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There is a lesson here about the push for privacy laws. If you can't trust the government, why trust that they would uphold any law about your privacy? Privacy

by imgabe 7y ago

There is a lesson here about the push for privacy laws. If you can't trust the government, why trust that they would uphold any law about your privacy? Privacy has to be established from a technological perspective - strong encryption, don't put information on the Internet if you don't want it compromised. Laws require a government that will respect them.

yummypaint 7y ago
There has to be a multi-pronged approach. The central prong is organized public will, without which neither laws nor appropriate tech will be adopted. Governments may violate people's privacy in spite of laws, but without such laws governments will absolutely do so with impunity. Visible evidence of a government breaking its own laws to harm its people draws more citizens to the fight and helps move regime change forward. That being said, everyone should still use the strongest encryprion available for all communications, including boring and unremarkable communication.
- shi314 7y ago
  When you have anti encryption laws, any effort for privacy is just farce.
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  This posts seems to assume laws and government are separate. In reality, government makes the laws. They're an expression and codification of the ruler's will.
  - shaki-dora 7y ago
    The quickest way to autocracy is pretending there's no difference between it and democracy. This is civics 101: There is no "one ruler". There are parliaments, with multiple, opposing fractions. Then, there are administrations (te "executive branch"), which are separate. Then, also separate: the judiciary. Of course you already knew that, yet you chose to double down on OP's cynical take declaring democracy dead and asking people to stop trying to save and/or improve it. Why vote, if law has no power? And, for the odd politician that happens not to be corrupt: why bother, when your constituents are just going to spit and yell conspiracy theories in your face, with absolutely no attention being paid to your actual work?
    - BurningFrog 7y ago
      I guess the very detailed imaginary persona you've invented from my short post says something about you :)
    - tasogare 7y ago
      That may have been true in the past, now it’s one more fiction. The real three powers are: the rich (which decide laws in the background), the politicians (gov+parliments that use the existing institutions to push laws decided by the rich) and the media (that create and drive public opinion and chose the politicians). The first two classes are not truly separated anymore, and one may pass from to another (best example is being France’s president Macron).
  - EliRivers 7y ago
    There's more nuance to this. Take the UK, for example (if only because it's what I'm familiar with). The government, in recent times, attempted to create new laws and got shot down. New laws denied. It may be the case that government makes laws, but (in many places) they still need permission to do so. Laws also survive governments; subsequent governments have at times tried to remove existing laws, and been shot down in the attempt. While there's a clear link twixt government and law, they're not (in many places) the same thing; they are separate.
    - BurningFrog 7y ago
      Sorry, I should have been more precise. I used "government" as meaning all branches of government as a whole. I don't disregard the advantages of dividing power between executive, legislative and judicial branches. That dilution of centralized power is important. But at the end of the day, when the branches has come to agreement, it's still a sovereign entity that does whatever it wants.
shaki-dora 7y ago
That argument is trivially true for most any civil liberty: the promise of a fair trial is protected only by the next higher court's fairness, etc. To categorical discount the value of the rule of law, and to apparently consider that idea to be so obvious that just about half a paragraph of argumentation is given for it, strikes me as... just scary? There are quite a few established democracies that have seen steady improvements in civil rights over their existence. There have been setbacks, such as World War Two. And the last five to ten years may well be similar. But it's still obviously true that "the long arch of history bends towards justice". And, fwiw, technology alone is not capable to guarantee any meaningful rights when your own government is your adversary. The internet was praised as the killer tool to empower the individual against censorship. And yet there still is no technology that makes accessing Wikipedia in Shanghai as easy as it is in Billings, Montana. Bitcoin was hailed (by the conspiracy-minded) as a tool to overthrow democratically-established institutions. But, as it turned out, regulators were far less interested in shutting down Bitcoin than expected, and did not even break a sweat implementing KYC nad similar regulation across the cryptocurrency universe when needed.
- throwaway_acct1 7y ago
  > technology alone is not capable to guarantee any meaningful rights when your own government is your adversary In fact, I would argue technology has made it easier to abuse individual rights. Its so easy to build mass surveillance systems nowadays that citizens are quickly becoming a row on a spreadsheet. Technology has empowered authoritative governments to become more authoritative. China being the prime example.
- claudeganon 7y ago
  > There are quite a few established democracies that have seen steady improvements in civil rights over their existence. There have been setbacks, such as World War Two. And the last five to ten years may well be similar. But it's still obviously true that "the long arch of history bends towards justice". I’d be interested for you to cite specific example of this. During the Cold War, the threat of the Soviet domination pushed some countries in the direction of greater equality and equanimity. But they seem uniformly in retreat following its collapse, and retreating on the basis of ever shoddier premises (first the War on Terror, now ethnonationalism). While it’s true that the ranks of the elite have diversified, the material reality and civil rights protections of almost everyone beneath them have worsened in many of these countries.
adrianN 7y ago
Without the appropriate laws to go with them, technological solutions won't work. The state will just make strong encryption illegal, or force people to give up their passwords. Or simply start a propaganda campaign to limit adoption (anybody that uses encryption anyway is automatically suspicious, that makes the secret police's job much easier).
yongjik 7y ago
You could personally implement the best technical solution for privacy, and then one of your family will buy the newest phone and go to the hottest site to see cute cat videos, while the phone live-streams your surrounding to 3rd party servers. And then you could rage about how these stupid people are ruining everything by not understanding privacy, but then again, "Stupid people are ruining my beautiful society!" has been a refrain since the days of Marx, probably earlier. 99% of people won't even understand PKI, ever. They have jobs and other things to worry about. You should structure your society with that assumption.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

by imgabe 7y ago

yummypaint 7y ago

There has to be a multi-pronged approach. The central prong is organized public will, without which neither laws nor appropriate tech will be adopted. Governments may violate people's privacy in spite of laws, but without such laws governments will absolutely do so with impunity. Visible evidence of a government breaking its own laws to harm its people draws more citizens to the fight and helps move regime change forward. That being said, everyone should still use the strongest encryprion available for all communications, including boring and unremarkable communication.

