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Quote of my coworker about why he doesn’t want to vote yes on a referendum to overturn a law that expands our intelligence agencies rights for surveillance with

by lwkl 6y ago

Quote of my coworker about why he doesn’t want to vote yes on a referendum to overturn a law that expands our intelligence agencies rights for surveillance with oversight from a single judge and no transparency and accountability: „As long as they catch at least one of these assholes, I don‘t care about me being surveilled. You will understand this when you become a father.“ This opened my eyes most people have an irrational fear and think that these capabilities won‘t be abused. At the same time our state abused their surveillance capabilities during the cold war and gathered data on almost a million people. But people seem to have forgotten already. I‘m talking about Switzerland if you are wondering what which of authoritarian regime I‘m talking about.

scotty79 6y ago
You can get them thinking by making them realize that more than one of the assholes they are afraid of will be hired there and will have access to their and their kids most private data.
sneak 6y ago
It’s astounding how many ordinary regular humans want a father or a big brother to take the responsibility of looking after them and keeping them safe. The world is a scary place. The problem is that it doesn’t become less so by giving up your privacy, it becomes more so. The world bought the idea that privacy and security are at odds, and that by giving up one, you gain the other. It’s the biggest lie of our generation. I hope I don’t live to see the chickens coming home to roost. It’s happening in China and Russia, and what happened to Assange is a preview of what will eventually happen in the USA.
- sdoering 6y ago
  Eventually? You mean already is happening. It has started. But that only as a side note. The "problem" is, that there is not one universal "freedom". Freedom is many concepts packaged into one single word. Coming from Germany, I still remember the division by the Iron Curtain. Having lived on the western side few miles from the border and having talked to a lot of former GDR people (my father fled with his parents before the wall was build when he was still a little kid) during the years I came to understand two totally different forms of "freedom" at play in the different regimes: A lot of people in the east got away with critizizing their bosses and sometimes even becoming physical. Up to a certain point they even got away with being somewhat critical to the system and the problems within the system. In the west people got away with critizising the state quite well, while it became problematic to critique your bosses at your workplace. I know a lot of people in my father's generation who got fired for pointing out flaws in their workplace. We were able to travel to a lot of places (once we were well off enough to afford it). While my parents still struggled to pay for me being able to attend sport clubs. My while my SO's parents (she was born few years before the wall fell in the eastern part of Germany) were only ever able to travel to the east German coast, other eastern countries like Slowakia or what is now the Czech Republik, Romania or Bulgaria, Russia or Cuba (and they were by far less well off than my western German parents). I don't imply one system was better, one was worse. Well yes I do - the GDR was worse. But what I wanted to show is, that there are different kind of "freedoms" and that is just one example. Every form of freddom comes with inherent trade-offs. Because of preferences, personal values and said trade-offs other people tend to prefere different kinds of freedoms (while maybe not grasping that their choices impact others - like a tragedy of the commons thing). They seem to have a different hierarchy of what is important to them - and decide based on that. Be it in Germany, the US or as OP pointed out in Switzerland.
  - mattm 6y ago
    This is such a good comment. I was in China for a friend's wedding and his fiance's family was adding another floor to their house. I asked what kind of permission they needed. They said they didn't need anything. They just went ahead and did it. Contrast that to the US and, depending on the place, you could spend months arranging to get the proper paperwork and inspections to be able to do something like that. So while the Chinese person may not have the freedom to strongly criticize their government, in this case they did have more freedom to make an individual improvement to the quality of their immediate life. I think it's a huge issue when someone brings up "freedom". What does that even mean? In a society you're never truly free. There's always some form of constraint. You could go live as a hermit and be free but then you're constrained by the physical limitations of the environment. While walking to work (pre-covid) I'd see homeless people and wonder "Are they freer than me?" They can wake up and do whatever they want for the day. I'm the one that has to stick to a fairly regular schedule.
    - Lio 6y ago
