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Yeah the current government has been accelerating an authoritarian slide unencumbered by a bill of rights. Neither major party supports such a document and with

Yeah the current government has been accelerating an authoritarian slide unencumbered by a bill of rights. Neither major party supports such a document and without it you get bullshit like this recent secret trial and imprisonment: https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-21/canberra-prisoner-prompts-secrecy-debate/11726654 https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-21/canberra-prisoner-...

friendlybus 7y ago
A bill of rights does not protect you against secret trials. Assange's secret indictment is a famous example.
- Synaesthesia 7y ago
  No those rights need to be enforced and of the government won’t do it, the people have to put pressure on them.
- ekianjo 7y ago
  Where is the trial of Assange secret exactly? You can consider his treatment to be unfair but there's been nothing secret about it.
  - roenxi 7y ago
    It will be secret if it ends up somewhere like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Court#Secret_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig... . Given that we don't actually know anything about what happens in the FISA court it is plausible that Snowden will be dragged in there for reasons we are never told. Maybe we never even find out he appeared before the court, who knows. And GP said indictment not trial.
  - friendlybus 7y ago
    For a few years he has claimed that the US had a sealed indictment on him in secret it was left unproven until recently when part of it was revealed and then it was confirmed. There's also the case of ladar levison getting a national security letter when his business was FBI'ed for hosting encrypted snowden emails. That letter meant he could not even tell his wife what was happening, including going to court and being generally railroaded by the legal system. His defcon talks on the legal lies he experienced in court are amusing. Being accuses of running from police put the backdoor of 5 story apartment building with no exit for the sake of speeding up proceedings along with his lawyer being bismurched for ties he knew nothing about and copy and paste text in the prosecution's legal docs. I mean the US had Guantanamo, secrecy in the US government has been the norm for a while.
    - iudqnolq 7y ago
      Sounds like he thought he could outsmart the legal system and learned courts don't treat you well when you try to pretend the law is a computer program. > Levison reluctantly turned over his encryption keys to the government, although not in a manner that the government deemed useful—he provided a lengthy printout in tiny type, a move the authorities said was objectionable. The company had treated the matter "as if it was a contract negotiation," rather than a "lawful court order,” Assistant US Attorney Andrew Peterson, who represented the government, told the appellate court. Also, hearing someone say they didnt have time to hire a lawyer is a massive red flag. Not having a lawyer, especially if you haven't ever learned about the law, is nearly a guarantee you're about to be screwed. Most judges know this and will give you more time to find a lawyer if you need it (called a continuance). I don't know if he asked, but I suspect if he had and the judge had refused his request he'd have stated that. His case may have had merits, but if this is how he approached the legal system I think his losses can be attributed to him.
      - friendlybus 7y ago
        When the other side of the story is Ladar saying he hired a lawyer and the prosecution characterized it as an act of defiance.. then character attacks on both sides lose their value. He turned over the keys on paper because that's all he had access to in the 3 hours he had to provide it. https://youtu.be/g_lN-RAfzRQ?t=4485 https://youtu.be/g_lN-RAfzRQ?t=4485 Timestamp for the paper keys. There is way more detail that shows he was put in extremely difficult situations and his ability to respond to quite a few legal mechanisms was severely limited by compressed timeframes and legal actions been done in parallel and out of sight. The whole talk linked goes through a lot of it in detail, if you want to take the Wiki's story do.. but it's not the whole story in any sense of the word. https://youtu.be/g_lN-RAfzRQ?t=5754 https://youtu.be/g_lN-RAfzRQ?t=5754 Timestamp for a Q&A question that asks specifically about the paper keys and he goes in to much more detail.
        iudqnolq 7y ago
        I'm not going to watch the entire talk. Just listening at the timestamp you provided, I think he confirms my characterization. He states that technically the government never specified how they wanted the keys, so he could hand them over however he wanted even if the format he provided was extremely hard to make use of. This isn't how the law works. Him saying that he thought up some clever trick, and not that his lawyer proposed a clever trick, is also a massive red flag. The document up on the screen in the video says he had 24 hours. That's enough time to type up an encryption key, if the printout was actually readable. Can you provide a cite for hiring a lawyer being characterized as an act of defiance? My assumption, given no further information, is that he didn't hire a normal lawyer in a normal fashion if that happened. Many things are unfair about the US legal system, I have never heard being penalized for having a lawyer being one of them.
- humanrebar 7y ago
  You also need several independent pieces of government (1) overseeing one another. People tend to underappreciate how the divided powers in the U.S. setup are also critical. Different branches of government. Different independent levels of government. And so on. To some degree, the frustrations in America right now are due to the erosian of that system of separated powers, generally in favor of a national bureaucracy, which I don't thing many voters actually like. (1) And, ideally, other social institutions would be in the mix, but those vary more by country. Having a monarch around to berate political leaders for nonsense helps with some things. A free press helps with others. Strong protest culture, etc.

friendlybus 7y ago

A bill of rights does not protect you against secret trials. Assange's secret indictment is a famous example.

