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> I'm far less worried about commercial companies doing this than I am worried about governments doing this. I don't understand this statement. I hope after Sn

> I'm far less worried about commercial companies doing this than I am worried about governments doing this. I don't understand this statement. I hope after Snowden we all know that data at a commercial company = data at government? What's the difference? I don't see any practical barriers to various government agencies having access to all data at all companies. With and without company knowledge, mostly secretly, with and without company and customer consent, legally and illegally. This goes for the US, all US allies and all US enemies. The intentions of commercial companies when it comes to data protection from government are pretty irrelevant. If you (as a people) want to ban your government from access to anything specific, you must first have control over your government. Which is inherently impossible in a system that is anything other than a direct democracy. Just my very unpopular opinion. There is no nation in the world that comes close to a people having control over a government, except arguably Switzerland. But even there I have my doubts...

atemerev 7y ago
I live in Switzerland. Direct democracy works perfectly well. I don't understand why it is not the default mode and no other country uses it -- to me, it is the obvious way of running things.
- bboygravity 7y ago
  I don't live in Switzerland and I completely agree and it blows my mind as well. The standard, surprisingly popular, rhetoric I hear against direct democracy in other European countries is really very unconvincing to me: people are too stupid to vote, people can't know enough about specific subjects to vote well, people aren't interested in politics (duh, why would you in a system where you can't influence politics), people can be influenced too easily through propaganda and other nonsense arguments which would all apply to a representative democracy as well. People don't like change I guess and they (want to) love their country the way it is. On top of that I get a feeling that people somehow look up to politicians subconsciously as somehow being above them or at least being above their neighbors. They seem to equate leadership and sales skills to being able to take hard decisions and being incorruptible / divine. It's like the "king effect" (just made this up): everybody hates the king's decisions, but at the same time the king is the hero and pride of the nation and who could possibly want any other king?
  - AmericanChopper 7y ago
    People only have so much attention to give to operating their democracy. Which is why in most instances, the more local you get, the less efficiently government operates. Participation in local elections tends to be a complete joke, and as such those local government bodies tend to only represent a very narrow set of interests. In any case, this form of direct democracy wouldn’t solve the problems the parent is talking about. To achieve that, you’d need to vote on every decisions made by every public official ever.
    - atemerev 7y ago
      This is how it works here. We have local, cantonal and federal laws; the laws to vote on are presented in packages once every two months (so every time, people vote on both local and federal laws). Our participation is not a joke. Every Swiss citizen can propose a law to be voted on one of the next referendums, provided that they will collect the appropriate minimum number of signatures in its support.
      - AmericanChopper 7y ago
        Just to look at your claim for a moment. Voter turnout for referendums moves between 30 and 50 percent, and referendums appear to decide about 10 questions on average per year. Which is hardly the paragon of direct democracy. However, you missed the part of my comment where I wasn’t talking about Switzerland at all, I was talking in generalities about the places where it was being discussed as an idea to implement. Take LA for example. A lot of people who post here seem to have strong opinions on how that city is run, and I’d bet a lot of them even live there. If the LA city council elections generate turnout in the mid-teens, that is considered very high. Turnout below 10% is not strange. Switzerland’s voter turnout is actually quite pedestrian. It’s higher than a lot of local elections in the US for sure, and perhaps even high enough to prevent the kind of special interest local government policies you see all over the US. But just because something seems to mostly work in one single, small, rich European country, doesn’t mean it will work as well anywhere else.
- tsbinz 7y ago