      > I think it's a huge issue when someone brings up "freedom". What does that even mean? Someone smarter than me once wrote “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.” If you can point out that someone in authority is wrong, without fear of death or persecution, then you have freedom and from that germ everything else can be reformed eventually. Dictators know this and it's why they don't let people laugh at them even when they clearly look stupid.
- dkdk8283 6y ago
  > The world is a scary place. I can’t agree with this. Life is hard but isn’t scary. I’m far more concerned about losing my home to a natural disaster than terrorism. Fear is the media’s new currency. There’s nothing to be scared of, except maybe a dystopian future where you can be jailed or killed for your beliefs.
  - sneak 6y ago
    The world doesn’t scare me, but it scares enough people (into doing stupid things in reaction to it) that it is accurately described as a scary place. I just don’t scare easily. Many do.
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
>I‘m talking about Switzerland if you are wondering what which of authoritarian regime I‘m talking about That's part of the the problem. Hundreds of years of (relative to everyone else) peace and stable not too abusive government makes people complacent. You won't hear many people from places that had repressive governments within their or their parents' lifetimes saying "but if it catches one terrorist."
kweks 6y ago
There is a nice counter-balance to the "I've got nothing to hide" idiom, which is "I've got nothing to hide, but I've got nothing to share". Changing the focus from "hiding", which insinuates underhandedness or immorality, to "sharing" - often allows the conversation to extend to "What would you be comfortable sharing with (the government | the police | your neighbors) etc. In my experience, this angle helps people grasp more quickly that they'd be uncomfortable sharing many things with most people.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
monkeynotes 6y ago
> You will understand this when you become a father Such a BS attitude. For one, it's self serving and selfish. It serves only to comfort the parent and has no consideration for the life their child will be handed when they become adults. Heck, even children and teenagers will suffer from freedom sapped by people who offload their agency to the government time and time again in exchange for an insulated "life". How can you make mistakes and learn if everything is under the eyeball of an authority who has the freedom to do as they please as long as it's in the name of public safety. Life entirely without risk and danger, at all costs, is not a life at all, and that's what you want to hand your daughters and sons? When you blindly let this legislation through because the first page of the draft reassures you it will get "assholes" off the streets you also tend to become entirely passive about the rest of the legislation. All sorts of side effects and detriments to society can be ushered in if you don't question big changes like this. People with the mentality of "at all costs we must be safe" are doing damage that is irreparable. We must accept that life is implicitly hazardous at times. I recognize my objection is futile, it's impossible to argue any case in the face of "think of the children". Genes want to survive and project themselves into the future, it's hard wired into us. The more technology and organization we have the more we are going to use it to abstract ourselves the human monument rather than mere organisms. We really can't help ourselves. This is possibly one of the most defining and interesting times to be alive. We get to witness the beginning of a madness, what happens when life is able to achieve its goal only to find out it's a meaningless dead end. Wow, that got dark quickly.
goatinaboat 6y ago
I don‘t care about me being surveilled. You will understand this when you become a father He's OK with random strangers surveilling his children then? Because no child molesters have ever been employed by the public sector, of course. And no government has ever leaked data onto the dark web. Honestly, there should be a parenting license people need to pass with exams.
fsflover 6y ago
> „As long as they catch at least one of these assholes, I don‘t care about me being surveilled. You will understand this when you become a father.“ PRISM – NSA surveillance program did not prevent a single terrorist attack (tutanota.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24777115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24777115 Fighting "assholes" is not even the goal of the surveillance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance#Purposes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance#Purposes
Nasrudith 6y ago
> "As long as they catch at least one of these assholes, I don‘t care about me being surveilled. You will understand this when you become a father" I would probably make enemies very quickly as I would be sorely tempted to respond "So you want your children to live in a police state? God you are a terrible father."

