5 ms·

Civil disobedience is an important form of democracy. Maybe in the future, when all of our calls, messages and identities are monitored in full by our benevolen

by msvan 11y ago

Civil disobedience is an important form of democracy. Maybe in the future, when all of our calls, messages and identities are monitored in full by our benevolent overlords, we won't be able to practice it anymore. Right or wrong, faraway anti-Western countries have served as counterweights against the West for Snowden, Assange and Elbakyan.

khedoros 11y ago
> Maybe [...] we won't be able to practice it anymore. Do you mean by suppressing the action before it occurs? I thought that one of the points of civil disobedience was to get caught, so as to increase visibility of the problem and become a catalyst for change.
- msvan 11y ago
  I do mean suppressing ideas before they take root. I don't think getting caught is a necessary part of it. The most worrisome example of today is China, which has an iron grip on the spread of ideas within the country. If China deemed Sci-Hub to be an issue, they would shut it down (via DNS poisoning) and incarcerate anybody who spoke in its favor.
  - throwaway2048 11y ago
    not to mention silencing any mention of it
  - khedoros 11y ago
    Thanks for the clarification. It's true; if any message can be silenced and any thought wiped out at will before it's even developed, then its hard for even the realization that you're being controlled to spread, let alone any plan to fight against the control.
    - AnthonyMouse 11y ago
      Cory Doctorow makes that case all the time. You don't want perfect enforcement because it provides no opportunity to evaluate when the law is wrong. You need somebody to be able to break the law, show what happens and prove that the world doesn't end in order to make the case that the consequences are actually quite alright and we shouldn't have that law anymore.
      - conceit 11y ago
        Separation of power ideally means that enforcement and evaluation of the law are separate instances. It doesn't work in practice. Indeed, having more laws to help enforce basic laws would seem absurd, if the practice of lawgiving was in principle wrong. But lessening law would seem absurd, if avoiding lawlessness was the idea in the first place.
- AnthonyMouse 11y ago
  The basic problem with the "original formulation" of civil disobedience is that power structures have evolved to thwart it. Things that should by any right be a civil case or misdemeanor are instead charged as multiple overlapping felonies in order to coerce a plea bargain, which is effective to deter all but the most dedicated from demanding their day in court. Then the court won't allow you to make the case for jury nullification or any other argument that the law is wrong to the jury, and prosecutors will be allowed to exclude anyone from the jury who is sympathetic to the idea that juries shouldn't convict when they don't agree with the law. You can only make the case that the law is wrong to the judge, and no matter how stupid the law is the judge can only agree with you if it violates the constitution. Which plenty of very, very stupid laws clearly don't, so you become a convicted felon without having had an opportunity to make your case to anyone with the power to do anything about it. In theory the outrageous nature of that process should inspire the public to demand change, but have we passed Aaron's Law yet? [1] [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/aarons-law-reintroduced-cfaa-didnt-fix-itself https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/aarons-law-reintroduce...
  - Retric 11y ago
    The natural response to that is civil disobedience without actually getting caught. As a first approximation a single person operating alone could probably do around a billion dollars worth of damage without directly inflicting physical harm on anyone. Get a few thousand people to do the same and individually there going to be less effective, but things break down. Keep pushing and government becomes meaningless. However, people are generally fat and happy. A surveillance state in wall-e's world just does not mean the same thing without the downtrodden masses which have fueled past revolutions.
  - gozur88 11y ago
    >You can only make the case that the law is wrong to the judge, and no matter how stupid the law is the judge can only agree with you if it violates the constitution. Well, yes. It's not a judge's job to strike down bad law. We're already too close to a system where the judiciary acts as a super-legislature.
- a_bonobo 11y ago
  A quote from Orwell's essays: >At the same time there is reason to think that Gandhi, who after all was born in 1869, did not understand the nature of totalitarianism and saw everything in terms of his own struggle against the British government. The important point here is not so much that the British treated him forbearingly as that he was always able to command publicity. As can be seen from the phrase quoted above, he believed in “arousing the world”, which is only possible if the world gets a chance to hear what you are doing. It is difficult to see how Gandhi's methods could be applied in a country where opponents of the regime disappear in the middle of the night and are never heard of again. Without a free press and the right of assembly, it is impossible not merely to appeal to outside opinion, but to bring a mass movement into being, or even to make your intentions known to your adversary. Is there a Gandhi in Russia at this moment? And if there is, what is he accomplishing? The Russian masses could only practise civil disobedience if the same idea happened to occur to all of them simultaneously, and even then, to judge by the history of the Ukraine famine, it would make no difference. Reflections on Gandhi http://www.orwell.ru/library/reviews/gandhi/english/e_gandhi http://www.orwell.ru/library/reviews/gandhi/english/e_gandhi
  - Terr_ 11y ago
    I think Gandhi's effort was also about arousing a moral sense (shame, guilt, questioning) in the oppressor's rank-and-file... But that works better when there are a large number of them who are not super-committed to beating innocent people. It becomes much harder when the oppressors can use a small and dedicated mobile murder-force.
- indrax 11y ago
  This is also Direct Action, where what you're doing is solving or mitigating the problem and so you want to keep doing it as long as you can.
userbinator 11y ago
My biggest worry is the whole "security culture" that developed shortly after Snowden is encouraging more of the population to embrace locked-down walled-garden systems in which they can feel secure but have little freedom, and the general push for secure-by-default rather than open systems. A necessary condition for civil disobedience is the freedom to disobey, to defeat access controls, to exercise one's beliefs. The fact that Snowden's leaks were made possible by insecurity, and now seemingly everyone is against insecurity, is ironic enough that it makes me wonder if that was really the intent all along...
- smarx007 11y ago
  insecurity != openness
conceit 11y ago
I don't think it's a form of democracy any more than are breathing or rigged voting. Peace treaties aren't a form of war either.

