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How Smartphones Betray Democracy

165 points by ENOTTY 7y ago

lifeisstillgood 7y ago
But no. This is not about phones. The same argument can (and has been) made about non-uniformed police officers, photography of crowds, video of demonstrations, wiretaps, postal inspection etc. Yes, democracy can be threatened by the actions of governments and big business. Can be, has been. The solution is nothing to do with phones, or cameras. It is about good laws, enforced vigorously. And that requires us to vote, to become engaged and perhaps enraged. If anything is breaking democracy perhaps it is the realisation by government that they can get away with things that previously were unthinkable - that breaking the basic rules of democracy does not lead to destruction. And the only solution is our vote. But enough of us need to be engaged and outraged. The fault dear brutus is not in our stars, but in our selves.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Phones are merely one of the common and accurate ways to track people. We clearly need legislation for everything related to this, but phones provide a good and visceral example of the dangers.
- tsimionescu 7y ago
  Voting is such a weak control system, that it is obviously not enough. Regular elections pack together so many decision points into so few options that it's barely worth participating. If we really want to influence politics, we need to get rid of this idea that voting is all that democracy means, and try to get people more organized, try to get many more people to participate directly in politics, get them to talk to their representatives regularly, get them to organize and pool resources together for important causes and so on. If you can convince 2 people to vote your way in an election, you've had a more meaningful impact on the election than if you voted yourself. If you can convince an elected representative to change their stance on some issue, you've had probably a hundred or a thousand times more impact on policy than your vote alone has. Until we recognize these things, the people who already do (mostly, but not exclusively, lobbyists and industry groups; and some religious organizations) will continue to effectively control policy. Would anyone ever imagine that, if say Mark Zuckerberg wanted a particular policy, he would do nothing until the next elections, and then would go to the polling station and vote for the candidate who seems to promise that policy?
  - deith 7y ago
    >If we really want to influence politics, we need to get rid of this idea that voting is all that democracy means, and try to get people more organized, try to get many more people to participate directly in politics, get them to talk to their representatives regularly, get them to organize and pool resources together for important causes and so on. You think people have time and energy for this? If they did they could already do it. Usually you take the good with the bad and vote for the candidate that agrees with you on the issues that you care about the most, or the one that seems more reasonable overall.
    - nocturnial 7y ago
      Democracy isn't dead because it got defunded. > Usually you take the good with the bad and vote for the candidate that agrees with you on the issues that you care about the most, or the one that seems more reasonable overall. How is that working out in the US? I don't want to make an analysis of what's wrong or right in american politics. If someone got elected with the message they will burn down the house and everything and he doesn't care... I hope you read this message that after this presidency, you cannot go back to business as usual. Even if "you" win in the next election, it's going to be more brutal in the election after that one. The EU countries know this and are already planning for an exit of the US on the global stage.
    - tsimionescu 7y ago
      Not all people, obviously. But I'm tired of hearing that everything would be better if only people voted. People feel, correctly, that voting is not always an efficient way of influencing public policy. However, instead of hearing about all the other mechanisms which exist, they simply conclude that they can't influence public policy and abandon the stage completely. If we want to get more people involved in political matters, helping them find ways to influence what they care about with less effort than it takes right now would be the best way (not that I know what would be a real solution to that).
  - vturner 7y ago
    Us Americans have an impractical revulsion to lobbying and industry groups. Most Americans simply do not have the time and, at least until recently, are not too concerned what someone a state away does. Unfortunately, like you pointed out, voting isn't a frequent enough control mechanism on the authoritarians or simply narcissistic politicians ready to hand out favors. So, what do we do if lobbying and industrial groups are automatically not an option?
- carlob 7y ago
  Allow me to use a leaky metaphor. We now know pretty well addiction has little to do with the specifics of the substances we abuse: one can be addicted to gambling or sex just as well as to various chemicals. However that argument doesn't mean heroin is safe or that one should approach opiates without care. I think the same can be said of smartphones: if the government or a company wants to track you they will find other ways to do that, but we're making it the game far too easy for them. Another issue is that smartphones are so pervasive that 1) it has become increasingly difficult and sometimes impossible to do some things without one; 2) the sole fact of choosing not to use or own one is suspect. So, yeah surveillance is not just about phones, but we need to have a serious discussions about whether it is at all an option to opt out and lead a normal life.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- _visgean 7y ago
  The problem with that logic is that it completely ignores the effectiveness of the surveillance. You can't really dispatch non-uniformed police officer for every demonstrator to find out where they live. With location data you can.
- talkingtab 7y ago
  "The fault dear brutus is blah, blah, blah." I agree that smart phones in themselves are not the problem, but it is naive to think they are not the delivery vehicle for the problem.
- edanm 7y ago