by lwkl 6y ago

scotty79 6y ago

You can get them thinking by making them realize that more than one of the assholes they are afraid of will be hired there and will have access to their and their kids most private data.

sneak 6y ago

It’s astounding how many ordinary regular humans want a father or a big brother to take the responsibility of looking after them and keeping them safe. The world is a scary place. The problem is that it doesn’t become less so by giving up your privacy, it becomes more so. The world bought the idea that privacy and security are at odds, and that by giving up one, you gain the other. It’s the biggest lie of our generation. I hope I don’t live to see the chickens coming home to roost. It’s happening in China and Russia, and what happened to Assange is a preview of what will eventually happen in the USA.

sdoering 6y ago
Eventually? You mean already is happening. It has started. But that only as a side note. The "problem" is, that there is not one universal "freedom". Freedom is many concepts packaged into one single word. Coming from Germany, I still remember the division by the Iron Curtain. Having lived on the western side few miles from the border and having talked to a lot of former GDR people (my father fled with his parents before the wall was build when he was still a little kid) during the years I came to understand two totally different forms of "freedom" at play in the different regimes: A lot of people in the east got away with critizizing their bosses and sometimes even becoming physical. Up to a certain point they even got away with being somewhat critical to the system and the problems within the system. In the west people got away with critizising the state quite well, while it became problematic to critique your bosses at your workplace. I know a lot of people in my father's generation who got fired for pointing out flaws in their workplace. We were able to travel to a lot of places (once we were well off enough to afford it). While my parents still struggled to pay for me being able to attend sport clubs. My while my SO's parents (she was born few years before the wall fell in the eastern part of Germany) were only ever able to travel to the east German coast, other eastern countries like Slowakia or what is now the Czech Republik, Romania or Bulgaria, Russia or Cuba (and they were by far less well off than my western German parents). I don't imply one system was better, one was worse. Well yes I do - the GDR was worse. But what I wanted to show is, that there are different kind of "freedoms" and that is just one example. Every form of freddom comes with inherent trade-offs. Because of preferences, personal values and said trade-offs other people tend to prefere different kinds of freedoms (while maybe not grasping that their choices impact others - like a tragedy of the commons thing). They seem to have a different hierarchy of what is important to them - and decide based on that. Be it in Germany, the US or as OP pointed out in Switzerland.
- mattm 6y ago
  This is such a good comment. I was in China for a friend's wedding and his fiance's family was adding another floor to their house. I asked what kind of permission they needed. They said they didn't need anything. They just went ahead and did it. Contrast that to the US and, depending on the place, you could spend months arranging to get the proper paperwork and inspections to be able to do something like that. So while the Chinese person may not have the freedom to strongly criticize their government, in this case they did have more freedom to make an individual improvement to the quality of their immediate life. I think it's a huge issue when someone brings up "freedom". What does that even mean? In a society you're never truly free. There's always some form of constraint. You could go live as a hermit and be free but then you're constrained by the physical limitations of the environment. While walking to work (pre-covid) I'd see homeless people and wonder "Are they freer than me?" They can wake up and do whatever they want for the day. I'm the one that has to stick to a fairly regular schedule.
  - Lio 6y ago
    > I think it's a huge issue when someone brings up "freedom". What does that even mean? Someone smarter than me once wrote “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.” If you can point out that someone in authority is wrong, without fear of death or persecution, then you have freedom and from that germ everything else can be reformed eventually. Dictators know this and it's why they don't let people laugh at them even when they clearly look stupid.
dkdk8283 6y ago
> The world is a scary place. I can’t agree with this. Life is hard but isn’t scary. I’m far more concerned about losing my home to a natural disaster than terrorism. Fear is the media’s new currency. There’s nothing to be scared of, except maybe a dystopian future where you can be jailed or killed for your beliefs.
- sneak 6y ago
  The world doesn’t scare me, but it scares enough people (into doing stupid things in reaction to it) that it is accurately described as a scary place. I just don’t scare easily. Many do.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago

>I‘m talking about Switzerland if you are wondering what which of authoritarian regime I‘m talking about That's part of the the problem. Hundreds of years of (relative to everyone else) peace and stable not too abusive government makes people complacent. You won't hear many people from places that had repressive governments within their or their parents' lifetimes saying "but if it catches one terrorist."

kweks 6y ago

There is a nice counter-balance to the "I've got nothing to hide" idiom, which is "I've got nothing to hide, but I've got nothing to share". Changing the focus from "hiding", which insinuates underhandedness or immorality, to "sharing" - often allows the conversation to extend to "What would you be comfortable sharing with (the government | the police | your neighbors) etc. In my experience, this angle helps people grasp more quickly that they'd be uncomfortable sharing many things with most people.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

monkeynotes 6y ago

> You will understand this when you become a father Such a BS attitude. For one, it's self serving and selfish. It serves only to comfort the parent and has no consideration for the life their child will be handed when they become adults. Heck, even children and teenagers will suffer from freedom sapped by people who offload their agency to the government time and time again in exchange for an insulated "life". How can you make mistakes and learn if everything is under the eyeball of an authority who has the freedom to do as they please as long as it's in the name of public safety. Life entirely without risk and danger, at all costs, is not a life at all, and that's what you want to hand your daughters and sons? When you blindly let this legislation through because the first page of the draft reassures you it will get "assholes" off the streets you also tend to become entirely passive about the rest of the legislation. All sorts of side effects and detriments to society can be ushered in if you don't question big changes like this. People with the mentality of "at all costs we must be safe" are doing damage that is irreparable. We must accept that life is implicitly hazardous at times. I recognize my objection is futile, it's impossible to argue any case in the face of "think of the children". Genes want to survive and project themselves into the future, it's hard wired into us. The more technology and organization we have the more we are going to use it to abstract ourselves the human monument rather than mere organisms. We really can't help ourselves. This is possibly one of the most defining and interesting times to be alive. We get to witness the beginning of a madness, what happens when life is able to achieve its goal only to find out it's a meaningless dead end. Wow, that got dark quickly.

goatinaboat 6y ago

I don‘t care about me being surveilled. You will understand this when you become a father He's OK with random strangers surveilling his children then? Because no child molesters have ever been employed by the public sector, of course. And no government has ever leaked data onto the dark web. Honestly, there should be a parenting license people need to pass with exams.

fsflover 6y ago

> „As long as they catch at least one of these assholes, I don‘t care about me being surveilled. You will understand this when you become a father.“ PRISM – NSA surveillance program did not prevent a single terrorist attack (tutanota.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24777115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24777115 Fighting "assholes" is not even the goal of the surveillance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance#Purposes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance#Purposes

Nasrudith 6y ago

> "As long as they catch at least one of these assholes, I don‘t care about me being surveilled. You will understand this when you become a father" I would probably make enemies very quickly as I would be sorely tempted to respond "So you want your children to live in a police state? God you are a terrible father."