  I live in Switzerland as well and wouldn't agree that direct democracy works much better than representative democracy. You can certainly argue that it does but it's far from obvious IMO. There's less focus on lobbying and more focus on spreading FUD about other parties' proposals, people have no time to investigate consequences of proposals so they rely on what they read in political ads, see on tv, etc. Men were voting that women shouldn't be allowed to vote as recently as 1990(!) in one part of Switzerland. I can't say it's worse than other systems, but it's also far from obvious to me that it's better.
  - bboygravity 7y ago
    Have you ever tried living in another country / watching the political news in other countries?
    - kmlx 7y ago
      what about japan? about 60 times bigger than switzerland and they seem to have it quite good for quite some time.
      - glandium 7y ago
        Japan is not a direct democracy.
        kmlx 7y ago
        exactly. you don't have to be a direct democracy to be successful.
    - tsbinz 7y ago
      I've lived in countries with representative democracies (Germany, Austria) as well, yes.
  - atemerev 7y ago
    Well, the case you are talking about is a few tiny villages who decided that they could keep their "tradition" way into modernity, but even they yielded to the pressure of the rest of the Swiss society.
- epiphanitus 7y ago
  Switzerland is a relatively small country though. Here in the US, we have 50 states that are each very different from each other. Their economies rely on different industries, the natural hazards they face are very different and their cultures can be extremely different. To have such a large society being run that way would have lots of unintended consequences. Imagine a country where voters are so burnt out on voting for every policy that the response rate becomes extremely low - and the only people who vote on any given policy are the slim minority with vested interests.
  - n4r9 7y ago
    Yes it's small but it's made up of 26 cantons which are very different from one another in similar ways, including economically and culturally. Half of the country's GDP comes from 4 cantons. They mitigate the "low response" phenomenon by encouraging political awareness from a young age and trust in public institutions. It's imperfect and it may be a massive task to make such cultural changes in the US, but I don't think there's anything inherently stopping it from scaling.
  - emptyparadise 7y ago
    I think this is an indictment of the large nation state idea.
  - jdnenej 7y ago
    Not Amercian but I'm wondering if it would be an insane idea to split America up in to a whole bunch of countries joined by something like how it works in the EU. That way Texas and California aren't trying to battle for a one size fits all government.
    - lostlogin 7y ago
      Why would the turf battles end? Those that provide the most X will demand more in return. Those states that are given the most Y will fight tooth and nail to keep it. Someone will threaten to leave. Europe is quite the example.
    - epiphanitus 7y ago
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
lopmotr 7y ago
If the population is worried at all, they'll probably want to stop private companies using it anyway. Governments usually gets exemptions from privacy laws, so in a way that's more worrying - government access is less likely to be stopped than private access. Also, people won't have the choice when they're compelled to be scanned on arrest vs logging in to some optional private business.
- wongarsu 7y ago
  >when they're compelled to be scanned on arrest I choose to plead the 5th. The wording is "nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself" which obviously covers brain scans. Of course the police will say I have the right to remain silent and they have the right to lock me in a jail cell. And TSA will absolutely do brain scans. I guess the right to remain silent is successfully getting eroded.
- xg15 7y ago
  > Governments usually gets exemptions from privacy laws, so in a way that's more worrying - government access is less likely to be stopped than private access. Yes, because private companies are regulated. By the state. Meanwhile, private companies have nevertheless managed to make surveillance and ridiculously detailed tracking into a whole industry. > Also, people won't have the choice when they're compelled to be scanned on arrest vs logging in to some optional private business. Except in reality, this stuff has long since stopped being optional. If you buy any reasonably modern car, you'll be tracked by private companies. If you have a bank account, you'll be tracked by private companies. If you write an email... you get the point. How exactly do you opt-out of that?
nwalker85 7y ago
I agree that the third party doctrine is a huge problem for privacy. We're making progress on that front: https://www.insideprivacy.com/data-privacy/supreme-courts-carpenter-decision-requires-warrant-for-cell-phone-location-data/ https://www.insideprivacy.com/data-privacy/supreme-courts-ca...

