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25 years of mass surveillance is enough

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Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#231

Post by godelski »

seydor wrote: post #84

It isn't going to stop until it becomes a national security issue. If your can spy on your citizens , your enemies can potentially gain access to the same surveillance and hit high profile targets. We live in war times and will soon see it happening

  > your enemies can potentially gain access to the same surveillance
Which has already happened. Though it is less obvious if high profile targets have been blackmailed or coerced. There's at least signs that some have. Even if not foreign governments, Epstein certainly had leverage

Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#232

Post by hax0ron3 »

asaddhamani wrote: post #228
hax0ron3 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the trans acceptance movement's main problems comes, as is often the case in politics, from some of its most militant and passionate activists. To put it simply, those extreme activists overreached and annoyed people. That's not the fault of trans people in general, but it explains some of the backlash and the focus on niche cases. Basically, the activists I'm talking about overreached by: - Pushing for speech…

“Militant” trans activists? How is just using someone’s pronouns “speech control”? It’s no different than using a name. If trans people tell you who they are, just believe them, it’s not that hard. There’s nothing mythical about the ongoing trans genocide. Genocides don’t just happen in gas chambers. https://translegislation.com/ I am not going to say much more here because I’m fairly certain none of this will get th…

It's cooled down a lot in the last few years, since peak woke passed. But I think that a few years ago, there would have been serious danger of being fired at many companies in the US if you refused to use a trans person's chosen pronouns. Now, one might say, this is just a matter of basic politeness... why wouldn't you use them? However, consider the situation if a white coworker started insisting that people refer to him as black, and you could get fired for not referring to him as black. For the sake of a better comparison, let's say that the white coworker was doing medical treatments to increase skin melanin, hair curliness, and so on.

As for trans genocide, I mean sure, you can make an argument that there is a trans genocide by really really stretching the meaning of the word "genocide" or by using certain parts of highly technical definitions of "genocide". But when trans activists speak of "trans genocide", they are trying to appeal to the emotional resonance of more popularly central examples of genocides, ones with mass killings. If we use the common meaning of the word "genocide", the one that is intended the vast majority of the time the word is used, there is no trans genocide.

As for washrooms, note that I never said that I'm against trans people using their chosen genders' washrooms. What I said is that many trans activists pushed to do this long before the American public had become ready for something of that nature, which contributed to a backlash against the trans movement in general.

Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#233

Post by vict7 »

stronglikedan wrote: post #198
cortesoft wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The red scare of the 1950s was ridiculous enough, but at least the Soviet Union was an actual threat. We are now at a point where “pro-transgender” is the new threat?

Sure, if you conveniently drop the qualifying word "radically". But that's not what was said. What was said specifically included the word "radically" for a good reason. Radical anything is a threat.

Are you familiar with the concepts of propaganda and lying?

Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#234

Post by sethammons »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #179
sethammons wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

6. who controls and accesses the data will change over time 7. authoritarians and evil men can have a one-stop shop to know where to round up political opponents 8. power becomes increasingly entrenched and concentrated 9. See 7

Your points are, essentially, always true of all power for all time. (Or mostly true of most power for most of time)... Humans have frequently created systems which contradict steps 6-9, or atleast from Monarchy to Democracy. Constitutions, legal systems, laws et al. have generally served as barriers to abuse. The question is how do we continue to uphold and increase the value for individuals and decrease the expecte…

> one-stop shop to know where to round up political opponents

>> Your points are, essentially, always true of all power for all time

yes, there are very famous examples of good record keeping leading to invaders or coups having an easier time killing people who they don't like.

>> Humans have frequently created systems ... as barriers to abuse

we have systems that law abiding people abide by. Again, when those people change to not-law-abiding, it is a problem that we've not solved.

Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#235

Post by danielmarkbruce »

godelski wrote: post #222
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the real world it's hard enough to get 5 people on the same page about anything. The idea that dozens/hundreds of people with billions of dollars who are in business against each other in many cases are secretly colluding with any effectiveness is a joke. If they were, zuckerberg, larry and sergey would have been squashed in the 90's/00's by the elite of the time. Sam Altman would have been crushed years ago. Obam…

This seems to contradict itself. You first claim that there's no organization but then you claim billionaires have no power because of the more powerful above them. Hierarchy is organization, so which is it

No, nothing above them. No power. That's the point. In a couple years Trump will be gone and he'll be kowtowing to others and so on.

