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Four fears for authoritarians

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Re: Four fears for authoritarians

#41

Post by swombat »

snitko wrote: post #35
Cakez0r wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be impossible in the UK. Salary is paid directly into one's bank account and tax is deducted before it even gets there.

Ask your employer if he can pay you in cash or Bitcoin off the record. If you're a business, sell for bitcoins and give discounts, certainly pay employees in Bitcoin if they ask you to. As far as I know, there's currently no law that requires you to pay taxes on bitcoins earned. Even if there was, it'd be prohibitively expensive for government to track everyone's Bitcoin addresses (data mining on the blockchain is ce…

As a UK employer, that'd be a straight ticket to an HMRC investigation and severe penalties, possibly jail. Employing people illegally, "off the books", is treated as a serious thing here.

Re: Four fears for authoritarians

#43

Post by batemanesque »

and describing all this as the same 'agenda' is grossly simplistic & undermines attempts to reinforce civil liberties. there may be broad trends but they're not driven by a unified entity, and given that the scope of NSA surveillance was known before Snowden his leaks hardly give credence to the possibility of taking conspiracy theories seriously

Re: Four fears for authoritarians

#44

Post by snitko »

swombat wrote: post #41
snitko wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ask your employer if he can pay you in cash or Bitcoin off the record. If you're a business, sell for bitcoins and give discounts, certainly pay employees in Bitcoin if they ask you to. As far as I know, there's currently no law that requires you to pay taxes on bitcoins earned. Even if there was, it'd be prohibitively expensive for government to track everyone's Bitcoin addresses (data mining on the blockchain is ce…

As a UK employer, that'd be a straight ticket to an HMRC investigation and severe penalties, possibly jail. Employing people illegally, "off the books", is treated as a serious thing here.

Ok, got it. Then just keep your savings in gold or Bitcoin. Even if half the population did just that, the government would be shitting bricks already.

Re: Four fears for authoritarians

#45

Post by marvin »

raverbashing wrote: post #25
asgard1024 wrote: post #22

I have come to conclusion that more radical thinking is needed. American constitution (or other derived documents, such as EU Charter on Human Rights, I am EU citizen), as it stands, is not going to cut it. The thing is, the extremes of keeping things hidden we see in the government are just a tip of a long tail of many, many people trying to keep things hidden in other, more mundane, institutions. For existential fe…

"Can democratic state do without any secret service at all?" Maybe. But probably they won't stay democratic for long. Some people are only there to make a mess. "There should be no blank exceptions to free speech" Remember that this works for the WBC. I'm not saying it's bad, but it's a consequence. "you should have right to publicly criticize your employer" But this is like it is. Free speech does not mean speech wi…

Freedom of speech does imply that people will say unpopular things. And Westboro Babtist Church does fall under this protection. Regarding extrajudicial consequences of e.g. whistleblowing in the private sector, I think that this area needs explicit protections since the consequences of pissing someone off are so severe. (From what I gather, whistleblowing against a US employer is more or less career suicide). It goes without saying that this is a democratic problem.

In fact, the protection of the freedom of speech is another prominent example that if you just leave the market forces to sort things out, you will eventually end up with a situation that is in opposition to the ideal of a functioning democratic society.

Re: Four fears for authoritarians

#46

Post by snitko »

Cakez0r wrote: post #40
snitko wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ask your employer if he can pay you in cash or Bitcoin off the record. If you're a business, sell for bitcoins and give discounts, certainly pay employees in Bitcoin if they ask you to. As far as I know, there's currently no law that requires you to pay taxes on bitcoins earned. Even if there was, it'd be prohibitively expensive for government to track everyone's Bitcoin addresses (data mining on the blockchain is ce…

That could work if you were a freelancer (although it would make life significantly more complicated). However, no established employer would agree to pay cash or bitcoin. It'd be highly illegal and no business would want to take that risk. Aside from that, you'd still need a way to convert bitcoins to cash, which involves the money running through a bank account. It would turn in to an elaborate fraud operation.

As I said in reply to swombat, if you can't switch to cash, gold and Bitcoin completely, then at least keep your savings in either gold or Bitcoin. That alone might make a significant difference both to you and to society at large.

