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A Surveillance Treaty in Disguise: Canada Signs UN Cybercrime Convention

michaelgeist.ca

171–180 of 181 posts

Re: A Surveillance Treaty in Disguise: Canada Signs UN Cybercrime Convention

#171
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, history has shown enormous missteps and in fact tragic actions of harm, from the very people that claim to be the ones that are Doing The Right Thing. The other side would make this exact same point about vaccine proponents. How can we differentiate one argument from the other?

An interesting point to bring up. Why? Well, because the issue with vaccine doubt, is misinformation. It's disinformation, spread for either profit (followers on youtube), or foreign actors working to reduce the cohesion of the West's societies. Russia? China? Iran? None of these countries, even together, stand a chance militarily against the West. But if you cannot beat them militarily, you must weaken them from wit…

> Well, because the issue with vaccine doubt, is misinformation

In other words you don't agree with it. But the vaccine deniers would say the vaccine proponents are the ones with misinformation they're paid to spread. Again, how to differentiate the two sides?

Re: A Surveillance Treaty in Disguise: Canada Signs UN Cybercrime Convention

#172
post #164
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For example, continuing to accept anything that remotely passes as protect-the-children politics without understanding that the consequences are worse than the benefits, even for the children themselves. Have you checked the premise? Usually the waves of fake protect-the-children policies are widely decried, support is fairly thin and the politicians pass it anyway then refuse to revisit the issue ever. It is like…

> Have you checked the premise? Usually the waves of fake protect-the-children policies are widely decried, support is fairly thin and the politicians pass it anyway then refuse to revisit the issue ever. I think support can be quiet. I think politicians make a bet on how their constituents, including the quiet ones, will feel. Do you think that on average if you pulled a person off the street and asked them, they'd…

If that were true, wouldn't that mean that politicians are in fact acting in a WYSIWYG manner? They roll in, implement policies that people like, say "I implemented this policy because it has quiet support" and the political defence of the policy is average people like it and can't be talked out of supporting it?

If your position is that the average person on the street thinks a policy is a good idea then the politicians involved aren't going to need complex signalling. They're going to say "You all like this policy! The current mob aren't going to do it >:( Vote for me, I will implement it". The sticking point is all the policies politicians implement that are unpopular with the average person on the street and that polie couldn't win an election if they were visibly standing for their actual position.

Re: A Surveillance Treaty in Disguise: Canada Signs UN Cybercrime Convention

#173
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An interesting point to bring up. Why? Well, because the issue with vaccine doubt, is misinformation. It's disinformation, spread for either profit (followers on youtube), or foreign actors working to reduce the cohesion of the West's societies. Russia? China? Iran? None of these countries, even together, stand a chance militarily against the West. But if you cannot beat them militarily, you must weaken them from wit…

> Well, because the issue with vaccine doubt, is misinformation In other words you don't agree with it. But the vaccine deniers would say the vaccine proponents are the ones with misinformation they're paid to spread. Again, how to differentiate the two sides?

One thing I mentioned in my prior post, is the difference between internal discord, and externally amplified disinformation.

As democracies, we've always had healthy debate, but when you add fuel to the fire via external influencers, it throws the whole ball out of wack.

And you can literally drown out any voice of reason, with LLMs, content generation, eg video. Yes this can happen domestically, but we're talking about a scale issue here. And just as with Cambridge Analytics, and Facebook, highly skilled, targeted messaging is a thing.

A random disbeliever isn't going to wage a multibillion dollar, highly targeted and effective campaign. Again, scale.

If you remove that external influence, you now revert to facts vs people just making paranoid things up. Its at least something tenable.

Re: A Surveillance Treaty in Disguise: Canada Signs UN Cybercrime Convention

#174
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can go both ways. Bad actors can simplify because it leads to indifference, by way of generalizations. "black" = "bad", "illegal immigrant" = "gang member". It's how racism works. > The “good” side therefore needs to fight that complexity with simplicity and empathy. Empathy, yes. Simplicity doesn't normally lead to empathy; complexity does.