  I agree in principle. > [The solution] is about good laws, enforced vigorously. This I agree with, but I think it does have to be more than just "good laws". It has to also be a constitution, or some check on the government that is outside the "regular" powers of government to overcome. I think of the US-style bill of rights as having the correct idea - make it clear that the government is a servant of the people, that the people have given it power over some things, but certainly not everything, and that there are some things which are completely off-limits for the government.
- huffmsa 7y ago
  The only solution is not just your vote. The tree of liberty occasionally needs to be watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants. That's how it's always been, and probably always will be.
- t34543 7y ago
  > The solution is nothing to do with phones, or cameras. It is about good laws, enforced vigorously. I think this rationale is exactly what got us into this mess. Laws are sufficiently complex that navigating them successfully is only realistic with a lot of resources. Laws have become an instrument of power for wealthy people. In order to have unbiased enforcement we need to clean up and simplify the laws we already have.
- Aperocky 7y ago
  And you’ll be fed outrage on subject that the source want you to outrage on. And you will be outraged. An entire country will be. Just think about how many time you’ve experienced outrage over positive human experience some online content has? You’re already there, you want more outrage because you’re addicted to this mess. I agree that technology itself is not the problem. The problem imo is humans themselves, the natural and biological tendency to identify with a group and behave hostilely against another group.
- lifeisstillgood 7y ago
  Just to follow up on my post (too late for edits) - Yes voting is weak, but it is what counts. Please write to your MP / congresswoman, please join your local party, or volunteer at a refugee centre. All those things are vital life blood of democracy and I tip my hat to you if you have done any of those things. But the final thing is voting - it's what counts, what adds up. - We still need good laws. We still need them enforced. It would be lovely if we had a law that put politicians in jail if they lied. But just as Twitter and Facebook are finding, defining "political", "lie" and "truth" are hard problems. Like making NP-hard a walk in the park hard. - A new battlefront has opened. In the same way in the 1900s armed forces started saying, "Well I guess we are gonna need some pilots", we need "some coders". HN is probably the highest density of new pilots on the planets - and we are going to need the skills. Once I could read ten newspapers and know what information had been fed to millions of people - today that needs a university level observatory monitoring twitter and facebook firehouses. It will only get worse and the best we can hope for is to fight for the idea of objective truth agreed upon by millions. It's a fight well worth the coding. See you on the frontline.
reilly3000 7y ago
Snowden shared a chilling video today of smartphone surveillance at play in China. Its a real wake up call- what happens when there is no privacy from the state. Please share. https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1208469511051075585 https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1208469511051075585
- acqq 7y ago
  Interestingly, a few tweets later in the same thread is this tweet: "meanwhile in the usa 🇺🇸 you get sent to a restrain chair for walking your dog without a leash." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFG4KKwtEZo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFG4KKwtEZo They also used taser on her as she was already on the chair: "Did you see this? (tazzzap) (she cries from pain) It will happen again, so sit down and stop resisting." At least there's a difference: there's no record of her being interrogated later while bound to the chair. Or, maybe a bit more relevant, surveillance in action in the U.S. of A (2012): https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2093796/Emily-Bunting-Leigh-Van-Bryan-UK-tourists-arrested-destroy-America-Twitter-jokes.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2093796/Emily-Bunti... "British pair arrested in U.S. on terror charges over Twitter jokes" It’s not just what “could” happen.
  - hamhand 7y ago
    Let's not compare systematic and institutionalized measures to news-worthy odd cases.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - freeflight 7y ago
      Claiming these issues are not systematic [0] and institutionalized [1], is willfully ignoring a very apparent problem. This isn't even reserved to US police, the whole system is flawed to the root due to being based on retribution and vengeance, instead of actual rehabilitation, which feeds exactly the kind of straight-up sadism showcased so often by US police and the US justice system. Case in point: Tazzing a restrained woman is justified with her having been "argumentative" [2]. Just follow the orders, be obedient, lick some boots, and then this will supposedly never happen to you, is a very common reply to these "news-worthy odd cases". But these "news-worthy odd cases" are merely the tip of an iceberg that is the US justice system boasting the highest incarceration rate and the largest prisoner population on the planet. Many of them working in for-profit forced labor prisons [3] or being imprisoned under circumstances that some would rate as torture [4]. It's all extremely authoritarian [5], deeply embedded into the country and culture, but regularly overshadowed by the chants of "Land of the free!" distracting from the crass actual reality. [0] https://time.com/4878195/civil-asset-forfeiture-jeff-sessions/ https://time.com/4878195/civil-asset-forfeiture-jeff-session... [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-police-do-not-have-a-constitutional-duty-to-protect.html https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-po... [2] https://youtu.be/TFG4KKwtEZo https://youtu.be/TFG4KKwtEZo [3] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/17/us-private-prisons-forced-labour-detainees-modern-slavery https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/17/us-pri... [4] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-rights-un-usa-torture-idUSKCN0WA2B8 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-rights-un-usa-torture-idU... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone
goodguy1234 7y ago
