6 ms·

The comparison that Bruce Schneider makes is not correct. Governments are likely to control food pathogens and airline risks because they need living, producti

by Gys 9y ago

The comparison that Bruce Schneider makes is not correct. Governments are likely to control food pathogens and airline risks because they need living, productive, happy voters. But governments have also a fundamental distrust for all individuals and therefore want as much surveillance as possible. By allowing big companies to collect that, they have access as well. Therefore I think governments are not motivated to improve privacy at all. On the contrary.

Anderkent 9y ago
That's an explanation of how this is happening, not an argument that it should happen. What governments do is not some mysterious black-box that we can't influence.
- ballenf 9y ago
  I think we've all seen the story over and over: populist politician gets in power and forgets everything. They start to sacrifice principles in return for staying in power in order to ostensibly do the right thing later. But later never comes. So, maybe theoretically we can influence, but understanding the nature of what a self-interested, pragmatic government beaurocrat values is incredibly important. I think the parent comment and idea behind it needs to be explored further. Maybe there is a solution, but it will perhaps require an entirely new type of government. Democracies, as we know them, don't seem capable of solving this problem.
  - clarkmoody 9y ago
    > populist politician gets in power and forgets everything. They start to sacrifice principles in return for staying in power in order to ostensibly do the right thing later. But later never comes. Remove the word "populist" and you've just described most politicians ;-)
  - zipwitch 9y ago
    Politicians aren't the problem. They don't exist in a vaccuum. They're a symptom. Democracy is only the problem insofar as we (here in the US) do not have one, we just pretend we do. Democracy and Republic both mean a government by the public. Voting once a year, donating money, and writing stuff on the net are utterly inadequate for that end. Public government needs educated and involved citizenry. It means putting in quite a bit of time.
    - KSteffensen 9y ago
      People in democracies get the politicians they deserve. Look at Italy, the USA, Argentina, Hungary, Denmark, wherever
  - KSteffensen 9y ago
    Elect the parliament by lottery. 4 years of service if you get drafted, replace 25% of seats per year. Would be far more representative of the people than current way and less susceptible to populism. People often think I'm joking when I propose this but I haven't heard a good argument against it yet.
    - walterbell 9y ago
      See the Ekklesia (Ancient Greece) for pro/con: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9817173 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9817173
    - igravious 9y ago
      If jury duty is random why not political duty? I think your idea (is it your idea?) deserves a lot of attention. Maybe 2 years of service. 4 is a lot. That combined with Swiss-style direct democracy would go a long way I feel. And universal basic income.
      - tzs 9y ago
        > If jury duty is random why not political duty? Jurors are asked to do a couple fairly common tasks that most people do frequently throughout their lives: (1) listen to different sides of a story and decide which side to believe, and (2) decide the motives for a person's acts. A legislator is asked to judge complex policy questions often requiring extensive specialized knowledge. The arguments for and against are often long and complex. It's not a job you can expect to take some random adult off the street for and have them do it competently.
        KSteffensen 9y ago
        Why should a career in party politics improve your ability to make these decisions? Do current law makers have to pass some kind of knowledge based test to be allowed to make the decisions?
    - ethbro 9y ago
      As someone who agrees with the idea, here's some arguments against it. 1) By taking the average, you are risking compounding educational decreases in the populace. Bad public education policy is enacted, chosen politicians become less educated, worse public policy is enacted, etc etc. 2) By using less experienced politians, you lessen the efficiency of the entire political process. 3) By not having the possibility of re-election, you remove any responsibility of the elected after they're elected.
  - dv_dt 9y ago
    I don't think it's a problem of defining ever more detailed or different government rule sets, but a problem of the feedback between the people governed and the people governing. The institutions of law provide some help - mostly by beneficially slowing down how fast things can change, but the maintenance of a stable government is a balance of politicians and leaders do, and what people allow. A much more dynamic, and fragile relationship than most of us care to contemplate. There are more than "politician corrupted by power" stories, there are also many politician does a good thing and fades into the background, or politician leads well for a long time stories too. These are less exciting and usually receive far less press, because they are remarkable in their unremarkable outcomes.
  - chongli 9y ago
    Honestly, I'd prefer to have a government repeatedly fail to implement its own agenda than one which whips violently to and fro like a tree in a storm. When we let the mob into the halls of power we get a lot of bloodshed and little good. The intransigence of the bureaucracy is a feature, not a bug.