by msvan 11y ago

khedoros 11y ago

> Maybe [...] we won't be able to practice it anymore. Do you mean by suppressing the action before it occurs? I thought that one of the points of civil disobedience was to get caught, so as to increase visibility of the problem and become a catalyst for change.

msvan 11y ago
I do mean suppressing ideas before they take root. I don't think getting caught is a necessary part of it. The most worrisome example of today is China, which has an iron grip on the spread of ideas within the country. If China deemed Sci-Hub to be an issue, they would shut it down (via DNS poisoning) and incarcerate anybody who spoke in its favor.
- throwaway2048 11y ago
  not to mention silencing any mention of it
- khedoros 11y ago
  Thanks for the clarification. It's true; if any message can be silenced and any thought wiped out at will before it's even developed, then its hard for even the realization that you're being controlled to spread, let alone any plan to fight against the control.
  - AnthonyMouse 11y ago
    Cory Doctorow makes that case all the time. You don't want perfect enforcement because it provides no opportunity to evaluate when the law is wrong. You need somebody to be able to break the law, show what happens and prove that the world doesn't end in order to make the case that the consequences are actually quite alright and we shouldn't have that law anymore.
    - conceit 11y ago
      Separation of power ideally means that enforcement and evaluation of the law are separate instances. It doesn't work in practice. Indeed, having more laws to help enforce basic laws would seem absurd, if the practice of lawgiving was in principle wrong. But lessening law would seem absurd, if avoiding lawlessness was the idea in the first place.
AnthonyMouse 11y ago
The basic problem with the "original formulation" of civil disobedience is that power structures have evolved to thwart it. Things that should by any right be a civil case or misdemeanor are instead charged as multiple overlapping felonies in order to coerce a plea bargain, which is effective to deter all but the most dedicated from demanding their day in court. Then the court won't allow you to make the case for jury nullification or any other argument that the law is wrong to the jury, and prosecutors will be allowed to exclude anyone from the jury who is sympathetic to the idea that juries shouldn't convict when they don't agree with the law. You can only make the case that the law is wrong to the judge, and no matter how stupid the law is the judge can only agree with you if it violates the constitution. Which plenty of very, very stupid laws clearly don't, so you become a convicted felon without having had an opportunity to make your case to anyone with the power to do anything about it. In theory the outrageous nature of that process should inspire the public to demand change, but have we passed Aaron's Law yet? [1] [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/aarons-law-reintroduced-cfaa-didnt-fix-itself https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/aarons-law-reintroduce...
- Retric 11y ago
  The natural response to that is civil disobedience without actually getting caught. As a first approximation a single person operating alone could probably do around a billion dollars worth of damage without directly inflicting physical harm on anyone. Get a few thousand people to do the same and individually there going to be less effective, but things break down. Keep pushing and government becomes meaningless. However, people are generally fat and happy. A surveillance state in wall-e's world just does not mean the same thing without the downtrodden masses which have fueled past revolutions.
- gozur88 11y ago
  >You can only make the case that the law is wrong to the judge, and no matter how stupid the law is the judge can only agree with you if it violates the constitution. Well, yes. It's not a judge's job to strike down bad law. We're already too close to a system where the judiciary acts as a super-legislature.
a_bonobo 11y ago
A quote from Orwell's essays: >At the same time there is reason to think that Gandhi, who after all was born in 1869, did not understand the nature of totalitarianism and saw everything in terms of his own struggle against the British government. The important point here is not so much that the British treated him forbearingly as that he was always able to command publicity. As can be seen from the phrase quoted above, he believed in “arousing the world”, which is only possible if the world gets a chance to hear what you are doing. It is difficult to see how Gandhi's methods could be applied in a country where opponents of the regime disappear in the middle of the night and are never heard of again. Without a free press and the right of assembly, it is impossible not merely to appeal to outside opinion, but to bring a mass movement into being, or even to make your intentions known to your adversary. Is there a Gandhi in Russia at this moment? And if there is, what is he accomplishing? The Russian masses could only practise civil disobedience if the same idea happened to occur to all of them simultaneously, and even then, to judge by the history of the Ukraine famine, it would make no difference. Reflections on Gandhi http://www.orwell.ru/library/reviews/gandhi/english/e_gandhi http://www.orwell.ru/library/reviews/gandhi/english/e_gandhi
- Terr_ 11y ago
  I think Gandhi's effort was also about arousing a moral sense (shame, guilt, questioning) in the oppressor's rank-and-file... But that works better when there are a large number of them who are not super-committed to beating innocent people. It becomes much harder when the oppressors can use a small and dedicated mobile murder-force.
indrax 11y ago
This is also Direct Action, where what you're doing is solving or mitigating the problem and so you want to keep doing it as long as you can.

userbinator 11y ago

My biggest worry is the whole "security culture" that developed shortly after Snowden is encouraging more of the population to embrace locked-down walled-garden systems in which they can feel secure but have little freedom, and the general push for secure-by-default rather than open systems. A necessary condition for civil disobedience is the freedom to disobey, to defeat access controls, to exercise one's beliefs. The fact that Snowden's leaks were made possible by insecurity, and now seemingly everyone is against insecurity, is ironic enough that it makes me wonder if that was really the intent all along...

smarx007 11y ago
insecurity != openness

conceit 11y ago

I don't think it's a form of democracy any more than are breathing or rigged voting. Peace treaties aren't a form of war either.