The article. What is he arguing about? Phones can be tracked? So can anything if the interested party is rich enough, powerful enough or dedicated enough. It has never been this easy to Protest. There are apps on phone with full encryption, there are mesh app that require no setup. There are custom roms for android with 100% focus security and privacy. Also is tracking bad? If we ignore the privacy fanatics, all the good that location tracking has given us far outways all the bad stuff. Also everyone seems to love the idea giving people a voice but does a 360 when they realize other people can have completely opposite radical ideas too.
- feanaro 7y ago
  Calling people holding a particular opinion "privacy fanatics" seems like a cheap move that tries to discredit a position by name-calling. To answer your question, yes, tracking is bad and we should be working to decrease it, then stop it.
  - dageshi 7y ago
    The problem is, they usually sound like fanatics.
    - feanaro 7y ago
      A whole class of people loosely categorized with a quippy, but undefined moniker sounds like fanatics? Sounds like a useless generalization to me.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 7y ago
  > Phones can be tracked? So can anything if the interested party is rich enough, powerful enough or dedicated enough. In other words: Nothing is dangerous, because there is always another way to achieve the same thing if your resources are unlimited. Seriously? > There are apps on phone with full encryption, there are mesh app that require no setup. There are custom roms for android with 100% focus security and privacy. In other words: There are ways for individuals who understand the situation to limit their participation, therefore what is actually happening is of no concern, no matter where it actually leads. Seriously? > Also is tracking bad? If we ignore the privacy fanatics, all the good that location tracking has given us far outways all the bad stuff. Could you substantiate that, maybe? > Also everyone seems to love the idea giving people a voice but does a 360 when they realize other people can have completely opposite radical ideas too. In other words: People who want people to have a voice should be happy when people who want to shut up everyone who isn't like them are promoting their ideas? Seriously?
mirimir 7y ago
It's not just phones. And you don't need GPS to get GPS-level location accuracy. All that you need is WiFi capability. Because WiFi devices scan for APs. And there are databases of GPS-located APs. Located by other GPS-enabled pawns, as it happens. So if you're using anything Google related, or other apps that access such data, you can be tracked. Just from WiFi. Without a cellular radio, or GPS.
- ShorsHammer 7y ago
  Simple triangulation of any dumb phone that hasn't even got a sim card inserted is enough tracking for most surveillance governments. Unless of course we move to a world where people without sim cards become a significant minority or registering a sim card isn't so invasive.
  - mirimir 7y ago
    Yes, I get that. But many people probably don't realize that portable computers with WiFi can be geolocated just as well as phones. Better than dumb phones, even.
- throwaway743 7y ago
  To add to this, if an AP has monitor mode capabilities then our device's don't even need to be connected to the AP via WiFi to be tracked. They just need to have WiFi turned on and sending out probes.
  - mirimir 7y ago
    Yes, but that's just about being tracked by the WiFi AP itself. But as I understand it, being tracked by apps on your device doesn't depend on the AP having monitor mode capability. APs get geolocated primarily by GPS-capable smartphones. And then devices get geolocated based on proximity to such APs. Basically, through latency-based triangulation.
- Gaelan 7y ago
  iOS no longer gives apps a list of nearby APs (unless they have location access anyway), for precisely this reason.
boyadjian 7y ago
"The freedom of some stops where that of others begins"
thendrill 7y ago
Can we have a discussion about what democracy currently is? Is one dollar one vote really democratic?
- B1FF_PSUVM 7y ago
  That's the way republics have worked since Rome and Carthage. Nowadays the aristocrats just play in hard mode - best weapon is soft soap.
buboard 7y ago
Duh this should be common knowledge by now and it s only getting worse. Yes you should be freaked out about living in a world without privacy, but no, democracy is not in danger, freedom is in danger. In fact, democratic people voted for this shit and they keep voting for more regulation/spying because "think of the children/terrorists". Authoritarian control has gotten hold of both democracies and non-democracies and people are fine with it. So, maybe blame the majority along with the phones.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 7y ago
  > Authoritarian control has gotten hold of both democracies and non-democracies and people are fine with it. And how is democracy doing in places where authoritation control has gotten out of hand? After all, you are claiming that democracy is not in danger. So, have people who noticed that they weren't that keen on authoritarianism after all regularly voted the authoritarians out of office successfully, then?
  - buboard 7y ago
    > how is democracy doing in places where authoritation control has gotten out of hand? Not well, but not too bad either. Everyone is happy because of this: https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/number-of-democracies-over-time.png https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/number... Surveillance democracy is a thing, as is surveillance communism/putinism/erdoganism. The difference is that democracies have found a way to manufacture the consent of the majority, while in autocracies it's easier to pin the blame to one person. > have people who noticed that they weren't that keen on authoritarianism after all regularly voted the authoritarians out of office successfully, then? There are relatively few people who aren't keen on surveillance. most people are on board with UK level surveillance and most americans still think badly of Snowden. Don't expect it to be voted out soon
    - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 7y ago