kinkrtyavimoodh 9y ago
People downvoting you are probably taking your statement as normative, whereas it's purely positive. It's not about what the govt should do. It is what it does. For example, the police, the IRS, DHS etc etc. (and hence the state) WILL be helped in their jobs by increasing surveillance, and so will always be trying to increase its scope. Whether it's _worth_ the loss of privacy is of course a valid debate.
- ryanmarsh 9y ago
  People downvoting you are probably taking your statement as normative A bit meta but I wish more up/downvoters on HN could tell the difference between normative and descriptive speech.
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    So do I, and I wish they could tell that speculations on motivation are inherently normative.
- barrkel 9y ago
  It is not a positive statement. It sounds like one, by it's actually a judgement about how effective government is. I'm quite certain that it is false.
  - alethiophile 9y ago
    It would certainly be interesting to hear some evidence or justification for this position, given that the record of governments with respect to privacy over the Internet era (at least) has been uniformly dismal and getting worse. It certainly seems like the positive statement "government is not motivated to protect individual privacy and will not effectively do so" is well-supported by current experience.
rjprins 9y ago
Governments are made up of people and what governments want are afraid of or are motivated by is the sum of what those people want, are afraid of and are motivated by.
barrkel 9y ago
Governments care about food pathogens because ultimately they are held accountable by the people. They are not a malignant force, parasitic on society. Governments solve collective action problems by getting everybody to play by one set of rules and punishing people who don't. I know what you say is popular in certain political circles, but it's a false idea about government. Worse, it's a cynical meme that corrupts people into making government less effective, by both stopping people from trying to hold government to account, and not trying to change the rules that governments enforce. The best way to make your idea of government true is to stand idly by and do nothing.
- ethbro 9y ago
  Revelant, see effect of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle on food safety laws, which through popular sentiment forced the US government to create the FDA. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle
  - dredmorbius 9y ago
    Though his intent was to create employment reforms. "Iaimed for the public's heart, and ... hit it in the stomach". http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2006-05-21/features/0605210414_1_upton-sinclair-trust-free http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2006-05-21/features/06052...
    - Chardok 9y ago
      That was actually a very nice read! I just finished the book and certainly remember the meat factory scenes the most, but couldn't help but feel Upton would have been disappointed from the message he was trying to ultimately convey.
      - ethbro 9y ago
        Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I know he was disappointed with the outcome, but it was still an improvement during a fairly capital-friendly administration. (Though Teddy Roosevelt certainly pissed off monied interests when he felt they were acting immorally)
SilasX 9y ago
I don't think that's true, even under your model of a malicious government. Officials don't want their private conversations monitored, so they ensured that it would be a crime to secretly record conversations. Likewise, once these tools are used to compromise their privacy, they will demand better safeguards.
specialist 9y ago
Furthermore, since corporations are not subject to FOIA, governments routinely outsource to avoid transparency, accountability, oversight, responsibility, etc.
bunderbunder 9y ago
I don't think it quite works to try to talk about governments as if they are individual, coherent entities. There are government agencies whose business is to collect information. The people working for these agencies will do so _to the extent that they are allowed to_, because that is what they perceive their mission to be. Other people's job is to set limits, and they will set exactly the limits they think they have a mandate to set. They get their sense of that mandate from many possible sources, but in a republic one of the most important sources is public opinion. Which is where you get to the real kernel of the issue: In the USA, surveys indicate that most Americans remain in favor of large scale state surveillance.
- EdSharkey 9y ago
  There's a curious abstract thinking process of "government can do some good in the world" that spawns the bureaucratic leviathan capable of all kinds of mischief. I read some of ancestors' comments and wonder why they always seem willfully blind to it. Is there a still small voice in them that says, "A little waste is to be expected" or "WE are in control of it, I am certain"? Utopian dreamers and busybodies, ugh.
grwthckrmstr 9y ago
Case in point, just last week the Indian government was trying to fight the Supreme court of our country AGAINST privacy laws. Supreme court (and the people) prevailed, Privacy is now a fundamental right.
wmeredith 9y ago
In a less cynical world, what the government actually needs is the mandate of the people to rule. Therefore protecting their personal interests could be of interest if it was demanded by the people.
throwaway1232-4 9y ago
This is a non sequitur. He's not talking about government motivation.

