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Absolute outrage clickbait. The bill is intended to protect children from traffickers. It is sponsored by the European Commission. The nonprofit founded by Asht
by tootie 5y ago
Absolute outrage clickbait. The bill is intended to protect children from traffickers. It is sponsored by the European Commission. The nonprofit founded by Ashton Kutcher supports it. He's not personally in Brussels demanding surveillance. The draft of the bill is likely written from a single point of view with a set of rules beyond what they expect to get, then it will be negotiated down and they'll get some of it or none of it. The notion that we should not even try to combat child sex trafficking because it will have some associated cost is really selfish. Obviously, we have to balance concerns, but that's entirely possible to do responsibly.
I think the last 20 years (really 100 years) have shown that abuse of free speech and privacy will happen no matter what when the authorities want it to and not at all when the don't. The US ran warrantless wiretapping for over a year post 9/11 and sucked up all sorts of completely illegally obtained communication and as far we know not a single civilian was remotely inconvenienced for it. Meanwhile Russia is throwing journalists out windows for their very public statements of fact.
- yunwal 5y agoSo wait, your point is "Governments are going to spy on you no matter what"... and your plan is to make measures that protect against that such as encryption illegal?
- hunterb123 5y agoThat wasn't his point at all. Instead of badly paraphrasing why don't you reply to what he actually wrote. He was clarifying the situation unlike everyone else talking in hyperboles. I'm not for this specific suggestion but Ashton and his foundation are truly trying to help fight child trafficking. Let's talk through a solution instead of ignoring it or slandering those trying to do something.
- tootie 5y agoNo. My point is governments will _repress_ people regardless of their surveillance capabilities. The Gestapo didn't need to monitor WhatsApp to detain disloyal citizens without trial. On the flip side, there are billion dollar corporations who exist solely to shit on the leaders of their countries as loudly as possible with no repercussions. I'm not saying surveillance is great and we just blindly accept it, but I am saying the cost of heightened surveillance is a lot lower than the HN crowd seem to think it is. When you're balancing the scale of public safety against increased surveillance it's not a simple equation.
- raxxorrax 5y agoIf the Gestapo did have WhatsApp data it would have been severely more powerful. You are correct that I believe the cost is quite high compared to the very low returns of invasions of privacy like this. Which probably amounts to none. We increased surveillance for decades. And none of this surveillance had any measurable impact on safety. It is just a short sighted proposal and nothing more. We know where and when kids get abused. The abused is almost always in their vicinity. Internet chat surveillance does not help at all.
- raverbashing 5y agoWould you mind giving us access to all your email and phone messages? It's for a good cause, we want to check you're not doing anything wrong. Right? If you did nothing wrong you have nothing to fear
- hunterb123 5y agoThat's a bad faith argument that talks past everything that GP said. Ironically the most accepted replies here are emotional knee-jerk statements.