      > Surveillance democracy is a thing, as is surveillance communism/putinism/erdoganism. The difference is that democracies have found a way to manufacture the consent of the majority, while in autocracies it's easier to pin the blame to one person. Well, is it really, though? I mean, no doubt there is a thing that people call "surveillance democracy", and I would agree that it's actually a distinguishable thing. But for one, just because something is called "democracy", doesn't make it a democracy, so the question would be: What makes a democracy a democracy, and would a "surveillance democracy" fit those criteria? But also: Is a "surveillance democracy" even a place where authoritarian control has gotten out of hand yet? Maybe as long as you could still vote the authoritarians out of office, it's not out of hand yet? But then, what if there is actually no real way to achieve this, for whatever reason, and those places are destined for a situation where it is generally accepted that the authoritarians can not be voted out of office, even when people might ultimately change their mind about that whole authoritarianism thing? Maybe then it is out of hand after all? But then, is democracy actually fine if it is unavoidably destined for a place where it is impossible for a majority to elect a new government? Your analysis so far seems not too far from a line of thought that would conclude that the GDR was a democracy (they had elections, and they even called themselves democratic!)--not sure whether you would agree with that, but the GDR sure was and is not considered a democracy by many. > most people are on board with UK level surveillance But are they really? My impression is rather that people simply have no fucking clue what surveillance does or what the risks are. So, while it might well be true that most people don't think of surveillance as a problem right now, that doesn't answer the question of whether people are actually OK with it, as in what their opinion would be once they might be directly confronted with the consequences. And that was my point: There sure are and have been plenty of places where people are not happy with authoritarianism anymore, and those do not tend to be the places where people just vote the authoritarianism out. Authoritarianism is not compatible with democracy, by its definition: It is kindof fine just as long as there is still enough democracy left to potentially remove the authoritarians, so people don't realize the danger they are in, but it becomes unbearable exatly at the point where that power does not exist anymore, because that is also the point at which the authoritarians don't have to care about public opinion much anymore.
lbj 7y ago
Im in the latest Opera and all I see is a video of a crowd. Is that a broken experience?
- obahareth 7y ago
  I see the same thing on the latest Chrome too.
- HansHamster 7y ago
  Latest Firefox here, takes a few minutes to load and all I get is a mostly black top half of the screen and a few seconds of 'video' stuttering along in the bottom half.
thrower123 7y ago
If there's one thing you can count on the Times for, it is ragging on about everything under the sun being a threat to democracy. They don't ever want to place the blame a little closer to home, though.
Fjolsvith 7y ago
I don't get why people confuse Democracy with Constitutional Republic. The first is run by "mob rule" where personal rights can be swept away with the popular sentiment. The second (which is what the United States has) is where the Constitution protects personal rights despite popular sentiment.
- qrbLPHiKpiux 7y ago
  With two children in the school system now, teachers are not doing their job well. Observing first hand.
- marcosdumay 7y ago
  Wait, what? The first is a philosophical principle that says that a government must serve the governed people, the second is an actual form of government that tries to implement the first.
  - buboard 7y ago
    Where do you get those definitions?
    - marcosdumay 7y ago
      How about the dictionary? > n. Government by the people, exercised either directly or through elected representatives. > n. A political or social unit that has such a government. > n. The common people, considered as the primary source of political power. But better, where outside of some ancient history book did you ever see somebody use that word describing exclusively a government like the one in ancient Greece? (Not to say that republic comes from the exact same concepts, just in a different language.)
      - buboard 7y ago
        - these definitions are not the same as the one you stated previously. - All these 3 definitions of democracy may apply to a democracy that uses allotment instead of elections. - You are correct that modern usage of democracy is restricted to "election based majority government". - Republic is a wholly separate, orthogonal concept. Pre-empire Rome was a republic, not a democracy.
cmoscoso 7y ago
Muh, tracking bad...
huffmsa 7y ago
> "Countries including Canada and Spain have rules to limit or prohibit masks at riots or unlawful gatherings" Oh yes, I'm sure the guys burning cars and smashing shop windows are going to follow a no masks rule. More broadly, democracy doesn't require anonymity. In face, it functions better when you know exactly where everyone stands. If you're worried about the ruling government black bagging you for your stance, get a 2A. Start a real revolution. The Declaration wasn't signed "concerned colonists". Those dudes put their names on paper and mailed it to King George.
- huffmsa 7y ago
  Really, "Smartphones enable tyranny" would be a better title.
- buboard 7y ago
  > More broadly, democracy doesn't require anonymity. In face, it functions better when you know exactly where everyone stands that's just false. democracy wouldn't function at all without secret ballots > Those dudes put their names on paper and mailed it to King George. an act of war that has little to do with democracy
  - huffmsa 7y ago
    Can you imagine a parliament or Congress where every vote was anonymous? Anonymous "ministers" making anonymous, unaccountable decisions? "The Government" deciding what was right? And it did too have everything to do with democracy. A unanimous vote from the states representatives supported the motion to secede. In the United States, we know the names of everyone who votes for the president.
    - huffmsa 7y ago
      Now let's list people selected by a secret ballot: - the Pope - the general Secretary of the cccp - US Congressional representatives - the chairman of the NFL - the chairman of best Korea - the limp wristed forum members who use their anonymous downvote instead of engaging with a post the disagree with.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

