Barr’s Encryption Push Is Decades in the Making • Hacker News Board

Re: Barr’s Encryption Push Is Decades in the Making

#91

Post by robomartin » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 7:56 AM UTC

cycomanic wrote: post #89

robomartin wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All individual rights are carved out from the default government Not sure this is how you meant it. If you mean to say that rights come from governments that is not quite correct, at least not in the US. Rights, in the US, are not GRANTED by government, they are RECOGNIZED by the US Constitution to exist OUTSIDE OF GOVERNMENT (upper case is for emphasis only). In other words, these rights don't require government i…

It is unfortunate that Americans always propagate the story that the US system is still special, but I guess the thought is part of the self-image ("we are the greatest country in the world") . It's not 1788 anymore. Yes at the time the US constitution was special, but the world moved on and many countries took inspiration from the US constitution. Generally human rights (as for example defined by the UN declaration…

I think you are misinterpreting what I said. This is about a difference in law and not about being special in any way.

Also, don’t fall into generalizations of “Americans” and the whole “greatest country in the world” meme. This isn’t Star Trek, where all Klingons are a uniform cultural and behavioral monoblock.

Re: Barr’s Encryption Push Is Decades in the Making

#92

Post by robomartin » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 7:57 AM UTC

wavefunction wrote: post #83

salawat wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are more intertwined than you think. What is gun control but the government asserting a right to pierce your privacy to the putative end of arms control? People don't look at it that way because people are used to looking at X and calling it X, Y and calling it Y, but not realizing both X and Y are subtypes of Z, so chipping away at X is chipping away at Z, even if you want to swear up and down the street it's o…

You and I have a natural right to self-defense, I don't know that you or I have a natural right to firearms. I'm a firearms owner and I love to hunt but I am not sure that people have a natural right to firearms, and from observation many people should not possess them due to personal negligence surrounding the awesome responsibilities attendant with firearms usage/mis-usage.

100% agree with this.

Re: Barr’s Encryption Push Is Decades in the Making

#93

Post by idclip » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 7:59 AM UTC

robomartin wrote: post #34

javajosh wrote: post #19

Go through each of the Bill of Rights, and for each produce a scenario where that right would be used by a criminal to protect him or her from planning, executing, and avoiding detection of a crime. All individual rights are carved out from the default government, which is the one that takes absolute authority over all within its domain. North Korea is closest to this ideal today, but most vanilla monarchies were lik…

> All individual rights are carved out from the default government Not sure this is how you meant it. If you mean to say that rights come from governments that is not quite correct, at least not in the US. Rights, in the US, are not GRANTED by government, they are RECOGNIZED by the US Constitution to exist OUTSIDE OF GOVERNMENT (upper case is for emphasis only). In other words, these rights don't require government i…

I think he did mean that they are of-and-from as in taken away/given away freely while they previously were an integral part of previous mostly tyrannical power hierarchies.

The psychoanalytical “father” is both good, and tyrannical, and i think part if its wisdom in that it manifests today as government and written ideal (where the ideal has power to reign in the government) is testament to our wisdom as a society.

Re: Barr’s Encryption Push Is Decades in the Making

#94

Post by cycomanic » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 8:01 AM UTC

robomartin wrote: post #84

esoterica wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> all people inherently born free All people are born vulnerable to being beaten up and coerced by the guy with the biggest club. There is no "inherent" freedom in nature.

> All people are born vulnerable to being beaten up and coerced by the guy with the biggest club. There is no "inherent" freedom in nature. Sure there is! You are not prevented from grabbing a stick and defending yourself by some artifice. You might lose. Or win. And you are free to make that choice. In CA if someone comes at me with a baseball bat and I have two sticks tied together with a short piece of rope to def…

> > All people are born vulnerable to being beaten up and coerced by the guy with the biggest club. There is no "inherent" freedom in nature.

> Sure there is! You are not prevented from grabbing a stick and defending yourself by some artifice. You might lose. Or win. And you are free to make that choice.

> In CA if someone comes at me with a baseball bat and I have two sticks tied together with a short piece of rope to defend myself I can end-up in jail. I once asked a police officer friend (LAPD Commander, actually) what I could legally carry in Los Angeles to defend myself and not get into trouble. He said "your best pair of running shoes".

This is actually very sound advice and what you get told in every reasonable self-defense class. Carrying a weapon around is really more about satisfying some sense of self importance/illusion ("I could heroically defend myself, if I get attacked") than actual self defense. I remember doing that when I was 16 and feeling very tough, I've grown out of it.

> The whole thing is preposterous. What ends-up happening is that lots of people secretly conceal-carry because they don't want to be victims. They do the math and conclude they rather go to jail than be dead. Truly sad.

Re: Barr’s Encryption Push Is Decades in the Making

#95

Post by robomartin » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 8:06 AM UTC

leeoniya wrote: post #62

robomartin wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All organizations seek to expand their influence and power over time This is true. IANAL, but my guess is that a lot of this mucking around with firearms regulations is because people have not said "enough!" and taken it all the way up to the US Supreme Court (except for a few cases I am aware of). In other words, can California (or any State) really prohibit magazines with more than 10 rounds? Can they really proh…

> That's another common misconception. You can say whatever you want. And you can enjoy the full consequences of what you said. if the government can make these rules and bring these consequences, then what exactly is free about this "free" speech? north koreans are free to say whatever they want, too, and enjoy the full consequences of what they say. the only difference is what kind of speech can bring what severity…

The difference should be obvious:

In the one case, if your speech causes harm to others (i.e.: you incite a crowd to attack me) the consequences of your actions lead to legal repercussions.

In the other case all you have to do is look at the supreme ruler the wrong way and you are dead.

This is precisely my case: Our laws come from us, not them, not government.

