the US just speedran the process.
Plurality ("first past the post") voting systems always converge to a two-party system. There's even a theorem saying so, though of course the real world isn't always so polite as to behave the way the mathematics tells it to. Countries with better electoral systems don't so consistently seem to converge to a two-party system.
When one party is secure in a seat and the second is weak, other parties can challenge each other for second place. For example libertarians could try to beat republicans in a place where republicans do poorly.