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Using Law Against Technology
- wasteoftime 11y agoIt's a waste of time to interact with policy makers. They have no interest in just or fair or good outcomes. They are corrupt and beholden to those with wealth and power, and they only desire the same. The law has become an illegitimate tool of violenence to oppress any who dare oppose the state. The only solution is wide scale defiance.
- Armisael16 11y agoYeah, because bloody revolution is sure to work out well. No way that could possible lead to unintended outcomes.
- laotzu 11y agoWide scale defiance does not necessarily mean bloody revolution. Dr. King being a prime example.
- wasteoftime 11y agoThen sit by and allow the American government to continue wholesale slaughter of millions, allow it to bomb more weddings, take the innocent and lock them away without trial, assisinate whomever they please without due process, torture with impunity, spy on any and everyone, declare everything they do to be a state secret, and allow any they wish to ignore these laws since there is those who are above and those who are below. They will outlaw any tools that threaten them, while using the same to dominate others. Accept the American police state, accept your life as a slave with no power over yourself, only what the kings above will allow.
- kaybe 11y agoWhich, btw, is one of the better arguments I've heard against gun restriction. People fear the government might turn on them and they have to fight the state-loyal parts of the army.
- sosborn 11y ago> allow the American government to continue wholesale slaughter of millions You sure about those numbers?
- paulddraper 11y ago"Citation needed"
- wasteoftime 11y agoDepends when you start counting, but this century alone, well over a million across the ME have died because direct or indirect action taken by the US government. Millions more have been displaced, and those who remain suffer crippling economic realities. The word for such a scale is genocidal.
- krapp 11y agoRevolutionary prattling from an obvious troll account is tedious, banal and uninteresting.
- wasteoftime 11y agoIt amazes me how often people stand up and defend those who torture and commit mass murder, and have the moral rectitude to declaim those oppose such atrocities as mere trolls.
- krapp 11y agoYour username was employed as essentially a title for your first comment, which is a tactic common on imageboards. Your account is only seven hours old, but I strongly suspect it's a sockpuppet. Every comment you've made from this account has been a vitriolic screed against the US or other users who disagree with you, so obviously it exists to push a very specific agenda, to attempt to shock and insult people, while pre-emptively avoiding a ban by being disposable. I'm going to go with "troll."
- wasteoftime 11y agoYou are violating HN guidelines. Try responding to the argument, or can you not?
- Zigurd 11y agoThere are many alternative to bloody revolution to topple governments, and not all aftermaths are worse. Look at the way the Soviet Union came apart. Nations regained freedom. Very few lives were lost. Not all aspects of those revolutions were within the law, but neither were they more than minimally bloody.
- rayiner 11y agoI'm curious what country you're from. Because coming from a third world country your attitude seems to me like "shit coddled westerners say."
- wasteoftime 11y agoYou've consistently proven yourself to be a state apologists, you're likely funded directly or indirectly by the state, and you are also violating HN guidelines, but since you seem to be a favored child of the mods they will let it slide. But do go on and defend those who torture and commit mass murder.
- dang 11y agoPlease don't feed trolls. Instead, just flag the comment. (In case anyone is wondering, you can flag comments if you have over 30 karma, and do so by clicking the timestamp to go to the comment's page, then clicking 'flag'.)
- stefantalpalaru 11y ago> The law has become an illegitimate tool of violenence to oppress any who dare oppose the state. The state controls the law, so anything it does that is not already legal can be easily made so. > The only solution is wide scale defiance. Defy those who hold a monopoly on violence on your own peril.
- avmich 11y ago> The state controls the law, so anything... In the US there is a finer distinction. "State" can be understood as "all politics combined", and then yes, state does controls the law, and does that by the definition. Or you can consider state be "government" - with a set of hired specialists (ministers) under the guidance of elected official (president) - to be different from people representatives (Congress), which are actually controlling the law - and are supposed also to keep an eye on the executive branch.
- stefantalpalaru 11y agoIn Italy - and in most of Europe - the executive branch actually makes laws, using a loophole that's supposed to provide quick legislative responses to emergencies, and then strong-arms the legislative into approving them unmodified by asking for a vote of confidence that, if negative, would mean instability (a new government would need to be negotiated and voted by the parliament).
- dang 11y agoWe've banned this account for serial trolling.
- wasteoftime 11y agoIt amazes me how often people stand up and defend those who torture and commit mass murder, and have the moral rectitude to declaim those oppose such atrocities as mere trolls.
- mjpuser 11y agoThis is a bit off topic, but I don't understand the government's need to stunt technology for the good of the country. Is there really a net benefit for spending trillions on cyber spying? I've yet to see a cost benefit analysis on that, and would appreciate any input on that.
- laotzu 11y agoOne would think that doing something like weakening and backdooring encryption would provide a negative net benefit because it helps hackers to steal information more readily. I guess it depends on what you think of the broken window fallacy.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 11y agoThere probably is not, but there is a benefit to those who make a living from spying and undermining freedom. Also, as a matter of psychology, most people prefer it when "something is being done" even when that something is ineffective or self-destructive, so there is some political motivation to "do something", so you can claim to "have done something" in case something bad happens, to avoid being responsible.
