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>Broadband access is declining, data caps are becoming commonplace, surveillance is increasing, and encryption is under attack. One of these is not like the ot
by javajosh 11y ago
>Broadband access is declining, data caps are becoming commonplace, surveillance is increasing, and encryption is under attack.
One of these is not like the others. Broadband access is hardly a freedom thing; data caps aren't either. And attacking encryption is troubling, but can't ultimately happen without wholesale outlawing of general computing devices.
Which leaves surveillance. But even then, it's not really about surveillance so much as it is surveillance by people you don't like. Usually large organizations - government that scrubs your data for evidence of threat and may send goons to your house; companies that broker your info and inject data into your brain for cash.
Not sure what to do about surveillance, since by definition large organizations with lots of money control politics through campaign contributions, and pretty clearly they see surveillance as a critical part of their immune system (which is actually kind of strange since they've done quite well without ubiquitous electronic surveillance for a long time).
- njorth 11y agoBroadband access is very much a freedom thing if Comcast is your only option. I live in one of America's wealthiest cities and the undisputed tech capital of the east coast, yet finding a decent ISP is difficult bordering on impossible. There's exactly one good ISP in my city called netBlazr, but they don't service my neighborhood. So we get Comcast instead: bandwidth rates approaching a tenth of advertised speeds, outright throttling for certain services, cheap hardware with limited firmware, ubiquitous surveillance, and no legal recourse at all. Freedom.
- eli_gottlieb 11y agoUhhh... we get RCN over here in Somerville...
- njorth 11y agoRCN's on my radar for sure, but XMission is the standard against which I'm comparing services. What assurance is there that RCN won't pull any bullshit like blocking SMTP or throttling Tor?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- javajosh 11y agoA dearth of broadband options in a major american city doesn't seem like a freedom issue! How much bandwidth does free speech require?
- njorth 11y agoAt least 100 kb/s upload, assuming you don't edit torrc.