shi314 7y ago
When you have anti encryption laws, any effort for privacy is just farce.
BurningFrog 7y ago
This posts seems to assume laws and government are separate. In reality, government makes the laws. They're an expression and codification of the ruler's will.
- shaki-dora 7y ago
  The quickest way to autocracy is pretending there's no difference between it and democracy. This is civics 101: There is no "one ruler". There are parliaments, with multiple, opposing fractions. Then, there are administrations (te "executive branch"), which are separate. Then, also separate: the judiciary. Of course you already knew that, yet you chose to double down on OP's cynical take declaring democracy dead and asking people to stop trying to save and/or improve it. Why vote, if law has no power? And, for the odd politician that happens not to be corrupt: why bother, when your constituents are just going to spit and yell conspiracy theories in your face, with absolutely no attention being paid to your actual work?
  - BurningFrog 7y ago
    I guess the very detailed imaginary persona you've invented from my short post says something about you :)
  - tasogare 7y ago
    That may have been true in the past, now it’s one more fiction. The real three powers are: the rich (which decide laws in the background), the politicians (gov+parliments that use the existing institutions to push laws decided by the rich) and the media (that create and drive public opinion and chose the politicians). The first two classes are not truly separated anymore, and one may pass from to another (best example is being France’s president Macron).
- EliRivers 7y ago
  There's more nuance to this. Take the UK, for example (if only because it's what I'm familiar with). The government, in recent times, attempted to create new laws and got shot down. New laws denied. It may be the case that government makes laws, but (in many places) they still need permission to do so. Laws also survive governments; subsequent governments have at times tried to remove existing laws, and been shot down in the attempt. While there's a clear link twixt government and law, they're not (in many places) the same thing; they are separate.
  - BurningFrog 7y ago
    Sorry, I should have been more precise. I used "government" as meaning all branches of government as a whole. I don't disregard the advantages of dividing power between executive, legislative and judicial branches. That dilution of centralized power is important. But at the end of the day, when the branches has come to agreement, it's still a sovereign entity that does whatever it wants.

shaki-dora 7y ago

That argument is trivially true for most any civil liberty: the promise of a fair trial is protected only by the next higher court's fairness, etc. To categorical discount the value of the rule of law, and to apparently consider that idea to be so obvious that just about half a paragraph of argumentation is given for it, strikes me as... just scary? There are quite a few established democracies that have seen steady improvements in civil rights over their existence. There have been setbacks, such as World War Two. And the last five to ten years may well be similar. But it's still obviously true that "the long arch of history bends towards justice". And, fwiw, technology alone is not capable to guarantee any meaningful rights when your own government is your adversary. The internet was praised as the killer tool to empower the individual against censorship. And yet there still is no technology that makes accessing Wikipedia in Shanghai as easy as it is in Billings, Montana. Bitcoin was hailed (by the conspiracy-minded) as a tool to overthrow democratically-established institutions. But, as it turned out, regulators were far less interested in shutting down Bitcoin than expected, and did not even break a sweat implementing KYC nad similar regulation across the cryptocurrency universe when needed.

throwaway_acct1 7y ago
> technology alone is not capable to guarantee any meaningful rights when your own government is your adversary In fact, I would argue technology has made it easier to abuse individual rights. Its so easy to build mass surveillance systems nowadays that citizens are quickly becoming a row on a spreadsheet. Technology has empowered authoritative governments to become more authoritative. China being the prime example.
claudeganon 7y ago
> There are quite a few established democracies that have seen steady improvements in civil rights over their existence. There have been setbacks, such as World War Two. And the last five to ten years may well be similar. But it's still obviously true that "the long arch of history bends towards justice". I’d be interested for you to cite specific example of this. During the Cold War, the threat of the Soviet domination pushed some countries in the direction of greater equality and equanimity. But they seem uniformly in retreat following its collapse, and retreating on the basis of ever shoddier premises (first the War on Terror, now ethnonationalism). While it’s true that the ranks of the elite have diversified, the material reality and civil rights protections of almost everyone beneath them have worsened in many of these countries.

adrianN 7y ago

Without the appropriate laws to go with them, technological solutions won't work. The state will just make strong encryption illegal, or force people to give up their passwords. Or simply start a propaganda campaign to limit adoption (anybody that uses encryption anyway is automatically suspicious, that makes the secret police's job much easier).

yongjik 7y ago

You could personally implement the best technical solution for privacy, and then one of your family will buy the newest phone and go to the hottest site to see cute cat videos, while the phone live-streams your surrounding to 3rd party servers. And then you could rage about how these stupid people are ruining everything by not understanding privacy, but then again, "Stupid people are ruining my beautiful society!" has been a refrain since the days of Marx, probably earlier. 99% of people won't even understand PKI, ever. They have jobs and other things to worry about. You should structure your society with that assumption.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]