- karzeem 11y agoThere's some cognitive dissonance between how people nod sagely at this vs. how they react when FAA rules force Flytenow to shut down. Note the commenters' largely gleeful reaction to that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10779607 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10779607 You can't cry foul when a coin comes up tails if you were happy the whole time it was coming up heads. Agencies that have the power to make good decisions by force also have the power to make bad decisions by force.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- rayiner 11y agoThat's fallacious reasoning. It's like saying people are nodding sagely when doctors do successful surgeries then crying foul when they commit malpractice and operate on the wrong leg.
- patrickaljord 11y agoI don't think this is a good comparison. What karzeem is saying is more of a matter of principle: does any one or any group of people has the moral right to initiate force against two consenting adults agreeing to a mutual contract because we think we know better than they do about what's best for them? If the answer to this question is yes, then you have no right to complain when it happens to something you enjoy consenting to because a group of people think it might not be best for you.
- rayiner 11y agoNobody cares about two parties contracting. Regulation of contracts exists because of the systematic effects of particular types of contracts
- deciplex 11y ago> does any one or any group of people has the moral right to initiate force against two consenting adults agreeing to a mutual contract because we think we know better than they do about what's best for them? Yes. Society broadly has this 'right' if you want to call it that (I would refer to it as a 'duty'), though we are wise to exercise power there in a reasonably limited fashion e.g. making up a 'Bill of Rights' etc. What you're referring to forms the basis of the FDA, of OSHA, of the EPA, etc etc., all of which have had an overall positive effect on our economic health, our environmental health, and our literal bodily health. Monopolizing force and using it to promote egalitarian principles is a fundamental part of what makes Western civilization. You seem to be suggesting that if we as a people decide to enact and enforce laws via our elected government at all, then we give up the right to complain about laws we perceive to be unjust, and agitate for change. In fact, that is precisely how the system is meant to work. Just because you're miffed you aren't getting your way all the time, is no reason to tear the whole system down, and I think you'll find yourself part of a vanishingly small minority in believing so (very fortunately, even for you, even if you don't realize it).
- javajosh 11y agoDammit Scheier, if you're going to point out a pile of shit you should also point out a shovel. Just saying "tehnologists and policymakers don't understand each other, and golly gosh we better do something about it" doesn't cut the mustard.
- stefantalpalaru 11y agoFinding problems and proposing solutions are different activities and it's in everybody's interest that we don't bind the former to the latter. Let the people who see the problems describe them, even if they don't propose solutions. When somebody does both, try to separate one thing from the other because usually the problem is valid but the solution is wrong (see Marx).
- avmich 11y agoMaybe sometimes it's better to at least point to a problem - and even articulate it, as Schneier did - than do nothing, if you don't have a proposal. How about bringing law technology - i.e. the technology of establishing laws - closer to the speed of modern times? Things are being done already in the realm of practicing existing laws, as in legal consulting, case search etc. Can we make tech which would help write better laws sooner?
- javajosh 11y agoThe only reason not to offer even a list of possible solutions is because the problem is not be actionable in that framing. It is trivially easy to point out problems in a way that makes it difficult to find solutions. For example, "People don't understand computers well enough," or, "Politics today are just too divisive." Those statements are noise, not signal. The only way to make headway would be to get specific, divide them up, and at that point you're not solving the same problem. BTW I appreciate your attempt to sketch out a shovel (and it's an interesting one!) but I don't think that really addresses Schneier's particular pile.
- patrickaljord 11y ago> It's one aspect of a tech policy problem that has been plaguing us for at least 25 years: technologists and policymakers don't understand each other Policy makers do understand very well. This has not been going on for the last 25 years, this has been going on for hundreds of years. That is policy makers blocking new technologies to grant artificial monopolies to incumbents. The UK mercantilism from the 16th century comes to mind with the government trying to block cheaper wool and then new cotton tech to defend traditional wool merchants and justifying this with "a lack of license and legality" issues cheaper rural wood merchants and cotton merchants supposedly had. As the saying goes: 'It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.' As long as you will have governments with the power to shut down new technologies you will have incumbents willing to bribe those governments into doing so. Apart removing the government from the equation or at least its power, I don't think we will ever solve this issue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_the_United_Kingdom#The_Age_of_Mercantilism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_the_United... https://mises.org/library/mercantilism-england https://mises.org/library/mercantilism-england
- avmich 11y agoThat's why ideas which Lawrence Lessig is explaining are perhaps most valuable in the current US political cycle. However, even without proposed decoupling of money and power we ought to consider alternatives. That could be at least faster - if not more achievable.
- patrickaljord 11y agoWhat Lawrence Lessig is proposing is not enough. As long as the government has the power to block new technologies and other legitimate new business ideas, there will be incumbents there to bribe them into doing so. Even if you make laws that totally forbid campaign financing. Look at what happened in Germany, the chancellor didn't get any money but when he retired, he got a great mysterious job at a Russian oil company: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/dec/13/russia.germany http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/dec/13/russia.germany Give the government unlimited/huge power to regulate the market and money will find its way to the politicians in order to influence them, one way or the other. The only way to stop this is not to forbid campaign financing, super PAC or else. No, the only way to stop this is to do something most of us are not willing to do: complete separation of the economy and the State, just like total separation of Church and State was the only way to stop religious persecution, nothing short of total separation of the State and the economy will stop unfair and corrupt driven anti-tech and anti-new businesses laws.