At least the EU asks before just doing it. Or have we forgotten why Edward Snowden is a Russian now? /s
Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU
331–340 of 534 posts
Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU
#332Every time this comes up people talk about protecting privacy and anonymity and what not and while luckily for us most of the time the laws die out they still do pass on occasion. The fundamental issue to me is that society still wants to protect against pedophiles or drug dealers or whatever other group more than protect privacy. As an example, how many people here could go on television onto some talk program or ne…
By that logic, we'd need to make knives illegal, because people get stabbed to death every day somewhere.
Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU
#333The best way to deal with this is non-compliance and there need to be technical solutions to deny such attempts. One major factor that works against users is central authentication. Schemes like oauth2 might bring convenience and security in many cases, but will endanger net freedom overall. Google just added age restriction on blogger. Result is that you need to provide Google with ID information to access some cont…
Apple and Google will do what the EU tells them to do in the end.
Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU
#334Earlier quoted context omitted.
Assuming by “we” you are referring to Americans, which to me not a democracy, but a plutocracy; that is, a society that is ruled or controlled by people of great wealth, either as a individual or organization. As for American media, issues related to pandering to readers is likely related to it deregulating media industry in the 80s; for more information see: https://apnews.com/article/business-immigration-deregulati…
Which then is a true democracy according to you?
One where majority of citizens actively participate in matters impacting the majority of citizens, understand all significant views on a topic, and no entities are allowed have power beyond their own personal independent interests. As is, to me, America, Russian, China, EU, etc are all plutocratic — because the average person doesn’t want the responsibility of dealing that comes with running a society.
Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU
#335Strangest thing to me about the topic is that it’s obvious vast percentage of citizens within democracies wish they lived in an authoritarian country, yet choose to live in a democracy and use the liberties they’re provided to actively destabilize and destroy it. To me this is the largest issue, not a given topic that results from it. Yes, I am aware current authoritarian countries wage propaganda campaigns, but in m…
Nationalism is such an ubiquitous and powerful ideology, we don't realise that pretty much everyone today is an extreme nationalist. Before "nations" people didnt regard borders, states, etc. as they do today. "citizenship" of a "nation" is a relatively recent phenomenon. Most today think it's a good-and-fitting thing to defend "one's country". And this impulse is vastly more powerful than defending "democracy". Who…
I don't think Ukraine is a good example of your point, as apart from being a war between two nations, it is clearly also a war between democratic and authoritarian belief systems. That ideological divide is a large part of what sparked it in the first place--the whole thing began with mass pro-democracy demonstrations that ousted an authoritarian leader.
My perception is that Ukrainians know what it's like to live under an authoritarian system and they would rather risk death and the total destruction of the country than go back to it. Nationalism is clearly a factor as well, but it is deeply intertwined with pro-democratic and anti-authoritarian ideals. I don't think you'd see anything close to this level of resistance if victory would mean an authoritarian Ukraine rather than a democratic Ukraine.
Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU
#336Strangest thing to me about the topic is that it’s obvious vast percentage of citizens within democracies wish they lived in an authoritarian country, yet choose to live in a democracy and use the liberties they’re provided to actively destabilize and destroy it. To me this is the largest issue, not a given topic that results from it. Yes, I am aware current authoritarian countries wage propaganda campaigns, but in m…
Nationalism is such an ubiquitous and powerful ideology, we don't realise that pretty much everyone today is an extreme nationalist. Before "nations" people didnt regard borders, states, etc. as they do today. "citizenship" of a "nation" is a relatively recent phenomenon. Most today think it's a good-and-fitting thing to defend "one's country". And this impulse is vastly more powerful than defending "democracy". Who…
Tribes have existed since before written history; not sure if you’re referring to something else, but to me a tribe is essentially same thing, us vs them.
Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU
#337Earlier quoted context omitted.
let's encrypt made a huge improvement on the status quo, but now that 95% of the web depends on them, they're an obvious central point of vulnerability for censors and spy agencies
...you're not concerned about all of the other Trusted Root CAs that ship in OS/browser updates? Why would the NSA/GCHQ/etc need to compromise a high-profile target like LetsEncrypt when they could bribe any of the dozens of companies names listed in my own local certmgr.msc that I don't recognize at all[1]. 1: I'm seeing names like "Actalis", "Baltimore CyberTrust", "Cetrum" - some of these sound more like pharmaceu…
Why can't I be concerned about all of those things?
Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU
#338Strangest thing to me about the topic is that it’s obvious vast percentage of citizens within democracies wish they lived in an authoritarian country, yet choose to live in a democracy and use the liberties they’re provided to actively destabilize and destroy it. To me this is the largest issue, not a given topic that results from it. Yes, I am aware current authoritarian countries wage propaganda campaigns, but in m…
I think we need to slow down and look at this with level heads.
1. What is a reliable measure of this "vast percentage"?
2. Are you perhaps lumping any departure from your preferred political model as "authoritarian"?
3. Are you perhaps overattributing the level of "democracy" to your preferred political regime?
4. Have you considered the motivations behind the distaste with ostensibly "democratic" regimes?
Simply declaring "nationalism!" is not an intellectually substantive remark and probably caricaturish because a) what do you mean by "nationalism", and b) you haven't identified the confluence of motives to see what might be happening and why.
My 2 cents: liberalism as a political ideology traceable to Locke and Hobbes is unraveling because of its inherent tensions and errors (like the tension between knowledge and the mistaken liberal notion of "freedom" understood as "do what thou wilt" versus "do what thou ought"; its radical individualism; its totalitarian "neutrality" which is a manipulative, underhanded means of entrenching liberal presuppositions; its egalitarianism). It is to be expected that someone whose sentiments have been shaped in a social climate that valorizes an ideology will view any departure as hostile and "authoritarian", not on objective grounds, but merely according to habituated affect. You had the same thing in post-Soviet Russia and post-War Germany.
Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU
#339Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've always wondered behind the rationale on privacy being a human right. What if it wasn't? What if instead we were enforcing transparency? Force everything to be public, starting from the government down to the local coffee shop. All transactions, all communications, everything. Make privacy a crime for everybody, including the government and the military. Just as a thought exercise, it would be a remarkably differ…
The point of human rights is to protect the underprivileged - the privileged of any given society don’t need to have these protections because they are at the top of the social hierarchy and get to call the shots. They would simply use their influence to get an exception for themselves. That’s why the US constitution is great, because it’s such a pain in the ass to change (unfortunately the privileged invent “interpr…
Privacy though is perpetuating that priviledged class because they can do their shady business in secret. If everything was transparent, that would be harder to achieve.
Also the "every human society that's ever existed" isn't true, because for sure when humans were nomads, you basically knew what's happening with everybody in your tribe, transparency was at 100%, privacy at 0. It's also the case today in many places such as small villages where everybody knows what everybody else is doing and it seems to be ok.
Re: Stop the proposal on mass surveillance of the EU
#340Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We certainly need decentralized systems that cannot be controlled by EU, US, or any government/entity. No. If such a system could work in any meaningful way, it would be already in place. Trying to fight legal frameworks with technology, failed in the past with some notable but hardly repeatable exceptions. In the 90s a few geeks tech awareness could match the resources of a small state, non tech-savvy state. Nowad…
>No. If such a system could work in any meaningful way, it would be already in place. I'm reminded of the EMH joke about the economist walking by a 100 dollar bill on the street, assuming that it must be fake because if it were real, someone already would have picked it up.
What is EMH? Sounds like a crypto convention to me.