Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans • Hacker News Board

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#321

Post by brewdad » Thu, Jun 06, 2013, 4:07 PM UTC

loup-vaillant wrote: post #296

talmand wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True democracy is a far worse sort of government than a representative republic because it is essentially mob rule. "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch." -said by somebody

Ancient Athens was not mob rule, as far as I know.

It was a much more homogenous mob than what we have in the US today, but it was still a mob.

As for citizen referendums, look no further than California to see the outcome of this "direct democracy". It still suffers from the Golden Rule, he who has the gold makes the rules.

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#322

Post by crusso » Thu, Jun 06, 2013, 4:07 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #265

crusso wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You completely missed the point. When you give so much power to the government, it doesn't matter what your individual opinion is on abortion or any other noise issue. You have given your opponent a checkmate because you allowed that opponent to take your queen earlier thinking that he was somehow your friend.

Your language of "audibleness" clearly refers to the importance of abortion versus privacy as issues, not any sort of long-term tactical battle. I'm not addressing the rest of your post, just the first sentence.

> sort

I think that a bubble sort can be effective in that it's easy to write and does the job.

I'm not addressing the rest of your post, just the one part that has nothing to do with what you were really saying.

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#323

Post by rayiner » Thu, Jun 06, 2013, 4:09 PM UTC

crusso wrote: post #322

rayiner wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your language of "audibleness" clearly refers to the importance of abortion versus privacy as issues, not any sort of long-term tactical battle. I'm not addressing the rest of your post, just the first sentence.

> sort I think that a bubble sort can be effective in that it's easy to write and does the job. I'm not addressing the rest of your post, just the one part that has nothing to do with what you were really saying.

I addressed the part that I most cared about. In privacy discussions like these, it's often the case that people lament the fact that the public cares more about things like abortion than the NSA collecting call metadata. My point is that the legal status of abortion (or gay rights, etc) is not the kind of minor issue that some people like to dismiss as merely "wedge issues."

On the list of things that aren't in the Constitution, abortion rights are far more important than "privacy."

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#324

Post by robomartin » Thu, Jun 06, 2013, 4:13 PM UTC

d23 wrote: post #279

talmand wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He didn't say nor have I ever heard a libertarian claim they wanted no government. I believe that's a different ideology.

> Ultra limited government. Pretty damn close.

Nope. A rough count shows that over twenty million people work directly for our govenments from local to federal.

http://www2.census.gov/govs/apes/11fedfun.pdf

http://www2.census.gov/govs/apes/11stlus.txt

If we reduced government by 90% by reduction, automation, privatization and outright agency elimination you'd still have two million people in government.

"Ultra-limited" does not mean "no government".

I think 50% to 75% could be a good range. So you'd still have somewhere between five and ten million people in government.

Also, "ultra limited" refers more to what they are allowed to do rather than how many.

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#325

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Jun 06, 2013, 4:14 PM UTC

kunai wrote: post #320

dragonwriter wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's an embarrassment to say you are if you only vote for the lesser of two evils, and not one that cares about our country, like Ron Paul, Gary Johnson, or Jill Stein. Its quite possible to think that, of Obama and Romney, Romney is the lesser of two evils, and to think that for any X in (Ron Paul, Gary Johnson, Jill Stein), Romney would still be the lesser of two evils when considering Romney vs. X. Its also quit…

> Based on this, it would be counterproductive to vote third party, and the responsible thing would be to vote for Romney. This only stands if you want it to be counterproductive. A third-party candidate vote is never counterproductive. Even if it did increase the probability of an Obama win, or even if it did have no effect on the election outcome, why would it be a wasted vote? What you're effectively doing is rais…

> Even if it did increase the probability of an Obama win, or even if it did have no effect on the election outcome, why would it be a wasted vote?

If you think Obama is substantially worse than Romney and it increased the probability of an Obama win, its not a wasted vote, its a counterproductive vote. (That is, its a worse that decreases the expected realized utility.)

> What you're effectively doing is raising publicity for the cause.

There's better ways to do that that precede the voting booth, and which, if successful, eliminate the problem of counterproductive voting. At the voting booth, when those prior efforts haven't succeeded, you have to weigh the benefits of maybe microscopically advancing the PR for the cause by adding one to the count of protest votes against the microscopic possibility (times the expected magnitude of harm) of tossing the election to the least-favored of the major party candidate, and the policy consequences of that (which can, depending on the candidates choices, include a greater decrease in the long-term prospects of the kind of changes you want than the increase that would be expected from the PR value of a third-party vote, particularly if you think the major-party choices are between "basically maintaining the status quo" and "maintaining the worst features of the status quo while substantial reducing economic and political freedoms".)