Re: Barr’s Encryption Push Is Decades in the Making

#96

Post by matheusmoreira » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 8:07 AM UTC

rcoveson wrote: post #11

There's a balance that must be struck between the efficiency of law enforcement and the freedom of citizens. Personally, I lean heavily towards the latter, and I think this is the reason: My life and the lives of those I know are affected by criminals or terrorists with absurdly low frequency. I'm sure this is true of many Americans; perhaps more true now than ever in history. So why is it that there is so much suppo…

Because it has nothing to do with reducing crime or improving the quality of life for the population. They want access to encrypted communications because it gives them power. Child exploitation, terrorists and drug cartels are merely the political tools they're using to justify their overreach. Their real targets are whistle blowers, dissidents, journalists, people who can do real damage to the foundations of their power.

Re: Barr’s Encryption Push Is Decades in the Making

#97

Post by jacobolus » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 8:11 AM UTC

robomartin wrote: post #82

jacobolus wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Take the right to bear arms as an example. In most other nations, if it exists, this is a right granted by government to the people. In the US this is a right recognized by the constitution to exist despite and outside of government. In the US, the “right to bear arms” is a right to own a weapon as part of a “well-regulated militia”, with the idea that the nation was not originally intended to have a standing army,…

Well, you are wrong. That is, unless you are a constitutional scholar with powers the supersede those of the US Supreme Court. In "Heller" (2008), as the case is generally known, the US Supreme Court explored the history of the Second Amendment and established that it creates an INDIVIDUAL right not linked to a militia or army. This was confirmed once again by the US Supreme Court in another case in 2010. There's a p…

Heller was a 5:4 decision made against text, history, and precedent by radical judicial activists. The decision doesn’t stand up to historical or logical scrutiny, and it was accompanied by a very forceful dissent. Justice Scalia’s claim to being guided by “originalism” and “textualism” was shown to be a hypocritical farce by this and similar rulings.

Re: Barr’s Encryption Push Is Decades in the Making

#98

Post by robomartin » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 8:11 AM UTC

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #57

robomartin wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All individual rights are carved out from the default government Not sure this is how you meant it. If you mean to say that rights come from governments that is not quite correct, at least not in the US. Rights, in the US, are not GRANTED by government, they are RECOGNIZED by the US Constitution to exist OUTSIDE OF GOVERNMENT (upper case is for emphasis only). In other words, these rights don't require government i…

> Rights, in the US, are not GRANTED by government, they are RECOGNIZED by the US Constitution to exist OUTSIDE OF GOVERNMENT (upper case is for emphasis only). In other words, these rights don't require government in order to exist. We are recognized to have them and government can't do a thing about it other than to respect and protect them. Imagine a bakery puts out a sign that says "the bread you can buy here was…

No, it isn’t, in a country of laws these things have weight and meaning. If, on the other hand, we are talking about complete anarchy and the end of laws as our guiding principles then, yes, sure, in that case words on paper do not matter. Until then...

Re: Barr’s Encryption Push Is Decades in the Making

#99

Post by vidarh » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 8:21 AM UTC

robomartin wrote: post #34

javajosh wrote: post #19

Go through each of the Bill of Rights, and for each produce a scenario where that right would be used by a criminal to protect him or her from planning, executing, and avoiding detection of a crime. All individual rights are carved out from the default government, which is the one that takes absolute authority over all within its domain. North Korea is closest to this ideal today, but most vanilla monarchies were lik…

> All individual rights are carved out from the default government Not sure this is how you meant it. If you mean to say that rights come from governments that is not quite correct, at least not in the US. Rights, in the US, are not GRANTED by government, they are RECOGNIZED by the US Constitution to exist OUTSIDE OF GOVERNMENT (upper case is for emphasis only). In other words, these rights don't require government i…

This distinction is mostly philosophical and historical in as much as it forms part of how these issues are framed. No person except perhaps a few strange fanatical monarchists goes around in the UK and thinks of themselves as subjects of the queen rather than citizens, for example. The framing of where rights comes from can affect debate, but in and of itself it says very little about to what extent you can expect erosion of rights.

The issue is how many roadblocks you have managed to embed into the public consciousness, not what the law says - laws, even constitutions, can be changed, and regularly are, or tends to be possible to circumvent in all kinds of ways.

The framing can make it politically harder, but only as long as the idea of the importance of a right remains embedded in the public view of the society they live in enough to make changing the law hard. I don't think whether the letter of the law suggest rights are granted vs. recognized matters all that much in practice with respect to that.

I think it's good to encourage people to see rights as inherent rather than granted, but I have no illusions that that means they can't still be taken away.

Re: Barr’s Encryption Push Is Decades in the Making

#100

Post by robomartin » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 8:25 AM UTC

cycomanic wrote: post #94

robomartin wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All people are born vulnerable to being beaten up and coerced by the guy with the biggest club. There is no "inherent" freedom in nature. Sure there is! You are not prevented from grabbing a stick and defending yourself by some artifice. You might lose. Or win. And you are free to make that choice. In CA if someone comes at me with a baseball bat and I have two sticks tied together with a short piece of rope to def…

> > All people are born vulnerable to being beaten up and coerced by the guy with the biggest club. There is no "inherent" freedom in nature. > Sure there is! You are not prevented from grabbing a stick and defending yourself by some artifice. You might lose. Or win. And you are free to make that choice. > In CA if someone comes at me with a baseball bat and I have two sticks tied together with a short piece of rope…

Your perspective on this is truly twisted. Talk to crime victims and see how many speak about a sense of self importance or some illusion of heroism.

I was attacked by a thief with a knife when I was in my 20’s. This shit is real. Don’t generalize it to ascribe some kind of a Hollywood fantasy/caricature and intent.