Synaesthesia 7y ago
No those rights need to be enforced and of the government won’t do it, the people have to put pressure on them.
ekianjo 7y ago
Where is the trial of Assange secret exactly? You can consider his treatment to be unfair but there's been nothing secret about it.
- roenxi 7y ago
  It will be secret if it ends up somewhere like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Court#Secret_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig... . Given that we don't actually know anything about what happens in the FISA court it is plausible that Snowden will be dragged in there for reasons we are never told. Maybe we never even find out he appeared before the court, who knows. And GP said indictment not trial.
- friendlybus 7y ago
  For a few years he has claimed that the US had a sealed indictment on him in secret it was left unproven until recently when part of it was revealed and then it was confirmed. There's also the case of ladar levison getting a national security letter when his business was FBI'ed for hosting encrypted snowden emails. That letter meant he could not even tell his wife what was happening, including going to court and being generally railroaded by the legal system. His defcon talks on the legal lies he experienced in court are amusing. Being accuses of running from police put the backdoor of 5 story apartment building with no exit for the sake of speeding up proceedings along with his lawyer being bismurched for ties he knew nothing about and copy and paste text in the prosecution's legal docs. I mean the US had Guantanamo, secrecy in the US government has been the norm for a while.
  - iudqnolq 7y ago
    Sounds like he thought he could outsmart the legal system and learned courts don't treat you well when you try to pretend the law is a computer program. > Levison reluctantly turned over his encryption keys to the government, although not in a manner that the government deemed useful—he provided a lengthy printout in tiny type, a move the authorities said was objectionable. The company had treated the matter "as if it was a contract negotiation," rather than a "lawful court order,” Assistant US Attorney Andrew Peterson, who represented the government, told the appellate court. Also, hearing someone say they didnt have time to hire a lawyer is a massive red flag. Not having a lawyer, especially if you haven't ever learned about the law, is nearly a guarantee you're about to be screwed. Most judges know this and will give you more time to find a lawyer if you need it (called a continuance). I don't know if he asked, but I suspect if he had and the judge had refused his request he'd have stated that. His case may have had merits, but if this is how he approached the legal system I think his losses can be attributed to him.
    - friendlybus 7y ago
      When the other side of the story is Ladar saying he hired a lawyer and the prosecution characterized it as an act of defiance.. then character attacks on both sides lose their value. He turned over the keys on paper because that's all he had access to in the 3 hours he had to provide it. https://youtu.be/g_lN-RAfzRQ?t=4485 https://youtu.be/g_lN-RAfzRQ?t=4485 Timestamp for the paper keys. There is way more detail that shows he was put in extremely difficult situations and his ability to respond to quite a few legal mechanisms was severely limited by compressed timeframes and legal actions been done in parallel and out of sight. The whole talk linked goes through a lot of it in detail, if you want to take the Wiki's story do.. but it's not the whole story in any sense of the word. https://youtu.be/g_lN-RAfzRQ?t=5754 https://youtu.be/g_lN-RAfzRQ?t=5754 Timestamp for a Q&A question that asks specifically about the paper keys and he goes in to much more detail.
      - iudqnolq 7y ago
        I'm not going to watch the entire talk. Just listening at the timestamp you provided, I think he confirms my characterization. He states that technically the government never specified how they wanted the keys, so he could hand them over however he wanted even if the format he provided was extremely hard to make use of. This isn't how the law works. Him saying that he thought up some clever trick, and not that his lawyer proposed a clever trick, is also a massive red flag. The document up on the screen in the video says he had 24 hours. That's enough time to type up an encryption key, if the printout was actually readable. Can you provide a cite for hiring a lawyer being characterized as an act of defiance? My assumption, given no further information, is that he didn't hire a normal lawyer in a normal fashion if that happened. Many things are unfair about the US legal system, I have never heard being penalized for having a lawyer being one of them.
humanrebar 7y ago
You also need several independent pieces of government (1) overseeing one another. People tend to underappreciate how the divided powers in the U.S. setup are also critical. Different branches of government. Different independent levels of government. And so on. To some degree, the frustrations in America right now are due to the erosian of that system of separated powers, generally in favor of a national bureaucracy, which I don't thing many voters actually like. (1) And, ideally, other social institutions would be in the mix, but those vary more by country. Having a monarch around to berate political leaders for nonsense helps with some things. A free press helps with others. Strong protest culture, etc.