Political engagement isn't limited to voting.

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#326

Post by crusso » Thu, Jun 06, 2013, 4:14 PM UTC

loup-vaillant wrote: post #289

crusso wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Democracy vs the representative Republicanism are irrelevant. What matters is that we have a massive unelected bureaucracy that is its own ulta-powerful branch of the government that sucks money and makes its own laws.

Well, actual democracy does start by writing a constitution¹ by mostly randomly selected people who will forbid themselves to exert any meaningful further influence on the system. That should address the bureaucracy problem. [1]: I mean a constitution , not a set of super-laws such as the Bill of Rights. Something that state how political institutions should operate (Executive, legislative, judiciary, monetary, and t…

Well, we don't have as complete a constitution as you specified, but I think we've pretty much proven that a constitution doesn't just enforce itself.

It's like introducing a constitution and elections to Afghanistan. They don't mean anything without the culture or "civil society" to back them up.

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#327

Post by arianvanp » Thu, Jun 06, 2013, 4:14 PM UTC

dekz wrote: post #118

dirktheman wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, you can buy the one-time cards and they won't be able to track you. But for regular travellers like myself those one-time cards are much more expensive than the ones linked to your bank account. Not to mention the hassle of having to buy a new card every day...

Oh I agree, but privacy isn't always convenient. I'm currently sitting in your country (weather is nice), but these comments do scare me a little. I'm travelling through many countries and really haven't taken into account the local customs when it comes to online activity. There are VPS' available from resellers like Digital Ocean, are they required to also comply to the above?

Yes and no. VPS' providers under Europeaian juridistiction will have to collect and store all the information of their customers (emails, telephone calls) but if you're an American customer to a Europian VPS provider and you host an email-server on that VPS, you aren't forced to save that data for use by the europeian countries.

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#328

Post by wahsd » Thu, Jun 06, 2013, 4:15 PM UTC

flexie wrote: post #162

digitalengineer wrote: post #82

Dutch person here with a little insight what's to come for you guys. Some information about our tiny little country (in Wester Europe, very pro-US) with just 17 million people. Our government listens in on more calls every year than in the whole of the US combined. All our telecommunications providers are forced to have the capability to intercept all traffic (phone and internet). Encrypted data must be stored for an…

Dane here. Todays headline in Danish news is that the government just learned that a database containing ID numbers of all people with a driver's license was hacked last year and an unknown amount of information may be leaked. The Danish ID numbers can be used to get just about any information on Danes, whether it's tax related, education, health, criminal records, addresses, bank accounts etc.

Just wait until it turns out that forcing all software to have back-doors wasn't all that great of an idea.

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#329

Post by VikingCoder » Thu, Jun 06, 2013, 4:17 PM UTC

robomartin wrote: post #300

d23 wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No government? Who said that? Where? We need a simple and limited government. No, no, no. Stop backpedaling. You said this before: > Ultra limited government. That's pretty close to "no" government, so his points still stand. The problem isn't government in general , any more than it is people in general . It's things that are broken or aren't working well. It can just as easily be said about the private sector. Ye…

No, ultra-limited government means a government with significantly reduced power, reach and size with respect to what we have today. It does not mean "no government". Considering how massive and all encompassing our governments are now, even after severely reducing it at all levels we'd still have quite a few people running our cities, states and country. You can twist it any way you want but nobody is calling for no…

> nobody is calling for no government

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

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#330

Post by arianvanp » Thu, Jun 06, 2013, 4:18 PM UTC

bragh wrote: post #178

kriro wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the standard counterargument is started by asking them if they have any curtains or blinds and if so, why? [or you can ask them if they'd be willing to have a streaming camera installed in their bedroom]

That counterargument doesn't work in the Netherlands: http://stuffdutchpeoplelike.com/2010/11/24/no-8-not-owning-c...

You're trying to prove a point by giving a single example. Those pictures on that website are expensive houses in Amsterdam where people like to show off their wealth in a "non-intrusive" way. Once you get into sub-urbal and rural areas, you won't find a house without curtains. At least in the whole 10 blocks around me, I haven't seen a single house without blinds or curtains.