by Gys 9y ago

Anderkent 9y ago

That's an explanation of how this is happening, not an argument that it should happen. What governments do is not some mysterious black-box that we can't influence.

ballenf 9y ago
I think we've all seen the story over and over: populist politician gets in power and forgets everything. They start to sacrifice principles in return for staying in power in order to ostensibly do the right thing later. But later never comes. So, maybe theoretically we can influence, but understanding the nature of what a self-interested, pragmatic government beaurocrat values is incredibly important. I think the parent comment and idea behind it needs to be explored further. Maybe there is a solution, but it will perhaps require an entirely new type of government. Democracies, as we know them, don't seem capable of solving this problem.
- clarkmoody 9y ago
  > populist politician gets in power and forgets everything. They start to sacrifice principles in return for staying in power in order to ostensibly do the right thing later. But later never comes. Remove the word "populist" and you've just described most politicians ;-)
- zipwitch 9y ago
  Politicians aren't the problem. They don't exist in a vaccuum. They're a symptom. Democracy is only the problem insofar as we (here in the US) do not have one, we just pretend we do. Democracy and Republic both mean a government by the public. Voting once a year, donating money, and writing stuff on the net are utterly inadequate for that end. Public government needs educated and involved citizenry. It means putting in quite a bit of time.
  - KSteffensen 9y ago
    People in democracies get the politicians they deserve. Look at Italy, the USA, Argentina, Hungary, Denmark, wherever
- KSteffensen 9y ago
  Elect the parliament by lottery. 4 years of service if you get drafted, replace 25% of seats per year. Would be far more representative of the people than current way and less susceptible to populism. People often think I'm joking when I propose this but I haven't heard a good argument against it yet.
  - walterbell 9y ago
    See the Ekklesia (Ancient Greece) for pro/con: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9817173 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9817173
  - igravious 9y ago
    If jury duty is random why not political duty? I think your idea (is it your idea?) deserves a lot of attention. Maybe 2 years of service. 4 is a lot. That combined with Swiss-style direct democracy would go a long way I feel. And universal basic income.
    - tzs 9y ago
      > If jury duty is random why not political duty? Jurors are asked to do a couple fairly common tasks that most people do frequently throughout their lives: (1) listen to different sides of a story and decide which side to believe, and (2) decide the motives for a person's acts. A legislator is asked to judge complex policy questions often requiring extensive specialized knowledge. The arguments for and against are often long and complex. It's not a job you can expect to take some random adult off the street for and have them do it competently.
      - KSteffensen 9y ago
        Why should a career in party politics improve your ability to make these decisions? Do current law makers have to pass some kind of knowledge based test to be allowed to make the decisions?
  - ethbro 9y ago
    As someone who agrees with the idea, here's some arguments against it. 1) By taking the average, you are risking compounding educational decreases in the populace. Bad public education policy is enacted, chosen politicians become less educated, worse public policy is enacted, etc etc. 2) By using less experienced politians, you lessen the efficiency of the entire political process. 3) By not having the possibility of re-election, you remove any responsibility of the elected after they're elected.
- dv_dt 9y ago
  I don't think it's a problem of defining ever more detailed or different government rule sets, but a problem of the feedback between the people governed and the people governing. The institutions of law provide some help - mostly by beneficially slowing down how fast things can change, but the maintenance of a stable government is a balance of politicians and leaders do, and what people allow. A much more dynamic, and fragile relationship than most of us care to contemplate. There are more than "politician corrupted by power" stories, there are also many politician does a good thing and fades into the background, or politician leads well for a long time stories too. These are less exciting and usually receive far less press, because they are remarkable in their unremarkable outcomes.
- chongli 9y ago
  Honestly, I'd prefer to have a government repeatedly fail to implement its own agenda than one which whips violently to and fro like a tree in a storm. When we let the mob into the halls of power we get a lot of bloodshed and little good. The intransigence of the bureaucracy is a feature, not a bug.