There is no group in charge. No one is in charge.

Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#237

Post by vict7 »

NoImmatureAdHom wrote: post #160
RajT88 wrote: post #13

> It says that the government “will prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender and anarchist” and “will use all the tools constitutionally available to us to map them at home, identify their membership, map their ties to international organizations like Antifa.” So, Democratic candidates who are looking like the…

The politicized take on this is not correct. More importantly, it's not helpful. When the "left" (Democrats) had power recently in the U.S., they were very happy to try to criminalize the protected speech of their enemies. Their tack was to define speech they didn't like as "hate speech", which luckily isn't actually a thing in the U.S., legally. But they were trying to make it happen. I don't mean to defend one or t…

Please cite specifically what the Biden administration did to curtail people’s right to freedom of speech.

I’ll wait.

Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#238

Post by danielmarkbruce »

godelski wrote: post #220
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could make this statement about any group at all. And then once you realize people are in multiple groups, the whole thing devolves into chaos.

> You could make this statement about any group at all. Yes, that's the point > And then once you realize people are in multiple groups, the whole thing devolves into chaos. You have bad priors. That would only happen if groups could only have singular and simple goals. It requires those goals to be mutually exclusive. Because as soon as they overlap, even just a little, cooperation becomes an effective strategy. Hel…

Nobody is suggesting nobody or group cooperates on anything ever. This comment could go in the definition section of "strawman". My comment was in response to the idea that there is "a conspiracy of the elite". It's just an absurd idea to anyone who has spent time in the world working with people, both "elite" and non "elite".

In the bay area you'll find thousands and thousands of people who have worked at a company run by a billionaire founder. They will tell you said billionaire founder can't even get everyone in the company to conspire to row in the same direction.

Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#239

Post by godelski »

ux266478 wrote: post #227
godelski wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the parent is implying that we sit uncomfortably at home, silently, rather than uncomfortably marching through the streets, demanding. Yet, I say that while uncomfortably sitting in my home, typing on a screen

Mass demonstrations are common and frequent, more than ever. The thing is that these are mild pressures at best. What came from Occupy Wallstreet? The George Floyd protests? The No Kings marches? Anti-ICE demonstrations? They're not nothing and we should continue to have them and participate in them, but we have to recognize them as what they are: background radiation. On their own, they don't affect change or bring…

Plenty has come from all those things. But it's those in power who want you to feel like those are fruitless endeavors. That's why their strategy is to overwhelm. Good news takes time to be received and by then your focus will be on something else. But I promise you if you look them up you'll find real progress. It may not be as much as you want, but that's a different thing. Progress is made by small and successive steps. So the strategy to upend progress is to interrupt those steps and make them feel as small as possible. Don't fall for the trap

  > We clearly need ... sharks
I am afraid of sharks, just as I am scorpions. It is in their nature to draw blood. Bloodshed should be the last resort. By putting sharks in power is the problem with the current administration. Replacing with a different shark doesn't reduce attacks, it just changes targets. If sharks must be used, they must be well contained.

Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#240

Post by Psype »

foxglacier wrote: post #215
abustamam wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm Muslim. Born in the US. I've seen politicians and right wing public figures call my entire faith anti-American. One of them just had a nice memorial for their one-year since their death. The term may have had an agreed upon meaning at some point, but not anymore. Edit: it seems like most right-wing people conflate "non-Christian" with "anti-American". i don't know what's worse; the fact that these people say and…

[flagged]

Nowadays there's a lot of Muslims practicing their faith very differently from what most do. They might drink or smoke, and live a more "flexible" version, their own version of their own faith.

Even if, in fine, you are right despite the downvotes. Islam is also a political and legal system that cannot cohabit with another system (no system can cohabit with another one, you can't have a democracy and a dictature at the same place)

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