165 points by ENOTTY 7y ago

But no. This is not about phones. The same argument can (and has been) made about non-uniformed police officers, photography of crowds, video of demonstrations, wiretaps, postal inspection etc. Yes, democracy can be threatened by the actions of governments and big business. Can be, has been. The solution is nothing to do with phones, or cameras. It is about good laws, enforced vigorously. And that requires us to vote, to become engaged and perhaps enraged. If anything is breaking democracy perhaps it is the realisation by government that they can get away with things that previously were unthinkable - that breaking the basic rules of democracy does not lead to destruction. And the only solution is our vote. But enough of us need to be engaged and outraged. The fault dear brutus is not in our stars, but in our selves.

saagarjha 7y ago
Phones are merely one of the common and accurate ways to track people. We clearly need legislation for everything related to this, but phones provide a good and visceral example of the dangers.
tsimionescu 7y ago
Voting is such a weak control system, that it is obviously not enough. Regular elections pack together so many decision points into so few options that it's barely worth participating. If we really want to influence politics, we need to get rid of this idea that voting is all that democracy means, and try to get people more organized, try to get many more people to participate directly in politics, get them to talk to their representatives regularly, get them to organize and pool resources together for important causes and so on. If you can convince 2 people to vote your way in an election, you've had a more meaningful impact on the election than if you voted yourself. If you can convince an elected representative to change their stance on some issue, you've had probably a hundred or a thousand times more impact on policy than your vote alone has. Until we recognize these things, the people who already do (mostly, but not exclusively, lobbyists and industry groups; and some religious organizations) will continue to effectively control policy. Would anyone ever imagine that, if say Mark Zuckerberg wanted a particular policy, he would do nothing until the next elections, and then would go to the polling station and vote for the candidate who seems to promise that policy?
- deith 7y ago
  >If we really want to influence politics, we need to get rid of this idea that voting is all that democracy means, and try to get people more organized, try to get many more people to participate directly in politics, get them to talk to their representatives regularly, get them to organize and pool resources together for important causes and so on. You think people have time and energy for this? If they did they could already do it. Usually you take the good with the bad and vote for the candidate that agrees with you on the issues that you care about the most, or the one that seems more reasonable overall.
  - nocturnial 7y ago
    Democracy isn't dead because it got defunded. > Usually you take the good with the bad and vote for the candidate that agrees with you on the issues that you care about the most, or the one that seems more reasonable overall. How is that working out in the US? I don't want to make an analysis of what's wrong or right in american politics. If someone got elected with the message they will burn down the house and everything and he doesn't care... I hope you read this message that after this presidency, you cannot go back to business as usual. Even if "you" win in the next election, it's going to be more brutal in the election after that one. The EU countries know this and are already planning for an exit of the US on the global stage.
  - tsimionescu 7y ago
    Not all people, obviously. But I'm tired of hearing that everything would be better if only people voted. People feel, correctly, that voting is not always an efficient way of influencing public policy. However, instead of hearing about all the other mechanisms which exist, they simply conclude that they can't influence public policy and abandon the stage completely. If we want to get more people involved in political matters, helping them find ways to influence what they care about with less effort than it takes right now would be the best way (not that I know what would be a real solution to that).
- vturner 7y ago
  Us Americans have an impractical revulsion to lobbying and industry groups. Most Americans simply do not have the time and, at least until recently, are not too concerned what someone a state away does. Unfortunately, like you pointed out, voting isn't a frequent enough control mechanism on the authoritarians or simply narcissistic politicians ready to hand out favors. So, what do we do if lobbying and industrial groups are automatically not an option?
carlob 7y ago
Allow me to use a leaky metaphor. We now know pretty well addiction has little to do with the specifics of the substances we abuse: one can be addicted to gambling or sex just as well as to various chemicals. However that argument doesn't mean heroin is safe or that one should approach opiates without care. I think the same can be said of smartphones: if the government or a company wants to track you they will find other ways to do that, but we're making it the game far too easy for them. Another issue is that smartphones are so pervasive that 1) it has become increasingly difficult and sometimes impossible to do some things without one; 2) the sole fact of choosing not to use or own one is suspect. So, yeah surveillance is not just about phones, but we need to have a serious discussions about whether it is at all an option to opt out and lead a normal life.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
_visgean 7y ago
The problem with that logic is that it completely ignores the effectiveness of the surveillance. You can't really dispatch non-uniformed police officer for every demonstrator to find out where they live. With location data you can.
talkingtab 7y ago
"The fault dear brutus is blah, blah, blah." I agree that smart phones in themselves are not the problem, but it is naive to think they are not the delivery vehicle for the problem.
edanm 7y ago
I agree in principle. > [The solution] is about good laws, enforced vigorously. This I agree with, but I think it does have to be more than just "good laws". It has to also be a constitution, or some check on the government that is outside the "regular" powers of government to overcome. I think of the US-style bill of rights as having the correct idea - make it clear that the government is a servant of the people, that the people have given it power over some things, but certainly not everything, and that there are some things which are completely off-limits for the government.
huffmsa 7y ago
The only solution is not just your vote. The tree of liberty occasionally needs to be watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants. That's how it's always been, and probably always will be.
t34543 7y ago
> The solution is nothing to do with phones, or cameras. It is about good laws, enforced vigorously. I think this rationale is exactly what got us into this mess. Laws are sufficiently complex that navigating them successfully is only realistic with a lot of resources. Laws have become an instrument of power for wealthy people. In order to have unbiased enforcement we need to clean up and simplify the laws we already have.
Aperocky 7y ago
And you’ll be fed outrage on subject that the source want you to outrage on. And you will be outraged. An entire country will be. Just think about how many time you’ve experienced outrage over positive human experience some online content has? You’re already there, you want more outrage because you’re addicted to this mess. I agree that technology itself is not the problem. The problem imo is humans themselves, the natural and biological tendency to identify with a group and behave hostilely against another group.
lifeisstillgood 7y ago
Just to follow up on my post (too late for edits) - Yes voting is weak, but it is what counts. Please write to your MP / congresswoman, please join your local party, or volunteer at a refugee centre. All those things are vital life blood of democracy and I tip my hat to you if you have done any of those things. But the final thing is voting - it's what counts, what adds up. - We still need good laws. We still need them enforced. It would be lovely if we had a law that put politicians in jail if they lied. But just as Twitter and Facebook are finding, defining "political", "lie" and "truth" are hard problems. Like making NP-hard a walk in the park hard. - A new battlefront has opened. In the same way in the 1900s armed forces started saying, "Well I guess we are gonna need some pilots", we need "some coders". HN is probably the highest density of new pilots on the planets - and we are going to need the skills. Once I could read ten newspapers and know what information had been fed to millions of people - today that needs a university level observatory monitoring twitter and facebook firehouses. It will only get worse and the best we can hope for is to fight for the idea of objective truth agreed upon by millions. It's a fight well worth the coding. See you on the frontline.

