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Oppose the Earn IT Act

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Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#291

Post by cgriswald »

einpoklum wrote: post #260
jrumbut wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the key here isn't broadcasting, it's storage. In the future (?) we might think we can detect Parkinson's or MS very early through voice/video/typing characteristics. Your conversations were recorded, the data leaked to or purchased by a fly by night company hired by your bank, and now suddenly despite your excellent credit history you can't get a 30 year mortgage, you try to find a new job but companies are…

> In the future (?) we might think we can detect Parkinson's or MS very early through voice/video/typing characteristics. We probably won't.

Whether it works is irrelevant. If anyone buys it, the time between belief and disbelief will be longer than the time it takes to screw up individuals' lives.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#292

Post by jimiljojo »

Privacy aside, even if they "ban" it, people cannot just stop using it the next day. Almost every company has encrypted information, like passwords etc. This is what I LOVE about technology. They cannot stop it unless they want to bring entire systems down - some of which run govt business (like aws). So how are they really going to stop / enforce it?

It has been used encryptions and ciphers have been used for a long time, you cannot stop people from using a math function. It's like DO NOT USE multiplication from now on.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#293

Post by _AzMoo »

apeace wrote: post #208

If you want to convince your friends they should support encryption, here's how I like to get past the "nothing to hide" argument. Imagine we're sitting at a bar, chatting. None of us have anything to hide. Then the government passes a law that all conversations must be streamed on Youtube Live, so an agent comes in, sets up a camera at our table, and starts streaming. We still don't "have anything to hide". We're ju…

For those who aren't convinced by this argument, you can take it a little further by introducing a hypothetical situation in which their political opponents obtain power and criminalise criticism of government or other powerful "common-good" entities. Now your recorded conversations could become evidence of sedition, and even if it wasn't criminal at the time it could certainly be used to show evidence of previous behaviour.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#294

Post by cgriswald »

golem14 wrote: post #286
shay_ker wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the speeding analogy. "I have nothing to hide" "Have you ever sped on the highway?" "Well, yes" "Imagine if the government reveals it's been tracking everyone's speed, and has decided to write everyone tickets for speeding." "That's insane, the government can't do that!" "Exactly"

I say, no need to look at hypotheticals. Just sit back and watch what the Chinese government likely has done with the social media posts from people in Hong Kong, who are now in a desperate rush to obliterate them. Tough look, those have already been crawled and indexed. It's not quite the same, because these social media posts weren't meant to be private at the time, but it illustrates the point what can happen when…

Americans have a sense that what happens in China (or Nazi Germany, or any other place you'd care to name) can't possibly happen here—even if it is currently happening here.

Gone are the days during the Cold War where you could say, "What is this, Soviet Russia?" and have anyone squirm at the comparison.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#295

Post by jedieaston »

foolfoolz wrote: post #86
Klonoar wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even touching on those individuals, it's been bothering me that it feels like mostly silence from Google, Apple, Facebook (who this would presumably really hit at), etc. I'd really love to be missing something. It feels like this is just fading into the background... and while I can acknowledge the idea that you might just try to fight this as unconstitutional after it passes, that feels inherently risky given th…

because apple, google, facebook already comply with this. they have built ways for the government to access their data. any company with an important enough set of information is going to get this request and you can’t say no

At least for Apple, they claim the iPhone (at least devices post-checkm8) has not been compromised. iCloud is required to comply with records requests, but the data isn’t in iCloud the feds can’t get it. Even with checkm8, the Secure Enclave still has not been compromised.

If they were in bed with the feds, the FBI/NYPD wouldn’t keep asking them for keys that Apple doesn’t have.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#296

Post by spurgu »

ryandrake wrote: post #232
thayne wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a european, I don't see any party that actually have american people's interest in mind. As an American, I don't see any party that has my interests in mind. Elections always seem to be having to choose the lesser of two evils.

The two major American parties have more in common than not. They agree on most political issues, particularly defense and economics, and make a big show of arguing over a tiny corner of issues in order to desperately try to differentiate themselves. The two parties do not significantly differ on indefinite detention of American citizens on US soil. The two parties do not significantly differ on domestic spying, drag…

So what you're saying is that the US is doomed until a revolution happens?

