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This type of bipartisan support seems to be a recurring concern with the more authoritarian "national security" legislation being passed around the world. We ha
by Silhouette 7y ago
This type of bipartisan support seems to be a recurring concern with the more authoritarian "national security" legislation being passed around the world. We have the same thing in the UK, where both of the big parties have tended to support intrusive government surveillance powers. Because of our voting system, the more liberal but smaller parties that would challenge such measures tend to be disproportionately under-represented at national level, so authoritarianism almost always wins.
This leads to claims that most people support such measures, yet not so long ago we had a huge grass roots campaign against mandatory ID cards (and related measures like the database behind those cards) that ultimately succeeded in preventing their introduction, so clearly it's not really as simple as that. Certainly some reports based on polling that get brought out to demonstrate that public "support" for these measures have glossed over heavily loaded questions in the polls themselves. (They're not quite "Terrorism is a really serious threat and a nuke might kill everyone. Do you support stronger government powers to prevent bad people doing these bad things and keep your children safe?" but sometimes they get awfully close.)
This is the reality of the politics of fear in the Western world today. Personally I'm slightly optimistic that things will turn for the best within the next few years. We seem to have widespread concern about "fake news" and unwarranted interference in democratic processes, to the point that now we see explicit "fact checking" becoming a common practice in media reporting of political statements and we're seeing big social media platforms trying to rein in the more questionable propaganda and stop their systems from becoming little more than a rumour-driven mob on a national or global scale.
Maybe someone will finally notice that the threat from terrorism is actually pretty small, the threat from excessive government powers is actually pretty big, and in any case all of these resources might be better spent on other areas of government like education or healthcare or infrastructure projects that could make a much bigger difference to a lot more people anyway. We can hope...
- blackflame7000 7y agoCryptography is unknown to many and many fear the unknown.
- Silhouette 7y agoTrue. It certainly doesn't help that a lot of the elected representatives who are making these laws evidently lack even a basic understanding of the technical issues involved, so they are often guided by expert advice from those who entirely coincidentally are the main beneficiaries of the stronger powers being created.
- SiempreViernes 7y agoFrankly this story doesn't have any substantial to do with cryptography, rather it's about how the media in Australia just doesn't have much protection when anything labelled state secrets are involved. Stories about the raiding and seizing of journalists computers and other materials go back to 2000 at least, see links at end of https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jun/04/federal-police-raid-home-of-news-corp-journalist-annika-smethurst https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jun/04/feder...
- baybal2 7y ago> Because of our voting system, the more liberal but smaller parties that would challenge such measures tend to be disproportionately under-represented at national level, so authoritarianism almost always wins. Not because of the voting system, but the very inherent nature of the political process. You and me should be much more afraid of a lot of fools being turned into an organised political force than of typical "fascist intellectuals" ganging up on somebody. It is much more easy to coerce an insecure and ignorant person to do crazy things, than that of even most villainous man with intelligence whose crazyness will be at least limited by his instinct of self preservation. Minority juntas tend to be weak because everybody "have to look after their own backs," and different parties trying to prevent others from achieving monopoly on violence, or doing something stupid that has a chance to jeopardise them both. The long lull after WWII was all due to that "everybody having to look after own back" in both society and on the world stage. Four generations have passed since then, and all lessons of that time are now forgotten.
- mtgx 7y agoIt's because governments no longer fear their people. And they know the more such laws they get to pass the less they have to fear, too. Just like in China, the moment someone even hints at organizing a protest against the government, they are arrested because the government has access to all conversations, tons of public cameras, etc. The future is scary unless we turn this trend around.
- tomatocracy 7y agoThere's a phrase, 'hard cases make bad law'. I think it might apply here. You don't need to assume bad intent anywhere to get a suboptimal outcome because generalising from a hard case is a bad idea and yet that's exactly what political processes the world over end up doing at least some of the time. All we can do is hold our politicians to higher standards but we have to expect nonetheless that the system will fail from time to time and be ready to fix things when it does.
- Silhouette 7y agoYes, there is definitely an element of that here. The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all. (H. L. Mencken)