kinkrtyavimoodh 9y ago

People downvoting you are probably taking your statement as normative, whereas it's purely positive. It's not about what the govt should do. It is what it does. For example, the police, the IRS, DHS etc etc. (and hence the state) WILL be helped in their jobs by increasing surveillance, and so will always be trying to increase its scope. Whether it's _worth_ the loss of privacy is of course a valid debate.

ryanmarsh 9y ago
People downvoting you are probably taking your statement as normative A bit meta but I wish more up/downvoters on HN could tell the difference between normative and descriptive speech.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  So do I, and I wish they could tell that speculations on motivation are inherently normative.
barrkel 9y ago
It is not a positive statement. It sounds like one, by it's actually a judgement about how effective government is. I'm quite certain that it is false.
- alethiophile 9y ago
  It would certainly be interesting to hear some evidence or justification for this position, given that the record of governments with respect to privacy over the Internet era (at least) has been uniformly dismal and getting worse. It certainly seems like the positive statement "government is not motivated to protect individual privacy and will not effectively do so" is well-supported by current experience.

rjprins 9y ago

Governments are made up of people and what governments want are afraid of or are motivated by is the sum of what those people want, are afraid of and are motivated by.

barrkel 9y ago

Governments care about food pathogens because ultimately they are held accountable by the people. They are not a malignant force, parasitic on society. Governments solve collective action problems by getting everybody to play by one set of rules and punishing people who don't. I know what you say is popular in certain political circles, but it's a false idea about government. Worse, it's a cynical meme that corrupts people into making government less effective, by both stopping people from trying to hold government to account, and not trying to change the rules that governments enforce. The best way to make your idea of government true is to stand idly by and do nothing.

ethbro 9y ago
Revelant, see effect of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle on food safety laws, which through popular sentiment forced the US government to create the FDA. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle
- dredmorbius 9y ago
  Though his intent was to create employment reforms. "Iaimed for the public's heart, and ... hit it in the stomach". http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2006-05-21/features/0605210414_1_upton-sinclair-trust-free http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2006-05-21/features/06052...
  - Chardok 9y ago
    That was actually a very nice read! I just finished the book and certainly remember the meat factory scenes the most, but couldn't help but feel Upton would have been disappointed from the message he was trying to ultimately convey.
    - ethbro 9y ago
      Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I know he was disappointed with the outcome, but it was still an improvement during a fairly capital-friendly administration. (Though Teddy Roosevelt certainly pissed off monied interests when he felt they were acting immorally)

SilasX 9y ago

I don't think that's true, even under your model of a malicious government. Officials don't want their private conversations monitored, so they ensured that it would be a crime to secretly record conversations. Likewise, once these tools are used to compromise their privacy, they will demand better safeguards.

specialist 9y ago

Furthermore, since corporations are not subject to FOIA, governments routinely outsource to avoid transparency, accountability, oversight, responsibility, etc.

bunderbunder 9y ago

I don't think it quite works to try to talk about governments as if they are individual, coherent entities. There are government agencies whose business is to collect information. The people working for these agencies will do so _to the extent that they are allowed to_, because that is what they perceive their mission to be. Other people's job is to set limits, and they will set exactly the limits they think they have a mandate to set. They get their sense of that mandate from many possible sources, but in a republic one of the most important sources is public opinion. Which is where you get to the real kernel of the issue: In the USA, surveys indicate that most Americans remain in favor of large scale state surveillance.

EdSharkey 9y ago
There's a curious abstract thinking process of "government can do some good in the world" that spawns the bureaucratic leviathan capable of all kinds of mischief. I read some of ancestors' comments and wonder why they always seem willfully blind to it. Is there a still small voice in them that says, "A little waste is to be expected" or "WE are in control of it, I am certain"? Utopian dreamers and busybodies, ugh.

grwthckrmstr 9y ago

Case in point, just last week the Indian government was trying to fight the Supreme court of our country AGAINST privacy laws. Supreme court (and the people) prevailed, Privacy is now a fundamental right.

wmeredith 9y ago

In a less cynical world, what the government actually needs is the mandate of the people to rule. Therefore protecting their personal interests could be of interest if it was demanded by the people.

throwaway1232-4 9y ago

This is a non sequitur. He's not talking about government motivation.