atemerev 7y ago

I live in Switzerland. Direct democracy works perfectly well. I don't understand why it is not the default mode and no other country uses it -- to me, it is the obvious way of running things.

bboygravity 7y ago
I don't live in Switzerland and I completely agree and it blows my mind as well. The standard, surprisingly popular, rhetoric I hear against direct democracy in other European countries is really very unconvincing to me: people are too stupid to vote, people can't know enough about specific subjects to vote well, people aren't interested in politics (duh, why would you in a system where you can't influence politics), people can be influenced too easily through propaganda and other nonsense arguments which would all apply to a representative democracy as well. People don't like change I guess and they (want to) love their country the way it is. On top of that I get a feeling that people somehow look up to politicians subconsciously as somehow being above them or at least being above their neighbors. They seem to equate leadership and sales skills to being able to take hard decisions and being incorruptible / divine. It's like the "king effect" (just made this up): everybody hates the king's decisions, but at the same time the king is the hero and pride of the nation and who could possibly want any other king?
- AmericanChopper 7y ago
  People only have so much attention to give to operating their democracy. Which is why in most instances, the more local you get, the less efficiently government operates. Participation in local elections tends to be a complete joke, and as such those local government bodies tend to only represent a very narrow set of interests. In any case, this form of direct democracy wouldn’t solve the problems the parent is talking about. To achieve that, you’d need to vote on every decisions made by every public official ever.
  - atemerev 7y ago
    This is how it works here. We have local, cantonal and federal laws; the laws to vote on are presented in packages once every two months (so every time, people vote on both local and federal laws). Our participation is not a joke. Every Swiss citizen can propose a law to be voted on one of the next referendums, provided that they will collect the appropriate minimum number of signatures in its support.
    - AmericanChopper 7y ago
      Just to look at your claim for a moment. Voter turnout for referendums moves between 30 and 50 percent, and referendums appear to decide about 10 questions on average per year. Which is hardly the paragon of direct democracy. However, you missed the part of my comment where I wasn’t talking about Switzerland at all, I was talking in generalities about the places where it was being discussed as an idea to implement. Take LA for example. A lot of people who post here seem to have strong opinions on how that city is run, and I’d bet a lot of them even live there. If the LA city council elections generate turnout in the mid-teens, that is considered very high. Turnout below 10% is not strange. Switzerland’s voter turnout is actually quite pedestrian. It’s higher than a lot of local elections in the US for sure, and perhaps even high enough to prevent the kind of special interest local government policies you see all over the US. But just because something seems to mostly work in one single, small, rich European country, doesn’t mean it will work as well anywhere else.
tsbinz 7y ago
I live in Switzerland as well and wouldn't agree that direct democracy works much better than representative democracy. You can certainly argue that it does but it's far from obvious IMO. There's less focus on lobbying and more focus on spreading FUD about other parties' proposals, people have no time to investigate consequences of proposals so they rely on what they read in political ads, see on tv, etc. Men were voting that women shouldn't be allowed to vote as recently as 1990(!) in one part of Switzerland. I can't say it's worse than other systems, but it's also far from obvious to me that it's better.
- bboygravity 7y ago
  Have you ever tried living in another country / watching the political news in other countries?
  - kmlx 7y ago
    what about japan? about 60 times bigger than switzerland and they seem to have it quite good for quite some time.
    - glandium 7y ago
      Japan is not a direct democracy.
      - kmlx 7y ago
        exactly. you don't have to be a direct democracy to be successful.
  - tsbinz 7y ago
    I've lived in countries with representative democracies (Germany, Austria) as well, yes.
- atemerev 7y ago
  Well, the case you are talking about is a few tiny villages who decided that they could keep their "tradition" way into modernity, but even they yielded to the pressure of the rest of the Swiss society.
epiphanitus 7y ago
Switzerland is a relatively small country though. Here in the US, we have 50 states that are each very different from each other. Their economies rely on different industries, the natural hazards they face are very different and their cultures can be extremely different. To have such a large society being run that way would have lots of unintended consequences. Imagine a country where voters are so burnt out on voting for every policy that the response rate becomes extremely low - and the only people who vote on any given policy are the slim minority with vested interests.
- n4r9 7y ago
  Yes it's small but it's made up of 26 cantons which are very different from one another in similar ways, including economically and culturally. Half of the country's GDP comes from 4 cantons. They mitigate the "low response" phenomenon by encouraging political awareness from a young age and trust in public institutions. It's imperfect and it may be a massive task to make such cultural changes in the US, but I don't think there's anything inherently stopping it from scaling.
- emptyparadise 7y ago
  I think this is an indictment of the large nation state idea.
- jdnenej 7y ago
  Not Amercian but I'm wondering if it would be an insane idea to split America up in to a whole bunch of countries joined by something like how it works in the EU. That way Texas and California aren't trying to battle for a one size fits all government.
  - lostlogin 7y ago
    Why would the turf battles end? Those that provide the most X will demand more in return. Those states that are given the most Y will fight tooth and nail to keep it. Someone will threaten to leave. Europe is quite the example.
  - epiphanitus 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

lopmotr 7y ago

If the population is worried at all, they'll probably want to stop private companies using it anyway. Governments usually gets exemptions from privacy laws, so in a way that's more worrying - government access is less likely to be stopped than private access. Also, people won't have the choice when they're compelled to be scanned on arrest vs logging in to some optional private business.

wongarsu 7y ago
>when they're compelled to be scanned on arrest I choose to plead the 5th. The wording is "nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself" which obviously covers brain scans. Of course the police will say I have the right to remain silent and they have the right to lock me in a jail cell. And TSA will absolutely do brain scans. I guess the right to remain silent is successfully getting eroded.
xg15 7y ago
> Governments usually gets exemptions from privacy laws, so in a way that's more worrying - government access is less likely to be stopped than private access. Yes, because private companies are regulated. By the state. Meanwhile, private companies have nevertheless managed to make surveillance and ridiculously detailed tracking into a whole industry. > Also, people won't have the choice when they're compelled to be scanned on arrest vs logging in to some optional private business. Except in reality, this stuff has long since stopped being optional. If you buy any reasonably modern car, you'll be tracked by private companies. If you have a bank account, you'll be tracked by private companies. If you write an email... you get the point. How exactly do you opt-out of that?

nwalker85 7y ago

I agree that the third party doctrine is a huge problem for privacy. We're making progress on that front: https://www.insideprivacy.com/data-privacy/supreme-courts-carpenter-decision-requires-warrant-for-cell-phone-location-data/ https://www.insideprivacy.com/data-privacy/supreme-courts-ca...