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#297

Post by ekimekim »

elihu wrote: post #197
godelski wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with Fair Vote and the CGP Grey videos, while I like them for an introduction to the subject, both have two very misleading points. 1) When they say RCV they specifically mean Instant Runoff Voting (IRV). There are many other, and better, RCV methods. 2) They overclaim IRV's ability to solve the spoiler effect (see my other comment for links). While other RCV methods have strong resistance to spoiler effe…

I think when people talk about RCV (in the context of single-winner elections), they're almost always talking about the same thing as IRV. "Ranked voting" is the more general term. > Ranked voting is any election voting system in which voters use a ranked (or preferential) ballot to rank choices in a sequence on the ordinal scale: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. There are multiple ways in which the rankings can be counted to det…

> This is somewhat subjective, but I think they've got it backwards. Under approval voting, strategic voting and honest voting are basically the same: you vote for as many of the candidates as you can tolerate, and maybe if there's a candidate you really don't want to win you vote for everyone but them.

Except elections rarely work like that. There isn't a set of options I can tolerate and a set I can't. I want my preferred candidate to win more than I want any of the "fine I guess" candidates. And if I have to pick between "bad" and "horrible" I still want to vote for "bad".

With approval voting, I am forced to vote strategically, considering what point in my preference order to draw the line at in order to maximize my chance of causing the highest possible position in my preference order to win.

I realise that IRV isn't perfect, but it's a lot better than any non-ranked choice voting method as far as I can see, and honestly I think the risk of the situations where honest voting results in a sub-optimal outcome is massively overblown, though I don't have data to back that up.

I would note that IRV has the advantage of being actually put into practice at scale (Australia, Maine), and also comes with the nice property that it can be fairly easily adjusted to work with multiple winners (ie. STV), so you can have systems like Australia where IRV is used in single-winner races and STV in multi-winner ones without the voting public needing to learn two systems.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#298

Post by jakequade »

ypcx wrote: post #52
blintz wrote: post #3

I cannot believe that the one thing we have bipartisan consensus on is destroying strong encryption. I guess I’m biased since this is essentially my whole livelihood, but this is crazy, right?

It is worse than just crazy. Government is made of people, and people are corruptible. If the encryption backdoor key leaks from the government to a bad actor, it will create a "national security" issue of magnitude never seen before. If this line of reasoning is correct, then proposing an encryption backdoor is akin to committing an act of treason in itself, because it is purposely weakening the technological infras…

Also, they have no fucking idea what we're talking about, and "can't read their messages" just flat sounds like a bad idea to them.

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#299

Post by nopeNopeNooope »

apeace wrote: post #208

If you want to convince your friends they should support encryption, here's how I like to get past the "nothing to hide" argument. Imagine we're sitting at a bar, chatting. None of us have anything to hide. Then the government passes a law that all conversations must be streamed on Youtube Live, so an agent comes in, sets up a camera at our table, and starts streaming. We still don't "have anything to hide". We're ju…

This is better: "Cool, call your girlfriend while I listen to you two having phone sex. Right now. You have nothing to hide right? Let's hear it. I can turn around if that makes it easier, so you don't have to see my face. Come on then, you've got nothing to hide right? Should I call her and see if she's game since you're chicken?"

Re: Oppose the Earn IT Act

#300

Post by SenoraRaton »

IggleSniggle wrote: post #276
jcranmer wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think there's a strong argument that RCV/Approval would shift the incentives and game-theoretic landscape away from polarization and turnout, and towards big-tent coalition building, to appeal to the greatest quantity of left, right, center, and independent. I think most people wildly overestimate the popular appeal for compromise. Only about 20% of the population would support an opposite-side moderate over a ne…

It's almost as if you didn't even imagine what a "no 'opposite side' per se" would even look like. I think there's a LOT more room for nuance than "this" or "that" even among the ignorant and/or unengaged. Just look at sports-team divides in the US for evidence.

Except there ARE two sides. Capital controlled means of production, and worker owned means of production. These two systems are diametrically opposed to each other. This just comes across as enlightened centrism. I am vehemently opposed to the economic system of capitalism, and I think that it stands in opposition to the very concept of democracy. How am I supposed to see the capitalist as "the same side"?
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