reilly3000 7y ago

Snowden shared a chilling video today of smartphone surveillance at play in China. Its a real wake up call- what happens when there is no privacy from the state. Please share. https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1208469511051075585 https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1208469511051075585

acqq 7y ago
Interestingly, a few tweets later in the same thread is this tweet: "meanwhile in the usa 🇺🇸 you get sent to a restrain chair for walking your dog without a leash." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFG4KKwtEZo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFG4KKwtEZo They also used taser on her as she was already on the chair: "Did you see this? (tazzzap) (she cries from pain) It will happen again, so sit down and stop resisting." At least there's a difference: there's no record of her being interrogated later while bound to the chair. Or, maybe a bit more relevant, surveillance in action in the U.S. of A (2012): https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2093796/Emily-Bunting-Leigh-Van-Bryan-UK-tourists-arrested-destroy-America-Twitter-jokes.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2093796/Emily-Bunti... "British pair arrested in U.S. on terror charges over Twitter jokes" It’s not just what “could” happen.
- hamhand 7y ago
  Let's not compare systematic and institutionalized measures to news-worthy odd cases.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - freeflight 7y ago
    Claiming these issues are not systematic [0] and institutionalized [1], is willfully ignoring a very apparent problem. This isn't even reserved to US police, the whole system is flawed to the root due to being based on retribution and vengeance, instead of actual rehabilitation, which feeds exactly the kind of straight-up sadism showcased so often by US police and the US justice system. Case in point: Tazzing a restrained woman is justified with her having been "argumentative" [2]. Just follow the orders, be obedient, lick some boots, and then this will supposedly never happen to you, is a very common reply to these "news-worthy odd cases". But these "news-worthy odd cases" are merely the tip of an iceberg that is the US justice system boasting the highest incarceration rate and the largest prisoner population on the planet. Many of them working in for-profit forced labor prisons [3] or being imprisoned under circumstances that some would rate as torture [4]. It's all extremely authoritarian [5], deeply embedded into the country and culture, but regularly overshadowed by the chants of "Land of the free!" distracting from the crass actual reality. [0] https://time.com/4878195/civil-asset-forfeiture-jeff-sessions/ https://time.com/4878195/civil-asset-forfeiture-jeff-session... [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-police-do-not-have-a-constitutional-duty-to-protect.html https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-po... [2] https://youtu.be/TFG4KKwtEZo https://youtu.be/TFG4KKwtEZo [3] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/17/us-private-prisons-forced-labour-detainees-modern-slavery https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/17/us-pri... [4] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-rights-un-usa-torture-idUSKCN0WA2B8 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-rights-un-usa-torture-idU... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone

goodguy1234 7y ago

The article. What is he arguing about? Phones can be tracked? So can anything if the interested party is rich enough, powerful enough or dedicated enough. It has never been this easy to Protest. There are apps on phone with full encryption, there are mesh app that require no setup. There are custom roms for android with 100% focus security and privacy. Also is tracking bad? If we ignore the privacy fanatics, all the good that location tracking has given us far outways all the bad stuff. Also everyone seems to love the idea giving people a voice but does a 360 when they realize other people can have completely opposite radical ideas too.

