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This is exactly how I feel about this. There would be an actual interesting debate to be had about the powers of the state versus corporations versus the rights
by mcculley 11y ago
This is exactly how I feel about this. There would be an actual interesting debate to be had about the powers of the state versus corporations versus the rights of individuals to perfect end-to-end encryption if the state hadn't been using warrantless wiretaps and National Security Letters for the last 15 years. As it is, the state has shown it can't be trusted with that power.
- ktRolster 11y agoIt's an old debate, and I think it can be summed up in a single sentence: Government would be awesome if it worked right I would give the FBI everything if I trusted them. A monarchy/dictatorship would be most efficient if there were a way to guarantee a good monarch/benevolent dictator.
- morgante 11y agoMadison said it best: > If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.
- woodman 11y agoPeople are bad, therefore we need a government made up of people are bad...
- sremani 11y agopeople are not perfect and that is why we need a government made up of people accountable to all people.
- woodman 11y agoSo that they can imperfectly be held accountable by all imperfect people. Now let us find a nice foundation of sand to build a castle on.
- dsp1234 11y agoI could rip a piece of paper with my bare hands. Give me 300 million pieces of paper sandwiched together and I couldn't.
- venomsnake 11y agoBut they burn quite good.
- danudey 11y agoActually stacks, sheets, or bindings of paper are extremely difficult to burn compared to individual sheets.
- woodman 11y agoStacks burn, but not as energetically as a single sheet with a high surface area to volume ratio. The stack might just smolder for 229 years, because the flame resistant treatment turned out to only be flame retardant. Something something Alien and Sedition Acts... this metaphor cannot be tortured any further.
- morgante 11y agoIf you're going to debate this, at least read Federalist 51. The whole point of checks and balances is to get good results from imperfect people. You can use the ambitions of one individual or group to hold the ambitions of another group in check. I feel like you're just trying to be snarky and or gratuitously negative though.
- fweespeech 11y agoReasonable results that allowed most people to go about their lives unmolested from imperfect people. I don't think they imagined "good results".
- woodman 11y ago
- dibujante 11y agoWell, yes. If you are bad, you want what's best for yourself. But if you know that the other guy is bad, then you know he wants what's best for himself. So you set up the rules of the game to ensure that he can't get what he wants without you also getting what you want. See the prisoner's dilemma. If both people are bad, they will have the worst outcome. If either of them thinks the other is bad, then they will also be bad in order to protect themselves. So the best outcome (you are bad, and they are good) is impossible, because they know you're bad and will be bad themselves. So two bad people have a good reason to write a law preventing them both from being bad, because that's the best outcome they can get for themselves.
- woodman 11y agoThat is assuming rational self interested actors and equal cost/benefit. We don't need to look very hard to find examples of irrationality and imbalanced incentives. Also, how many times have you been exhorted to act against your own interests and think of the children? The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
- dibujante 11y agoIf these objections that you are raising were wrong, then we would live in a utopia. You're right that people fall short, but I think the point still stands that checks and balances can help overcome human unreliability, even if every human involved is unreliable. Just look at democratic institutions without checks and balances.
- woodman 11y agoI'm actually a big fan of the competing interests concept, it is a very eloquent solution. Where it goes off the rails though is the combination of that concept and the involuntary surrender of individual sovereignty to the very same people with whom your interests compete.
- junto 11y agoBy that logic, politicians need to be the worst of all people; compulsively lying, corrupt, scheming, psychopathic, sociopathic paedophiles. Oh wait....
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- yarper 11y agoIt's not just trusting the organisation as a single unit - but every single hire they ever have or will make. Pissed off FBI agent taps his wife's cellphone? Probably has happened and will again
- GVIrish 11y agoHappened with the NSA, it's appropriately called, "LOVEINT": https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2013/08/24/loveint-when-nsa-officers-use-their-spying-power-on-love-interests/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2013/08/24... Note that most of the instances that the NSA 'found" were self-reported.
- ktRolster 11y agoIt's actually amazing to me how fast the abuses happened, and how many of them. I figured it would be a typical program, starting out with good intentions, but slowly deteriorating as people who care are replaced. But no, any capability they were given was abused almost immediately.
- AnimalMuppet 11y agoIt's not whether the people care. It's whether they're willing to abuse power. And the people the program started with are just as likely to be willing to abuse power as the ones who replace them are.
- qbasic 11y agoThis is the debate that needs to take place. How do we restore trust? Checks and balances are meant to prevent abuse of power, but they have been removed from the equation. Oversight by the judicial branch has been perverted with "top-secret" courts and the ability of the legislative branch to correct the abuse has been scuttled by the lack of transparency.
- rm_-rf_slash 11y agoI generally advocate for a citizen's veto amendment, where any citizen can initiate a petition to veto legislation that will trigger a second and binding referendum if there are enough preliminary signatures. It's one thing to vote for the right people, it's something else to expect representatives to do what you want when everyone in Washington is brought there by the money and power of someone else.
- woodman 11y agoIf the State's power is derived from the consent of the governed, then a lack of political participation on the part of the governed should be considered a vote of no confidence. This would solve the problem of imbalanced lobbying incentive, government overreach following tragedy, etc. Most importantly it would solve the moral problem that Thomas Jefferson pointed out: "The question whether one generation of men has a right to bind another..." As it stands now, we have a garbage collected memory allocator with no reclamation function.
- dragonwriter 11y ago> I generally advocate for a citizen's veto amendment, where any citizen can initiate a petition to veto legislation that will trigger a second and binding referendum if there are enough preliminary signatures. Many US states have this kind of referendum provision (notably, given the disproportionate Silicon Valley representation on HN, California.) I don't detect substantially greater trust for government in the states with it then is the case elsewhere or with the federal government, and it is, itself, a frequent influence point for special interest money.
- sandworm101 11y ago>>> sing warrantless wiretaps and National Security Letters for the last 15 years. 15 years? It was going on long long before 9/11. Google "echalon". If you want to get really oldschool, Google "cabinet noir".
- mcculley 11y agoI am of course aware of Echelon. But it was designed around the limitations imposed by law. You've got to admit that the implementation of such eavesdropping since 9/11 is a huge difference.