Re: Four fears for authoritarians

#47

Post by radio4fan »

talktime wrote: post #36

Expat Brit here. Quite frankly I'm frightened to pass through UK ports now to visit family after reading about Schedule 7 powers. My reading of it is that passing through a UK port means I enter a legal limbo. If stopped by an inquisitor, I'm likely to assert my right to silence. This may mean I'm detained and intimidated for 9 hours. At the end of this I can be arrested and charged with 'non-cooperation', this may i…

> Quite frankly I'm frightened to pass through UK ports now to visit family after reading about Schedule 7 powers.

I'm not going to worry about it too much, myself. The statute is quite clear that you can only be questioned to establish whether you appear to be a terrorist. The law has been broken in the case of David Miranda. I hope he will sue -- as he has threatened -- so that Special Branch know that they can't get away with breaking the law in this way.

Chapter and verse:

Schedule 7, 2 (1) An examining officer may question a person to whom this paragraph applies for the purpose of determining whether he appears to be a person falling within section 40(1)(b).

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/11/schedule/7

...

40 Terrorist: interpretation.

(1) In this Part “terrorist” means a person who— (a) has committed an offence under any of sections 11, 12, 15 to 18, 54 and 56 to 63, or (b) is or has been concerned in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/11/section/40

If you're worried about this, perhaps you should also be worried about entering the US -- including in transit -- in case you are declared to be an unperson and sent to Gitmo with no trial or legal recourse. It's a bit worse than a maximum of nine hours of pointless tedium and handing over your Gmail/Facebook passwords which -- let's face it -- the spooks will have if they want them anyway.

As for Assange, if they get their hands on him, they will ship him to Sweden. He's spent the last year holed up in one room: I doubt another nine hours would bother him too much.

Re: Four fears for authoritarians

#48

Post by agilebyte »

Cakez0r wrote: post #32
snitko wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kinda simple. We finance this bullshit by paying taxes. Why do we pay them? Because they force us to and convince us it's a good idea. What do we do about it? Use any form of money that is problematic to track and tax: cash, gold, Bitcoin. Pretty sure it's possible to live just on that - would be a little uncomfortable, but certainly less so than some violent action. And it would be a major blow to the government if…

That would be impossible in the UK. Salary is paid directly into one's bank account and tax is deducted before it even gets there.

You can let someone in a tax neutral country setup a UK corporation and then get a letter from HMRC stating that the company is not tax resident in the UK.

Then you could persuade your employer to pay this corporation for services rendered.

Of course, the heart of the company would still be with you and if you are resident in the UK, you are doing something illegal.

Re: Four fears for authoritarians

#49

Post by ctdonath »

asgard1024 wrote: post #22

I have come to conclusion that more radical thinking is needed. American constitution (or other derived documents, such as EU Charter on Human Rights, I am EU citizen), as it stands, is not going to cut it. The thing is, the extremes of keeping things hidden we see in the government are just a tip of a long tail of many, many people trying to keep things hidden in other, more mundane, institutions. For existential fe…

The problem: enforcement.

The people who violate such principles (yours being not far from the USA Bill Of Rights) are the ones entrusted with enforcing them. They will and do impose creeping "reasonable exceptions" until just a shell remains.

Re: Four fears for authoritarians

#50

Post by Cakez0r »

snitko wrote: post #44
swombat wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a UK employer, that'd be a straight ticket to an HMRC investigation and severe penalties, possibly jail. Employing people illegally, "off the books", is treated as a serious thing here.

Ok, got it. Then just keep your savings in gold or Bitcoin. Even if half the population did just that, the government would be shitting bricks already.

But as long as it passes through your bank account, the tax has already been paid. I could convert all my savings to gold or bitcoin, but the government has already had their slice by the time that happens, which wouldn't be much of a protest at all.

EDIT: To clarify for non-UK residents (I'm not sure how it works in other countries), everything in the UK is fundamentally tied to your bank account. Your wages go directly to your bank. Your bills come directly out of your bank account via payment agreements that are set up with your bank and the 3rd party (see Direct Debit). There's no real way you can be paid in cash and pay your bills in cash.

The essence of fraud is finding loopholes that allow you to move cash outside of the system. Those loopholes are intrinsically not common knowledge, otherwise they'd be closed.

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