feanaro 7y ago
Calling people holding a particular opinion "privacy fanatics" seems like a cheap move that tries to discredit a position by name-calling. To answer your question, yes, tracking is bad and we should be working to decrease it, then stop it.
- dageshi 7y ago
  The problem is, they usually sound like fanatics.
  - feanaro 7y ago
    A whole class of people loosely categorized with a quippy, but undefined moniker sounds like fanatics? Sounds like a useless generalization to me.
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 7y ago
> Phones can be tracked? So can anything if the interested party is rich enough, powerful enough or dedicated enough. In other words: Nothing is dangerous, because there is always another way to achieve the same thing if your resources are unlimited. Seriously? > There are apps on phone with full encryption, there are mesh app that require no setup. There are custom roms for android with 100% focus security and privacy. In other words: There are ways for individuals who understand the situation to limit their participation, therefore what is actually happening is of no concern, no matter where it actually leads. Seriously? > Also is tracking bad? If we ignore the privacy fanatics, all the good that location tracking has given us far outways all the bad stuff. Could you substantiate that, maybe? > Also everyone seems to love the idea giving people a voice but does a 360 when they realize other people can have completely opposite radical ideas too. In other words: People who want people to have a voice should be happy when people who want to shut up everyone who isn't like them are promoting their ideas? Seriously?

mirimir 7y ago

It's not just phones. And you don't need GPS to get GPS-level location accuracy. All that you need is WiFi capability. Because WiFi devices scan for APs. And there are databases of GPS-located APs. Located by other GPS-enabled pawns, as it happens. So if you're using anything Google related, or other apps that access such data, you can be tracked. Just from WiFi. Without a cellular radio, or GPS.

ShorsHammer 7y ago
Simple triangulation of any dumb phone that hasn't even got a sim card inserted is enough tracking for most surveillance governments. Unless of course we move to a world where people without sim cards become a significant minority or registering a sim card isn't so invasive.
- mirimir 7y ago
  Yes, I get that. But many people probably don't realize that portable computers with WiFi can be geolocated just as well as phones. Better than dumb phones, even.
throwaway743 7y ago
To add to this, if an AP has monitor mode capabilities then our device's don't even need to be connected to the AP via WiFi to be tracked. They just need to have WiFi turned on and sending out probes.
- mirimir 7y ago
  Yes, but that's just about being tracked by the WiFi AP itself. But as I understand it, being tracked by apps on your device doesn't depend on the AP having monitor mode capability. APs get geolocated primarily by GPS-capable smartphones. And then devices get geolocated based on proximity to such APs. Basically, through latency-based triangulation.
Gaelan 7y ago
iOS no longer gives apps a list of nearby APs (unless they have location access anyway), for precisely this reason.

boyadjian 7y ago

"The freedom of some stops where that of others begins"

thendrill 7y ago

Can we have a discussion about what democracy currently is? Is one dollar one vote really democratic?

B1FF_PSUVM 7y ago
That's the way republics have worked since Rome and Carthage. Nowadays the aristocrats just play in hard mode - best weapon is soft soap.

buboard 7y ago

Duh this should be common knowledge by now and it s only getting worse. Yes you should be freaked out about living in a world without privacy, but no, democracy is not in danger, freedom is in danger. In fact, democratic people voted for this shit and they keep voting for more regulation/spying because "think of the children/terrorists". Authoritarian control has gotten hold of both democracies and non-democracies and people are fine with it. So, maybe blame the majority along with the phones.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 7y ago
> Authoritarian control has gotten hold of both democracies and non-democracies and people are fine with it. And how is democracy doing in places where authoritation control has gotten out of hand? After all, you are claiming that democracy is not in danger. So, have people who noticed that they weren't that keen on authoritarianism after all regularly voted the authoritarians out of office successfully, then?
- buboard 7y ago
  > how is democracy doing in places where authoritation control has gotten out of hand? Not well, but not too bad either. Everyone is happy because of this: https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/number-of-democracies-over-time.png https://thinkbynumbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/number... Surveillance democracy is a thing, as is surveillance communism/putinism/erdoganism. The difference is that democracies have found a way to manufacture the consent of the majority, while in autocracies it's easier to pin the blame to one person. > have people who noticed that they weren't that keen on authoritarianism after all regularly voted the authoritarians out of office successfully, then? There are relatively few people who aren't keen on surveillance. most people are on board with UK level surveillance and most americans still think badly of Snowden. Don't expect it to be voted out soon
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 7y ago
    > Surveillance democracy is a thing, as is surveillance communism/putinism/erdoganism. The difference is that democracies have found a way to manufacture the consent of the majority, while in autocracies it's easier to pin the blame to one person. Well, is it really, though? I mean, no doubt there is a thing that people call "surveillance democracy", and I would agree that it's actually a distinguishable thing. But for one, just because something is called "democracy", doesn't make it a democracy, so the question would be: What makes a democracy a democracy, and would a "surveillance democracy" fit those criteria? But also: Is a "surveillance democracy" even a place where authoritarian control has gotten out of hand yet? Maybe as long as you could still vote the authoritarians out of office, it's not out of hand yet? But then, what if there is actually no real way to achieve this, for whatever reason, and those places are destined for a situation where it is generally accepted that the authoritarians can not be voted out of office, even when people might ultimately change their mind about that whole authoritarianism thing? Maybe then it is out of hand after all? But then, is democracy actually fine if it is unavoidably destined for a place where it is impossible for a majority to elect a new government? Your analysis so far seems not too far from a line of thought that would conclude that the GDR was a democracy (they had elections, and they even called themselves democratic!)--not sure whether you would agree with that, but the GDR sure was and is not considered a democracy by many. > most people are on board with UK level surveillance But are they really? My impression is rather that people simply have no fucking clue what surveillance does or what the risks are. So, while it might well be true that most people don't think of surveillance as a problem right now, that doesn't answer the question of whether people are actually OK with it, as in what their opinion would be once they might be directly confronted with the consequences. And that was my point: There sure are and have been plenty of places where people are not happy with authoritarianism anymore, and those do not tend to be the places where people just vote the authoritarianism out. Authoritarianism is not compatible with democracy, by its definition: It is kindof fine just as long as there is still enough democracy left to potentially remove the authoritarians, so people don't realize the danger they are in, but it becomes unbearable exatly at the point where that power does not exist anymore, because that is also the point at which the authoritarians don't have to care about public opinion much anymore.

