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25 years of mass surveillance is enough

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251–260 of 385 posts

Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#251
post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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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 t…

> 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)

How much of an aversion to objective reality is required to believe this, as you’ve worded it?

Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#252
post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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 t…

As I mentioned in the other comment, Islam the faith and Islam the political system are largely different. Most Muslims (myself included) know a lot about the faith but know nothing about the jurisprudence. So I agree that Islamic jurisprudence is unlikely able to cohabit with American democracy, its pointless to talk about because no Muslim running for public office is trying to introduce such concepts into American politics.

Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Way to hand wave away all the negative effects of mass surveillance. Car theft is bad, but sleepwalking into dictatorship is worse. There’s also plenty of options for solving car theft that aren’t dystopian.

Your phone in your pocket is a much more powerful surveillance device. That's my point, it's just pure hivemind to freak out about traffic cameras. I find it pretty dystopian that CVS has to lock up cheap products because society has failed to punish criminals.

I don’t carry a phone most of the time, it stays at home, and I don’t have a Google/Apple duopoly device either.

I don’t drive a modern car with built in cell tracking.

I don’t use “smart devices” in my home.

I’m opposed to mass surveillance in all forms.

Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#254

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.

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Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but... but the bathrooms! and the children's sports! /s it's still baffling to me how incredibly irrelevant niche cases dominate the entire discourse.

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…

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Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do it because it wins them elections. It's a 90/10 issue and national democrats are on the losing side.

As someone who struggles with my position on some of these topics, one of my major self criticisms/fear is the tyranny of the majority. Even if (and that's a hypothetical if) my values would reject transgenderism, my values of freedom and fairness conflict with forcing another human being onto a specific path, especially with the use of force (government). So even if 90% are cisgendered (I didnt look up the real stat…

> even if 90% are cisgendered (I didnt look up the real stat)

The real stat is much higher than 90%, in case you were curious.

Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is the kind of sarcasm on HN that will draw a ton of comments. Good job on really nailing the psyche of the HN community.

I may have issues detecting sarcasm. I hope to god this is sarcasm… because these kinds of takes are rampant on this site.

Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#258
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funny thing about that is - it's a solved problem. The reason you heard about it for a while is that they hadn't tightened up the rules yet. As with anything, problems are highlighted, they are studied, and new rules are put into place to account for what was learned. Right wing media of course discovered a boogeyman that was so useful they will be using it for years still, even if it doesn't exist.

It wasn’t a problem to begin with. Meta studies recently showed trans women have no biological advantage over cis women after HRT, certainly nothing than cis women don’t have biological variation within anyway. All the rule updates did was exclude and further marginalise an already marginalised extreme minority. There are very few trans women to begin with, fewer of us still are competing in sports. Nothing was studi…

The paper you are thinking of did not show this, but that the evidence - of males who had weakened themselves with testosterone suppression having no athletic performance advantage over women - is low to very low quality. Such low quality that this hypothesis is not supported.

Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am from the UK and we are quite far down the surveillance and control mentality (Flock actually seems a greater system of surveillance then what we have here but if such a system was created, the push back would be less). But a lot of people here are slowly beginning to see the benefits in self defense and gun laws that mean you are not dependent on the police, this kind of logic where people have want autonomy and…

I do not know a single person in the UK who wants US style gun laws. There is significant pushback against surveillance.

Many are, perhaps not as far as guns yet but wanting self defense and self defense weapons. I think a movement of increasing rights to self defense could mean people are less supportive of surveillance where their own self defense deters crime rather then an expensive and rights destroying leviathan that only acts retroactively.

I hope so any way.

Re: 25 years of mass surveillance is enough

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I don't get this. If they're niche irrelevant issues that affect ~nobody, why not just concede them? Republicans could hardly dominate the discourse with these topics if there was nobody to discourse against.

> Yeah, I don't get this. If they're niche irrelevant issues that affect ~nobody, why not just concede them? Because there's about 1% of people who are trans in the US [1] and most other populations, on top of that come a further about 1.7% people who are somewhere on the intersex spectrum [2]. Democrats aren't willing to throw literally millions of people under the bus. Republicans aren't just willing to cast them a…

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