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Four fears for authoritarians

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Re: Four fears for authoritarians

#51

Post by asgard1024 »

raverbashing wrote: post #29
asgard1024 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But probably they won't stay democratic for long." The word "probably" is precisely my point. To my knowledge, nobody ever tested this. We have police to deal with mess, which is under public scrutiny. Why SS should be exempt is not clear at all. "Remember that this works for the WBC." Not being American, I don't know what you refer to, sorry. "Free speech does not mean speech without consequences" I don't follow. I…

"To my knowledge, nobody ever tested this." I'm not talking about only internal threats, but external threats as well. I'm not sure that "nobody has tested this" but history has lots of cases of coups, invasions, etc (and probably other cases where things went differently) The WBC is the Westboro Baptist Church, read about them and how they use freedom of speech laws. "I don't understand why speaking about what happe…

These are the things where I believe we should change the culture. We should learn not to take claims on their face value. If everyone would do that, we would need no defamation laws or laws restricting free speech. All that would be just "noise". And my 3rd point was, we can maybe even automate such processing of information, for our own benefit.

I believe that the positive effect of not censoring stuff outweighs the negative effect of spreading misinformation, always. In other words, you cannot at the same time claim that people cannot distinguish misinformation and that they process it differently from truth (and therefore attempts to ban it will do more good than harm). And the idea of "free speech" in itself is a proof of that, so far.

Re: Four fears for authoritarians

#52

Post by MisterWebz »

tlarkworthy wrote: post #6

If anyone knew the most effective way for us UK citizens to stop our government from making irreversible constitutional mistakes I would be highly grateful for the information.

We need to concentrate our efforts. We can't just go out into the streets and complain about a myriad of issues.

An organization like EFF is too broad. We need groups that each focus on one issue only.

Re: Four fears for authoritarians

#53

Post by jnbiche »

mseebach wrote: post #38
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? I don't mean not to have "operational" security. The secrecy there is in place today is all "operational", there are no other kinds. The problem is defining what constitutes as being within the scope of a legitimate operation, and especially the asymmetrical nature of defining it (only the people know a secret can reason about it, and they are rarely the be…

>The secrecy there is in place today is all "operational", there are no other kinds.

Are you seriously saying that all of today's classified documents relate to ongoing operations? They still classify stuff from WWII. And huge amounts of material relating to technologies unrelated to any operations imaginable (like CRM systems) are classified. I urge you to read the Washington Post's series on government secrecy from a few years ago to learn about what kinds of things are classified in today's government: http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/

Re: Four fears for authoritarians

#54

Post by 7952 »

tlarkworthy wrote: post #6

If anyone knew the most effective way for us UK citizens to stop our government from making irreversible constitutional mistakes I would be highly grateful for the information.

Supporting Liberty [1] could be a good starting point. These are plain old human rights and civil liberty issues.

[1] http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/index.php

Re: Four fears for authoritarians

#55

Post by talktime »

radio4fan wrote: post #47
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 g…

>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.

Quite.

>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.

I think you missed my point. Asserting your right to silence is a crime in this situation. You can be further detained, charged, prosecuted, jailed and/or fined for asserting a basic right.

Re: Four fears for authoritarians

#56

Post by snitko »

Cakez0r wrote: post #50
snitko wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dire…

> the tax has already been paid

Not so. Inflation is yet another tax you'll be paying if you keep your money in a bank. Inflation is a huge thing for governments. Without inflation, they'd be out of so many opportunities to finance various things and the fraudulent financial system governments run would be instantly exposed.

Then you would also have to remember that if you keep your savings in Bitcoin, you can pay for other products and services with them directly. And taxes would be paid only by a company that at some point decides to convert Bitcoins to fiat. That is, if you are A then your bitcoins may be in a chain of payments A -> B -> C. Obviously A (you) paid taxes, C would also have to pay taxes when he converts them to fiat. But because B decides to spend bitcoins earned from you directly by purchasing things from C, taxes are not paid from that deal.

Re: Four fears for authoritarians

#57

Post by lemming »

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…

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.

It's worse than this - since border zones are considered legal no-mans-land, you actually don't have the right to silence in those areas (i.e. it's an imprisonable offence not to co-operate). This is one of the significant points in the Miranda case, the fact that normal protections afforded to journalists don't apply in these areas.

Re: Four fears for authoritarians

#58

Post by asgard1024 »

mseebach wrote: post #38
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? I don't mean not to have "operational" security. The secrecy there is in place today is all "operational", there are no other kinds. The problem is defining what constitutes as being within the scope of a legitimate operation, and especially the asymmetrical nature of defining it (only the people know a secret can reason about it, and they are rarely the be…

> The problem is defining what constitutes as being within the scope of a legitimate operation

Of course, the final authority of interpretation should lie within the public. But it should be defined very narrowly. Basically, if public cannot reason about it, it shouldn't be a secret. Specific details can be a secret. In cryptography, this problem doesn't exist. There is a distinction between algorithm and key. I don't see why this shouldn't apply to accountability of government as well.

> which seems to amount to outlawing private agreements to not divulge certain information

Again, such private agreements should be very very narrow, and defined by what they can do, not by what they cannot do. In particular, they shouldn't prevent talking about events that happened to you.

> Constitutional free speech exclusively concerns the governments right to decide what you can say

Yes, and it shouldn't. Government is just another type of social institution. Just limiting government doesn't equate to freedom. Free speech, in my view, should cover all social institutions, including private companies and religious organizations.

> Your envisioned platform is essentially wikipedia

It isn't. First, I am talking about primary, not secondary sources of information. Second, Wikipedia isn't very anonymous. Third, there is no automated (or collective) assessment of trustworthiness of the sources.

The disagreement problem can maybe be resolved, but in a different way than on Wikipedia.

My thinking was that the system would have 2 types of information, sources (primary information) and edits (reviews of information drawn from sources). Sources would be optionally anonymous, while edits would be public. You would be able to "invest" your trust into an editor (producer of edits) in the system. Editing the information would be then redistribution of the trust. This would result in calculation of how much you should trust the primary sources, based on their reliability when reporting other things. This would allow you to get a "consistent" view of reality.

I am not completely sure how such a system should work, and how secure it would be possible to make it. But it's not at all like a Wikipedia.

Re: Four fears for authoritarians

#59

Post by etherael »

snitko wrote: post #31
andreasklinger wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if everyone already realised that it's not about terrorism but doesn't know how to act and therefore falls into cynicism? If anyone knows what to do please step up and lead I am happy to follow.

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…

Not impossible, you're on the right track.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agorism

Widely adopted, this is what kills the tyrants.

Re: Four fears for authoritarians

#60

Post by hahainternet »

marvin wrote: post #45
raverbashing wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 goe…

> And Westboro Babtist Church does fall under this protection

Not in the first world.

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