lbj 7y ago

Im in the latest Opera and all I see is a video of a crowd. Is that a broken experience?

obahareth 7y ago
I see the same thing on the latest Chrome too.
HansHamster 7y ago
Latest Firefox here, takes a few minutes to load and all I get is a mostly black top half of the screen and a few seconds of 'video' stuttering along in the bottom half.

thrower123 7y ago

If there's one thing you can count on the Times for, it is ragging on about everything under the sun being a threat to democracy. They don't ever want to place the blame a little closer to home, though.

Fjolsvith 7y ago

I don't get why people confuse Democracy with Constitutional Republic. The first is run by "mob rule" where personal rights can be swept away with the popular sentiment. The second (which is what the United States has) is where the Constitution protects personal rights despite popular sentiment.

qrbLPHiKpiux 7y ago
With two children in the school system now, teachers are not doing their job well. Observing first hand.
marcosdumay 7y ago
Wait, what? The first is a philosophical principle that says that a government must serve the governed people, the second is an actual form of government that tries to implement the first.
- buboard 7y ago
  Where do you get those definitions?
  - marcosdumay 7y ago
    How about the dictionary? > n. Government by the people, exercised either directly or through elected representatives. > n. A political or social unit that has such a government. > n. The common people, considered as the primary source of political power. But better, where outside of some ancient history book did you ever see somebody use that word describing exclusively a government like the one in ancient Greece? (Not to say that republic comes from the exact same concepts, just in a different language.)
    - buboard 7y ago
      - these definitions are not the same as the one you stated previously. - All these 3 definitions of democracy may apply to a democracy that uses allotment instead of elections. - You are correct that modern usage of democracy is restricted to "election based majority government". - Republic is a wholly separate, orthogonal concept. Pre-empire Rome was a republic, not a democracy.

cmoscoso 7y ago

Muh, tracking bad...

huffmsa 7y ago

> "Countries including Canada and Spain have rules to limit or prohibit masks at riots or unlawful gatherings" Oh yes, I'm sure the guys burning cars and smashing shop windows are going to follow a no masks rule. More broadly, democracy doesn't require anonymity. In face, it functions better when you know exactly where everyone stands. If you're worried about the ruling government black bagging you for your stance, get a 2A. Start a real revolution. The Declaration wasn't signed "concerned colonists". Those dudes put their names on paper and mailed it to King George.

huffmsa 7y ago
Really, "Smartphones enable tyranny" would be a better title.
buboard 7y ago
> More broadly, democracy doesn't require anonymity. In face, it functions better when you know exactly where everyone stands that's just false. democracy wouldn't function at all without secret ballots > Those dudes put their names on paper and mailed it to King George. an act of war that has little to do with democracy
- huffmsa 7y ago
  Can you imagine a parliament or Congress where every vote was anonymous? Anonymous "ministers" making anonymous, unaccountable decisions? "The Government" deciding what was right? And it did too have everything to do with democracy. A unanimous vote from the states representatives supported the motion to secede. In the United States, we know the names of everyone who votes for the president.
  - huffmsa 7y ago
    Now let's list people selected by a secret ballot: - the Pope - the general Secretary of the cccp - US Congressional representatives - the chairman of the NFL - the chairman of best Korea - the limp wristed forum members who use their anonymous downvote instead of engaging with a post the disagree with.

deleted 7y ago

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