I think this often tends to fall along political lines. In my experience, the left tends to like simple stories ("we are poor and the capitalists are rich, so just take their money and give it to us", "if people love each other, they should be able to marry, no matter the gender"). The right tends to like complex explanations ("taking money from the rich destroys the incentive structure required for effective resourc…

I think this is more of an example of what arguments you are exposed to. We typically only see the most superficial version of our opponents arguments and we see complex versions of our own. Its one of the simplest kinds of propaganda.

"Capital" is a big honking book. It has substantially more to it than "take their money and give it to us," and contemporary leftist thought has a huge number of different intellectual takes on how to right the world, from syndicalism to libertarian socialism, and the debates are vigorous (sometimes too vigorous, if you ask me).

I could just as easily characterize (eg) the Christian right as fundamentally only making one argument: "God wants it to be this way." That would be dumb. I've read CS Lewis and Chesterton, Ivan Illich. I happen to think that, fundamentally, there isn't anything like the Christian god out there, but I can see that its not just as simple as the cartoon I sketched above.

Re: A Surveillance Treaty in Disguise: Canada Signs UN Cybercrime Convention

#176
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Please don't post ideological flamebait on HN. The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

This is the comment I was replying to:

> I read that left-wing people are consistently found to be much more able to process conflicting ideas than right-wing people are.

Nothing in your guidelines tells me how this comment is ok, but somehow my reply is not.

Re: A Surveillance Treaty in Disguise: Canada Signs UN Cybercrime Convention

#177
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can go both ways. Bad actors can simplify because it leads to indifference, by way of generalizations. "black" = "bad", "illegal immigrant" = "gang member". It's how racism works. > The “good” side therefore needs to fight that complexity with simplicity and empathy. Empathy, yes. Simplicity doesn't normally lead to empathy; complexity does.

[flagged]

Please don't post ideological flamebait on HN. The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: A Surveillance Treaty in Disguise: Canada Signs UN Cybercrime Convention

#178
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure whether your "adversary determined to reclaim its own lands" is Europe's adversary (Russia, wanting to take Ukraine) or Canada's adversary (the United States, wanting to take Canada) but in neither case does "its own lands" seem like a reasonable description of what it is they want. And from where I'm sitting (in the UK, so I don't have a front-seat view of any of this) it seems as if "it's pissed off it…

Did you think Canada was attached to Europe or something ?

No. (I would try to explain how my meaning differs from what you thought I meant, but I am quite unable to figure out what you thought I meant.)

Re: A Surveillance Treaty in Disguise: Canada Signs UN Cybercrime Convention

#179
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't post ideological flamebait on HN. The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

This is the comment I was replying to: > I read that left-wing people are consistently found to be much more able to process conflicting ideas than right-wing people are. Nothing in your guidelines tells me how this comment is ok, but somehow my reply is not.

I've replied to them now with the same appeal. But someone else's breach of the guidelines doesn't excuse your own. Rather than escalating when you see a bad comment, you'd be better to flag the comment, or email us (hn@ycombinator.com) so we can see it and take action sooner.

Re: A Surveillance Treaty in Disguise: Canada Signs UN Cybercrime Convention

#180
post #45

The only way to have age verification on an international level, is to have treaties allowing for the sharing of information about citizens, digitally, in that context. And this is that level of cooperation. And it has all the hallmarks of what comes next, identity verification. And this, is what this is for. In order to prosecute anyone, you need to validate who did the crime. And that requires knowing who that pers…

I wish this was setup like a certificate authority so only the government is able to unmask an individual, but it's going to be pictures of government ID. I don't think the government themselves are prepared for the amount of identity theft that is going to follow mass collection of government documents.

>I wish this was setup like a certificate authority so only the government is able to unmask an individual

No such thing as a backdoor for one entity.

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